x.org is Hacker Trash

[Jon Senior]

>-----Original Message-----
>I had spent so much of my life on this TRAIN WRECK of
>a project that it was virtually painless to make an
>account specifically for this email.
>
>In Brief:  WTF?

Unlike the other respondents I wouldn't immediately dismiss your complaints out of hand. You do have a few points... that said, I did manage to successfully download and build Modular X from source. My method was however less than flawless but if you would like to know how, I'll send you the details.

>What's with you Open Source ninnies and your love for
>customization? Who the hell needs more than one way to
>get the source?

The developers and the users for starters.

> Individual tarballs? ARE YOU SHITTING
>ME!? Didn't the compulsion to create an 'everything'
>directory (chuckles) smell a little funny? Good Lord!
>What the hell are you supposed to do with all that
>shit when it's downloaded!!!! (Extraordinarily meek
>voice, weakened and pinched through years of role
>playing as Xeldarina, Princess of Eldar, responds:
>BASH scripting dummy. GOSH. Get a clue *snort*)
>
>You don't even provide scripts to turn it into a
>'tree'!

That annoyed me as well. Although there is a script which will build modular X from the everything directory without having to restructure it first.

<snip>

>This project is such a sham.
>
>So let's set it clear: You guys produced a heaping
>pile of dung by trying to generalize---or modularize,
>if you will----the existing X Window system to such an
>extent that nothing is useful! The only reason your
>crap works is because the big boys working on the
>GNU/Linux distros hack it together for their
>individual systems.

Which does lead to suggestion #1. Check to see if anyone has built a package for your distribution.

>(1) Make an easily navigable site with consistent
>build instructions. 

Would have been useful, but I did manage find enough information in the end. I understand from recent posts here that an attempt to restructure the site is in process.

>(2) Concentrate on one method of distribution.

Why?

>(3) Only offer individual tarballs for those who know
>what they're doing.

You weren't obliged to use them. Any glance at the build information in the wiki would probably have indicated that this would be non-trivial.

<snip - no experience here!>

>(5) Make it easy. Good Lord! I can compile a frickin'
>OS Kernel without a sweat. What the hell is X Windows?

I agree that this was harder than a kernel recompile, although I have been recompiling kernels for many years, and this was the first time I have ever attempted to build X. One major advantage of this setup is that you don't require a large amount of drive space for the source since you are only dealing with it module by module.

>It's crap.
>Do it better.

It's OS. If you have a better plan, the obvious thing to do would be to do it yourself!

>Cordially (as the biggest jerks of OSS like to say),
>x.org Sucks

Posting under a pseudonym (assuming you don't have malicious parents) is not a good way of adding strength to your argument.

This is a non-trivial build, and I didn't make things easy for myself by attempting to do it by hand. A few additional required libraries (One of the font ones... I don't remember off-hand which) were hard to locate but aside from those dependency issues it was fairly easy (If long-winded). For various reasons, which included curiosity, I opened the build script in an editor, located the dependency list (Relatively easy to find) and built each module in order, untarring, building and installing manually.

As I understand it, one principle advantage is that you don't have to download a several hundred meg monolithic block of code in order to upgrade (for example) your video driver. This is something which clearly benefits the end user. Perhaps if you learnt to phrase questions instead of invective-laden rhetoric, people might take your more valid points seriously.

Cordially, ;-)
Jon Senior