More News about XFree86®
It is on our website and ready to download. 4.5.0 was born on March 16 2005 and the delivery I hear was smooth. Get a copy now. It's just terrific... Details here
You will be seeing on the pages now a registration mark® instead of our old common-law trademark ™ sign. That's because XFree86 joins other Open Source Leaders like Linux® FreeBSD®, NetBSD® Debian®, Fedora® and countless others who wear the badge of Trademarked in the good ole USA.
If you want more information about Trademarks and why we got one go here.
After tremendous testing and community feedback, the 4.4.0 Release is now available for seventeen (yep that's 17!) popular platforms and with more coming in the ensuing week. Enjoy!
The Inquirer recently interviewed David Dawes on the license debate. It's a good read and sheds some light on this much debated issue.
The XFree86 Project, Inc is announcing that it has made a change to its license effective with the Third Release Candidate for the 4.4.0 series. This licence, like our previous, is fully free, (how do we know this? no less than the world authority on free software, RMS, has agreed with us on that one) and with this latest license debate the XFree86 leadership has re-affirmed its pledge to always keep our tree fully free.
The motivation behind this license change to the base license are the Project's desire to strengthen its stated policy of "You can do what you like with the code except claim you wrote it" . Our work-in-progress FAQ helps breakout the FUD from the facts.
The full announcement conncerning the license change can be found here. Discussion of the modified license should be done on Forum@XFree86.org. List subscription is not required but encouraged.
There are several news items claiming that X.Org and The XFree86 Project have merged, or are discussing to merge or secretly desire to merge.
Well, they are all bogus. There have not been any discussions with X.Org about merging, let alone any agreement about merging. We have though re-affirmed our mutual decision to disagree.
If you have anyother rumours, worries or concerns, bring them, and your own favourite beverage, over to Forum at XFree86 dot org. C'ya.
The XFree86 core team has voted to disband itself, effective 31 December 2003 in what is basically a minor internal restructuring, similiar in both spirit and action to last January when the devel list was opened up to the whole XFree86 community instead of as previously just XFree86 developers.
This dissolution makes a lot of sense from the standpoint that the core team was supposed to be distillation of the best and brightest that XFree86 development had to offer. In reality, this vibrancy became bureaucracy of constant code checking, and as XFree86 is a volunteer organisation of all this was an extra burden that took away precious development time.
Happily, the vast majority of core team members saw that the important architectural discussions were happening out there on the devel list and not behind closed doors on core, and so with a gift for the obvious, they voted to disband.
It is possible though, that Task Forces, ad hoc committees, will be setup in the future to fulfill certain goals, issues and technical problems that inevitably spring forth. There is precedent for such Task Forces in XFree86, as during the years of 1997-1999 there was one called a Design Team that was made up of many non-core technical personnel to create the all-important 4.0 modular architecture.
In the meantime, The XFree86 Project and its still very active and cutting-edge developers are doing what they do best: developing, discussing and hanging out on the development list all for the purpose of fielding questions and getting ready for our 4.4 Release. While you are in the area, why don't you join them?
Comments, sighs and cheers about the dissolution can be made on Forum at XFree86 dot org; registration is not necessary. Hope to see you there.
XFree86 finally has an Automatic Configuration tool which has been donated by X-Oz Technologies. This has been a major complaint by many who could not get their X server up and running. Now, thank's to this donation, Configuration troubles are a thing of the past. Just load and go!
Sun Microsystems a leading edge technology company has graciously donated IPv6, an important upgrade in internet architecture. This update brings a host of new features to the old-standby, IPv4, which though, is still a XFree86 supported architecture.
XFree86 is now providing regularly tagged development source snapshots every two weeks during the normal development phase of each release cycle. For more information, see the Development Snapshots page.
XFree86 has setup a community forum for the open discussion of issues and concerns that people may have about the future of X, XFree86, and related technologies. The discussion list is forum at XFree86.org.
To subscribe to this list here. An archive of this list is available here. Everyone is invited to participate in the discussion.
XFree86 is proud to announce Bugzilla is on the premises! The hardware has been generously donated by the Hewlett-Packard Company while Bugzilla itself is graciously hosted and totally, and reliably, sys-administered by netSweng. We encourage to you use it to full advantage after using our HELp section.
The 4.3.0 release has been tagged in the CVS repository as of 27 February 2003, and is available from the public CVS repository. Source tarballs and source patches are available from our ftp site, and binaries for several platforms are available here. Online documentation can be found at our web site. More information can be found here.
Apple, a leading innovator in graphics systems, has announced support for X11 under Mac OS X, offering a complete X Window System implementation based on XFree86, the de facto standard for X11.
The 4.2.1 update release has been tagged in the CVS repository as of 3 September 2003, and is available from the public CVS repository. Source patches are available from our ftp site, and binary updates for several platforms are available here. Online documentation can be found at our web site.
After its initial release, as part of X11R6.4, the Xinerama Extension API and code base splintered, as different vendors ported it in various forms to their X Window System base. The Xinerama task force of X.Org has been working with a cross section of developers to create a new API that meets the needs of all, so that it can replace the various versions currently available. The goal of this task force has been to create an API that can become an X Window System™ standard.
The Xinerama extension provides a mechanism for a multi-headed system to function as one large screen: windows can span multiple screens and can move from one screen to another in a seamless virtual desktop.
The web site for this project is Xinerama@Sourceforge . Further documentation and code is available there.
This is the FIRST (of what was to be many) case of XFree86 code going into the shared implementation. Previously all exchanges were bug fixes.
XFree86 has the proud honour of announcing that unlike other technologies that have come and gone, it is now officially 10 years old, celebrating it's anniversary from 09 April 1992. What makes this particularly adventful is that it is fully backwards compatible; this is a true testament to the spirit of the original X protocol of which XFree86 is its finest implementation.
The 4.2.0 release has been tagged in the CVS repository as of 18 January 2002, and is available from the public CVS repository. Source tarballs and source patches are available from our ftp site, and binaries for several platforms are available here. Online documentation can be found at our web site. More information can be found here.
XFree86 4.0.1 is now available. Enhancements made to the 4.0 base release are
The full distribution including source, source patches, binaries and documentation are available from our ftp site. The source is not necessary for installation and configuration. Pre-compiled binary distributions are available for most supported platforms.
Before downloading the binaries read the following 3 files:
There is some basic information comparing the hardware support in 3.3.x with 4.x in the driver status document; check there to see if your hardware is supported in the 4.x series. Our documentation, including the man pages, is available here.
4.0.1 can also be obtained directly from our public CVS server. The tag is xf-4_0_1.
Go to our Release Plans page to view our future schedules and release information.
The long awaited re-design of the XServer has been released. Highlights are:
Before downloading the binaries read the
The full distribution including source, binaries and documentation are available from our ftp site. The source is not necessary for installation and configuration. Pre-compiled binary distributions are available for most supported platforms.
There is some basic information comparing the hardware support in 3.3.x with 4.x in the driver status document. Check there to get an idea if your hardware is supported in the 4.x series. Our documentation, including the man pages, documentation is slowly coming on-line.
X.Org, an organization of The Open Group, and The XFree86 Project have signed an agreement whereby XFree86 will become an Honorary Member of X.Org and receive a voting seat on the Executive Board.
SGI, a leading edge company in 3D graphics seeds open-source with what becomes known as the DRI Project. makes GLX the glue connecting OpenGL® and the X Window System and brings advanced graphics and accelerated graphics, to XFree86. Precision Insight, which was later acquired by VA Linux Systems, was responsible for the overall implementation.
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XFree86® is a registered trademark of The XFree86 Project, Inc.
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Last Modified: 7 June 2006