[Pkg-nx-group] Re: Bug#385664: freenx: NXClient doesn't start properly

Sat Sep 2 23:31:17 UTC 2006

Hi

On Saturday 02 September 2006 18:32, you wrote:
> --- Martin Michlmayr <tbm at cyrius.com> wrote:
> > * Nadim Shaikli [2006-09-01 17:05]:
> > > Package: freenx
> >
> > This package doesn't appear to be in Debian.  Do you know where you
> > obtained it from?  What does
> >     dpkg -p freenx | grep Maintainer
> > say?
>
> It notes the following info - Stefan Lippers-Hollmann <s.l-h at gmx.de>.

Since these packages aren't in debian and won't become ready for debian in 
the etch timeframe (if it will be possible to get them into a releasable 
state for etch+1 remains to be seen [1]), the debian BTS is probably not 
the best place for discussing unofficial packages. A more appropriate list 
would probably be [2], [3] or the listed package maintainer directly (wich 
would be me).

> The package is available on a number of non-official repositories/sites;
> I got mine with,
>
>  deb     http://packages.debianbase.de/testing/i386/nx/ ./

I'm in no way affiliated with that repository, but a short look at the 
*.changes files suggest that those may be a very outdated rebuild of my 
source packages, definately in no way X.org 7 compatible and 
lacking quite a lot of changes done over the last year.

> yet there are other locations such as the one listed on the
> debian wiki page [1].

I'm not tracking testing, but sid packages should be installable on testing 
right now.
http://debian.tu-bs.de/project/kanotix/unstable.README or [4], [5]
http://debian.tu-bs.de/project/kanotix/stable.README

> Note the changes listed on that wiki page are also required for
> freenx to work properly.  I mailed a couple of people about
> updating the wiki page with the info noted in this bug report
> (you might want to follow-up with the wiki page's maintainer
> as well).

The proposed changes are not sufficient for proper NX 2.0 compatibility and 
will result in an installation that's neither stable for NX 1.5, nor NX 2.0 
connections; a NX 1.5 client is the better option for now.

Probably more important might be the question why I haven't updated to NX 
2.0 yet...

There are actually quite some reasons why this hasn't happened besides the 
ubiquitous time related issues:
- the changes to the core components of NX 2.0 are rather small in 
comparison to NX 1.5, but contain some compatibility traps which affect 
other dependent packages. It doesn't "fix" the most important issues like 
64 bit safety or "proper" X.org 7/ FHS compatibility either.
- recently qtnx as the first FOSS (GPL) client for NX (based on qt4) has 
seen its initial release [6], which isn't yet compatible to NX 2.0 [7].
- This week 2X Software Ltd. <http://2x.com> has released a complete NX 1.5 
based client (qt3 based) and server suite (perl based) licensed under the 
GPL [8], [9] (sources), initial contacts seem to be very promising.

Although I do have private NX 2.0 packages for testing, I currently prefer 
concentrating on fixing the remaining X.org 7/ FHS related issues (proper 
xkb/ rgb.txt/ font handling, which basically means getting XFree86 4.3 FHS 
compliant...) and preparing qtnx packages (NX ==1.5 dependency for the time 
being) while evaluating 2X Software's codebase (switching is technically 
possible at any time), instead of being forced to add an epoche later.
Other important aspects are reworking the build system from scratch, 
splitting the sources into proper/ self sustaining packages/ tarballs [1] 
and trying to reduce the amount of forked code by integrating NX related 
patches to the original upstream authors, where the upstream license allows 
the inclusion of GPLed code, unfortuneately this isn't the case for X.org 
itself.

Patches, packaging help and comments very appreciated [2], there's a long 
way ahead until #255850 [10] can be closed.

> [1] http://wiki.debian.org/freenx
>
> Regards,
>
>  - Nadim
>

[1] still current, although it seems to be easier to integrate patches into 
2X Software's code base [8], [9]:
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-nx-group/2005-October/000016.html 
[2] http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/pkg-nx-group (packaging 
efforts to get nx packages ready for debian, largely stalled due to 
upstream build related issues)
[3] https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/freenx-knx (general NX related 
questions)
[4] http://kanotix.com/debian/pool/main/n/nx/
[5] http://kanotix.com/debian/pool/main/f/freenx/
[6] 
http://blog.gwright.org.uk/articles/2006/08/23/qtnx-ready-for-public-consumption
[7] http://blog.gwright.org.uk/articles/2006/08/27/qtnx-and-nxproxy
[8] http://2x.com/news/linuxterminalserver.htm
[9] http://code.2x.com/linuxterminalserver
[10] http://bugs.debian.org/255850

Regards
	Stefan Lippers-Hollmann
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