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Re: Advice sought: which X11 for NetBSD 5.* (going forward) ??



On Friday, September 09, 2011 7:25 AM, "Mayuresh" <mayuresh%acm.org@localhost>
wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 07, 2011 at 08:44:35PM +0700, Robert Elz wrote:
> > But, on NetBSD 5, I have continued using native X11 (Xorg based I
> > believe) rather than the pkgsrc version.
>
> A basic question: Why does such choice exist in NetBSD? What is the
> trade off for the users in choosing one over the other?

At least at one time, I believe the reason was that the standard X
sources didn't support all the platforms on which NetBSD ran, so NetBSD
had to maintain a set of modified sources that would work everywhere.
And since NetBSD strives to provide a uniform environment on all
platforms it supports, NetBSD's X is available even on platforms where
standard X does run.  Pkgsrc (which, remember, is quite independent of
the NetBSD base system) provides the up-to-date standard X sources
because some people want/need a more recent version of X than the one
included in the base system, just as it provides more recent versions of
gcc, postfix, pkg_add, and other base system utilities.

I think that's part of (why) the choice exists.  Now as to which X to
choose, all I can say is that I've quite happily run the NetBSD base X
for years, partly because it's available out-of-the-box and just works
for me.  YMMV.

-- IDL


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