3Dfx Voodoo 1 & 2 Glide Linux Driver Retired, Different X.Org Code Formally Retired

In clearing up the state of varied X.Org packages which were successfully unmaintained for years, an try is being made to raised talk the standing of some “retired” X.Org packages that Linux distributions ought to work in the direction of eradicating as they’re not being maintained.

Alan Coopersmith at Oracle who has finished a lot of the X.Org launch wrangling over time and infrequently releasing minor X.Org driver updates for outdated/classic {hardware} has been getting ready a brand new announcement that spells out the present retired state of some X.Org packages to raised clear issues up with numerous Linux distributions / bundle maintainers. Coopersmith has lengthy finished this as a part of packaging X.Org for Solaris whereas additionally being a longtime X.Org upstream contributor and one of many few nonetheless working to assist preserve the X.Org packages.

Particulars might be discovered through this mailing record submit. Under is the present draft of the announcement to Linux distribution maintainers barring any minor modifications to return within the days forward.

The X.Org packages which can be “retired” and now in an archive-only state with none additional upstream work contains:

“app/lbxproxy & lib/liblbxutil:
Help for the required LBX extension to X11 was disabled by default in xorg-server 1.1 (Could 2006) and eliminated in 1.2 (January 2007).

app/luit:
X.Org stopped sustaining our fork and encourages use of Thomas Dickey’s from http://invisible-island.web/luit/ as an alternative.

app/proxymngr, app/xfindproxy, app/xfwp
X.Org has deprecated the X11 Proxy Administration Protocol and associated instruments, in favor of utilizing SSH’s X11 tunneling as an alternative.

app/xdbedizzy:
This was a easy demo of the Double Buffer Extension (DBE), not a helpful program.

app/xditview:
Whereas X.Org hasn’t deprecated this but, you should still be higher off utilizing the gxditview fork that is a part of the GNU groff bundle as an alternative.

app/xrx:
Most browsers ended assist for the outdated Netscape Plugin API (NPAPI) a number of years in the past. Even earlier than that, utilizing a browser plugin for distant show of an embedded X11 utility by no means actually caught on.

app/xsetmode:
Changed by: xinput –set-mode “machine identify” ABSOLUTE https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/app/xsetmode/-/blob/grasp/README

app/xsetpointer:
Does not work with xorg-server 1.4 (Sept. 2007) and later https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/app/xsetpointer/-/blob/grasp/README

app/xtrap & lib/libXTrap:
This was a proposed extension for X11R5, changed by the XTEST & RECORD extensions in X11R6 (launched in 1994). The server facet was eliminated in xorg-server 1.6 (Feb. 2009).

driver/xf86-input-*:
Virtually all of those are retired now – the one ones nonetheless supported are:
For Linux: xf86-input-libinput & xf86-input-evdev
For non-Linux: xf86-input-keyboard & xf86-input-mouse
For all platforms: xf86-input-elographics, xf86-input-joystick, xf86-input-synaptics, xf86-input-vmmouse, & xf86-input-void

driver/xf86-video-glide:
This was a driver for 3Dfx Voodoo 1 & 2 boards from the late 1990’s, utilizing the Glide API.

font/bitstream-speedo:
Help for the Speedo font format was disabled by default in X11R6.8 (Sept. 2004), and eliminated in libXfont 1.4.0 (Feb. 2009)

lib/liboldX:
This supplied backwards compatibility for apps from X Model 10, which was the model of the X Window System from November 1985, changed by X11 in September 1987. 35 years looks as if greater than lengthy sufficient to port functions to utilizing libX11 as an alternative.

lib/libXevie:
The server facet of XEvIE was eliminated in xorg-server 1.6 (Feb. 2009). GNOME’s at-spi2-core used libXevie beginning in August 2003, however that code was disabled by default in 2015 for the two.20.0 launch, after which eliminated altogether within the 2.26.0 launch in 2017.

lib/libXfontcache:
The server facet of the FontCache extension was disabled by default in X11R6.8.0 (Sep. 2004) and was eliminated in xorg-server 1.6 (Feb. 2009).

lib/libxkbui:
The one identified shopper of this library was the xorgcfg utility, which was disabled by default in xorg-server 1.4 (Sep. 2007) and eliminated in xorg-server 1.6 (Feb. 2009).

lib/libXxf86misc:
The server facet of the XFree86-Misc extension was eliminated in xorg-server 1.6 (Feb. 2009).

(This not a whole record – you’ll find extra listed below https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/teams/xorg/-/archived or marked Out of date in https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/doc/xorg-docs/-/blob/grasp/MAINTAINERS I’ve simply listed these which nonetheless present up with a good variety of entries on https://repology.org/ as nonetheless being in distros.)”

Moreover, there are plans to retire libdmx quickly for the Xdms server that was dropped from the xorg-server supply tree in 2021 and libXp because the Xprt server that was faraway from the X.Org Server again in 2009.

Extra particulars on the FreeDesktop.org Gitlab.