Xfree86 turns 4.4.0

THE XFREE86 project announced the availability of version 4.4 of "Xfree86", what most people simply refer to as "the linux video drivers" -which is actually a big understatement-. Xfree86 is the open source implementation of the X Window system (compatible with X11 Release 6.6) that comes bundled with almost every linux distro, and also runs on several unixes (like Sun's Solaris x86), FreeBSD, Mac OS X and yes there are even Xfree86 builds for IBM OS/2.

Traditionally, open source projects do not jump version numbers very often. I mean, not as often and for bogus reasons like commercial software does. The paramount case of version-jumping in history being the infamous "Great Microsoft Word version jump", by which the successor to Microsoft Word 2.0 was named Word 6.0, simply because WordPerfect was at version 6 at the time of Word's release. Apparently the marketing androids at the Vole thought people would buy Word Perfect because it was at version 6 instead of Microsoft Word for Windows 3.0 -the logical version number for the 2.0 successor- because "a version 6 is newer than a version 3" - even if they were completely different products. Makes sense? I didn't think so either.

Sorry for the drift, back to the topic: if you run or administer linux systems, you might want to install/deploy the new 4.4.0 for a better linux video experience. If linux distros jump to 4.4.0 still remains to be seen, as there was a lot of controversy surrounding the project's decision to switch to a new "version 1.1" license that the project leaders claim is still a "100% Free license". I don't want to get into the dirty details but the main change is that it "explicitly requires that the copyright holders and its contributors be acknowledged in the end user documentation which accompanies redistribution, and in the software binaries itself".

Apparently not everybody agrees and this licence change has irked some people. "The company soon-formerly-known-as-Mandrakesoft" was among the first to resist the license change and they threatened to boycott the new release and plan to go back to using 4.3.0. Since it's all free software, nothing can stop them for doing so if they wish. Choices, choices... Isn't open source a beauty?

The once-kings-of-the-hill-but-now-increasingly-irrelevant folks at Red Hat also seem to have moral problems with the new license. I might be wrong but I don't see the folks at Novell-SUSE, or Sun following these leaders in their screaming exercise. In case you're interested in following byzantine discussions, there is a never-ending cat fight thread at Slashdot, here.

For the pragmatic among you, who might just be wondering "should I upgrade to 4.4.0?", here are a few reasons.

Support for several VIA integrated graphics chipsets has been added, along with SIS 661/741/760 and 330 (Xabre).
If you own a system with Intel 830M, 845G, 852GM, 855GM and 865G integrated graphics chipsets, developers claim that several "stability issues" present in 4.3.0, have been fixed.
If you use a TNT or GeForce card, you will be happy to know that "2d acceleration has been completely rewritten and its performance should be substantially improved".
Speaking of GeForce, support for the GeForce FX 5700 card, which didn't work with XFree86 4.3, has been added.
Mouse driver auto-detection under linux and FreeBSD. In the words of the Xfree team: "This makes it unnecessary to supply mouse node information in the XF86Config file in most cases".
Freetype2 (the Truetype font renderer) updated to version 2.1.4.

Finally, another important forward-looking addition is the new support for IPv6, based on code contributed by Sun Microsystems to X.Org. Here, and FTP here. µ