To The Point Of Collapse

Call For Testing
I've just uploaded a new version of the xorg package to unstable. This package builds (somewhat confusingly, but trust me, there's a good reason) the xserver-xorg package that many people use to create their xorg.conf's. For this upload, we've been ripping out the logic in the xserver-xorg scripts that create the xorg.conf. The reason for this is that the X server can actually handle most of this configuration automatically at runtime, and I'm working on making it do even more. So rather than rely on a custom hacked together script we're moving towards a shared codebase that all linux and bsd distros should end up using to dynamically configure X at startup. This will be a significant win and it's really my primary release goal for Lenny.

So while this work is still ongoing, I'd like to ask that you all, our wonderful users of unstable, test these changes in the 7.3+3 package out. You see, we don't force an update to your xorg.conf, so your previous config should continue to work just like it always did. However, what we need to know if these slimmer xorg.confs work also. So if you have an xorg.conf that isn't customized, please copy and rename the copy somewhere (don't call the copy xorg.conf or else the server might load it even if it's not in the canonical /etc/X11 location) and run dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg to generate a new file. You'll see a lot less questions than in the past, but your old responses should be used by default. When you're done, restart the server and make sure it loaded like it used to. If not, please file a bug using reportbug against the xserver-xorg package.

This is still a work in progress, and I've still got a number of things I want to carefully extract from the scripts before the release, most notably any reliance on external programs like discover and xresprobe. But as things are, the configs should be slimmer and there's less time spent answering questions that aren't useful to getting a working X server running. I'm sure I'll send out another call for testing as I remove more major parts of the config, but this is an important step. Thanks everyone for helping make Lenny awesome!

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: Thievery Corporation - The Mirror Conspiracy

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