[Sussex] Slackware drops XFree86 for X.org

[John Crowhurst]

Hello all,

As an avid Slackware user, I was grabbing the latest from the FTP site.
The ChangeLog for slackware-current announces that the install set for x
will now be X.org rather than XFree86.

The wording is here:

x/:  Switched to X11R6.7.0 from X.Org.  Thanks to those who sent comments to
x at slackware.com.  Seems the community has spoken, because the opinions were
more than 4 to 1 in favor of using the X.Org release as the default version
of X.  I think I've heard just about every side to this issue now, and it
was only after careful consideration and testing that this decision was
made.
It's primarily (as is usual around here) a technical decision.  Nearly
everyone else is going with X.Org and it seems to me that sticking with
XFree86 it spite of this would be asking for compatibility trouble
(indeed, we saw some issues between X.Org and XFree86 4.4.0 until a few
things in XFree86 were patched).  I also noticed that the ATI Radeon
binary drivers designed for XFree86 4.3.0 do not work with XFree86 4.4.0,
but do work with the X.Org release.  Something I'm *not* in favor of is
dragging around two nearly identical projects, so XFree86 4.4.0 has been
moved to the /pub/slackware/unsupported/ directory on the FTP site.

I'd like to take this moment to thank the XFree86 Project for all the
truly amazing work they've done all these years, and to wish the project
the best of luck.  Slackware owes the XFree86 Project a debt of gratitude
and will always include the XFree86 acknowledgement, even if we are no
longer shipping XFree86.

--
John