On Sun, 2003-07-13 at 11:48, Leandro Guimarães Faria Corsetti Dutra wrote: > Em Sun, 13 Jul 2003 10:08:43 +0200, Michel Dänzer escreveu: > > > On Sun, 2003-07-13 at 02:48, Leandro Guimarães Faria Corsetti Dutra > > wrote: > >> Em Sat, 12 Jul 2003 17:29:00 -0700, Steven escreveu: > >> > >> dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86, ironic as it may seem in a PowerPC. > > > > Why would it? 'XFree86' is a pun on 'X386', to point out that it's not > > limited to a single platform. > > AFAIRI, it wasn't a pun originally, but a description. I still remember > version 3 or so times where it was described as an X RI implementation for > x86 systems. The ports for other platforms came later, along with NetBSD > and GNU ports.
It's possible that the name originally bore no meaning wrt platforms, but its inventor says it was intended as a pun, and while I disagree with him on many points, I have no reason not to believe him on this. > Some RISC users even prefer to say XFree simply in the hope that it > will bring the RISC ports to full citizenship; The name is XFree86, period. I have no idea what XFree is. > as it is now, XFree is released when the x86 port is ready, [...] Well, in contrast to other projects like the Linux kernel, XFree86 has been running perfectly on PPC out of the box for a long time, maybe other architectures as well. As for the others, XFree86 can hardly be blamed for the lack of testers and developers. -- Earthling Michel Dänzer \ Debian (powerpc), XFree86 and DRI developer Software libre enthusiast \ http://svcs.affero.net/rm.php?r=daenzer
