| Why XSserver 1.4 won't make it into Ubuntu Gutsy |
Aug. 21, 2007
If everything goes well, Ubuntu 7.10, Gutsy Gibbon, the next community version of the popular Linux distribution, will appear in October. It will not, however, include the latest and greatest X window server and utilities: Xserver 1.4 and X.Org 7.3.
These new windowing programs would have added more features to Ubuntu's display capabilities. In particular, the new Ubuntu would have had far better automatic monitor detection. It would also have made it possible to switch monitors—hot plugging—without needing to reboot the PC. Now, though, these features won't be included, by default, until the version of Ubuntu after Gutsy Gibbon. In other words, these features won't be included in the released version until March of 2008 at the earliest.
The reason for this, as Bryce Harrington, a Canonical developer who works on Ubuntu's X windowing system, explained is that at a developer's meeting on August 16th, the Ubuntu programmers decided to "opt for leaving xserver 1.4 for Gutsy+1. In checking with some upstream xorg developers, they concur this is probably the wise approach given our release schedule. The piece required for displayconfig-gtk, xrandr 1.2, has already been included in Gutsy, so this will not impact either of those specs."
Although Xserver 1.4 is very close to being delivered, its delivery date is August 29, 2007, it still has some bugs to be stamped out. It's also worth noting that at the X.org Developer's Conference in San Jose, Calif. in February, the plan was for Xserver 1.4 to appear in May 2007.
Some users, such as Michael Larabel on Phoronix, have grumbled about the delay. "Mark Shuttleworth frequently talks about wanting the major open-source projects to coordinate and schedule their release cycles with one another, but it doesn't look like Mark wants to play ball on this one by adjusting the Ubuntu 7.10 'Gutsy Gibbon' release cycle so late in the game."
In a note to the Ubuntu forums, Harrington explained the reasoning that went into Ubuntu deciding not to include Xserver 1.4 and X.0rg 7.3
"First, in the blueprint some have noticed that displayconfig-gtk [a program that will enable GNOME users to have more control over their displays and enable dual-monitors] and Bulletproof-X [a failsafe graphical display for Ubuntu users] are listed as dependent on xorg 7.3, and wondered if this means the latter two specs will also be postponed. Actually, the only Xorg 7.3 feature displayconfig-gtk depends on is xrandr 1.2, which we've had integrated into Gutsy for quite some time. So the dependency there has already been met, and there is no conflict, and neither is being postponed."
Harrington also said, "BulletproofX is also deployed with the latest xorg update, but I've not switched it on yet due to a few remaining issues. However you can turn it on yourself by updating Gutsy to the latest and then run `sudo /etc/gdm/failsafeInstall`. Then break your xorg.conf (like change your driver to 'foo'—make sure to make a backup of your xorg.conf!) and restart X. This should result in putting you into the failsafe mode. Please test it out, and file bugs you find against xorg in Launchpad."
"Also, all is not lost with the Xorg 7.3 spec. Remember that when we wrote the spec, we knew that it was a long shot that xserver 1.4 would be released early enough to meet Ubuntu feature freeze, so we determined to take advantage of the Xorg project's stellar work of modularized Xorg by upgrading as many pieces as possible. Nearly all the Xorg drivers, libraries, and apps have been updated to latest as of a week or two ago. We are also including xserver 1.3 rather than Feisty's xserver 1.2, so everyone is likely to see big improvements in X already," continued Harrington.
All that said, Harrington admitted. "It was difficult making this decision. I really wanted to be able to mark the Xorg 7.3 spec done, and ensure Gutsy users have the latest cool features in xserver. However, we must balance this against the vast bulk of Ubuntu users who have little idea what "X" is, and just want the GUI to work reliably. I felt that time would be best spent focusing on the needs of this latter group, enhancing the stability of Xorg, backporting fixes, and ensuring DisplayConfigGtk and BulletProofX are as reliable as we can make them."
Harrington doesn't blame anyone for what really is a matter of bad timing between X.org and Ubuntu's release schedules. "Ultimately I think this is just a timing issue, not really anyone's fault. Xorg and Ubuntu both have well published release schedules, just in this instance the gears didn't mesh up."
—Steven J. Vaughan Nichols
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