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Been wanting to setup a dedicated VNC station. Trying to get DirectFB and DirectVNC to work. Not much success, but after seeing the screenshots, this looks ideal for a central VNC console. And with VNC supported on almost everything, including some toasters would rock. (BTW, we call some network appliances toasters at work, aka, a simple server with no internal disks, throw away, replacable.)

I can see allot of potential for uses of vnc and directfb, and micro-vnc embedded appliances. (Software KVM, VideoCapture, Security, Service controls, Monitoring applications, etc..)

BTW, Gentoo has built in support for DirectFB. Now if DirectVNC just came preconfigured also...

This isn't funny, this is a troll. I'm not going to blither on about how horrible moderation is, because that itself is only immature and really, there is nothing to be done about it. Now, let me impose the following situation. If we took that wit-lacking comment, "Well, it *MIGHT* be powerful to run Longhorn(tm) as fast as Windows3.1(tm) ran on a 386 :-)" and replaced "Longhorn(tm)" with "GNU/Linux"; not only would the comment have been marked "Troll", and not "Funny"; but in bringing a valid point of the extreme unresponsiveness of GUI's that exist for Linux, (s)he would have incited a small scale flame war of Linux zealots splashing FUD like mud all around this forum about how for some strange reason, just because the GUI is unresponsive and doesn't even indicate it is working, that GNU/Linux and subsidiary GUI components are superior to Windows, BeOS or Mac OS X. All are false. Now, I will be less than surprised if a moderator unfairly, without fully reading and trying to put themselves in my perspective marks me as a troll. I am not trying to insult Linux users here, I do quite like the GNU/Linux system. I just finished installing GNOME2, and it's really quite nice (but like I said, horribly unresponsive on a brand new XP2000+ system with a GeForce 4 Ti4600? Oh, come on! Don't even blame my hardware! This is with the low latency/desktop features enabled in a fresh, optimized gentoo install! Don't even make me start on prepackaged "desktop distributions"!). The only acceptable reason, I feel, for Linux to be on the desktop; is if a current commercial operating system is incompatible with that system due to hardware problems. I'm sorry, but the majority of Linux users who I hear ranting "oh, Windows sucks, oh, the hardware support sucks" are using Cyrix processors and some strange NIC manufactured in Zimbabwe that has an anti-Microsoft sticker on every card's release box.

I'm honest when I say I'm not trolling your joking reply, and I'm probably honest about knowing I will be moderated down for this; but come on, why is this not marked as a troll? I'm sure Microsoft will pull through and figure out a way to make it run on old hardware responsively ;).

Oh, and in closing my little plethora of short arguments here, I must finish by saying a few things. Firstly, I have hypothesized a chance for Linux to really take the desktop and I believe it's quite possible. QT has a product called QT/Embedded, which recently runs Konqueror lightning fast on the framebuffer. To port it, they simply removed all dependance on 'xlib'. If such a project could be mounted that would have KDE running on a framebuffer with QT/Embedded, we would have a fast, responsive GUI with limitless possibilites for features such as true alpha blending, etc. For examples of what I mean, check the DirectFB project.

Secondly, I appreciate that GNU/Linux is free; however, it lacks coherence in the community based model. I find packaging by companies to be quite, well, embarassing. They include thousands of little scripts and toys built by spare-time developers that are quite incompetent. There are larger projects that I like alot, like Gnumeric, Kword and Koffice and OpenOffice; but they have real leadership and skilled programmers. (not to forget, I adore Mozilla :), unlike many of these projects we see packaged with modern distributions.

I'll tell you what, I will never buy a boxed Linux distribution with "K" this and "G" that. It sounds unprofessional, lacking, and stupid. Sure, call me an idiot for judging by name, but it just sounds unprofessional. We have no "notepad" in GNU/Linux, we have "gedit". What the heck is with that? We have no wordpad in GNU/Linux, we have "kword". Um, heh. Point proven.

Well, I'm going to stop now because I feel my wrists are tiring, but I feel I have presented a generally sufficient report on why the parent should be moderated as a troll.

My apologies on the Linux rant if you don't run it; though I still hold true to all points presented.

-Shatai.

None of these are X11 alternatives on the level of SVGALIB or DirectFB, but a bit higher level. They require a low-level display medium like DirectFB, SDL, or X11 (but you can ignore that option for now).

Squeak Smalltalk: A cool Smalltalk environment. Based on Smalltalk-80, for which first modern WIMP was invented. Has a bunch of little apps, simple web browser, vt100 client, few email clients, web servers, a couple different GUI toolkits and programming paradigms to choose from. Personally, what I use mostly as my OS. I like having my entire environment available to me, to be changed as I like, in a very straightforward way. Rather like Emacs users, I suppose. Except Squeak is more customizable, and has full windowing system. Also can run as the OS, no Linux or X11. DirectFB, SDL, X11, Mac (9/X), Windows, Acorn, WinCE, BeOS and lots of other ports that all run the same binaries.

ETH Oberon: Implementation of the Oberon language - derived from Pascal and Modula, by Nick Wirth. Has it's own entire GUI system, like Squeak does. Can run as an OS, without Linux or X11. Also has a VNC client, so you could still run the X11 app or two that you still needed in a window. :)

PicoGUI: A really cool GUI system especially for PDAs and other embedded applications. Super fast. Bindings for C, Perl, and Python (I think). Linux FB and SDL ports, runs wherever they can. Not much in the way of apps thus far, but it's definitely alive and under pretty active development.

QT/Embedded: You know, like runs on the Zaurus.

GTK+ on Direct FB: Can't say I've used this, but I imagine bindings for regular GTK+ work in this port, which makes for a lot of development options.

MicroWindows/Nano-X: Yet enother embedded GUI option. It's developer seems to be pushing for PDA, set-tops and such. Not many apps, but could be useful especially for custom apps.

Are there any worthwhile just-Java windowing systems out there? There are al ot of Java-OS projects, but none of them seem to have gotten past linking Kaffee with OSKit...

Probably others out there, but this is a good look at some options.

Read up and test it out!

Implement versions of GTK/QT that talk to the framebuffer directly and run KDE/GNOME on top of that

You mean like directfb?

I bet the performance increase would be astounding, Me to in emasurable term you would probebly need less memory and a lot less procesing power, especially if you could get the hardware 2d accelaration working efficiantly. However its not the measurable performance that need to improve in X/Xfree, its the perceived gui reaction speed that needs to improve. If you are not convinced use a littlte more low end box with xfree then BeOS and go back. QNX rtos also feels relatively fast (until you start a processor intensive job that is)

Come back when you have something that works for real work that isn't just a theory, and if it's better than X without losing any of the benefits or extensibility
Well I would say BeOS and Directfb Fits most of that, but still people like "10 years of binary compatibility" better the a gui that feel 10 times as fast ;-)

I mean we really should celebrate ten years of a system that by design is a bad solution for todays desktop, but which everone sticks by "for backward compatibility", f*#% backward compatibility and go with somthing that does what BeOS does (I had to change did to does there :-( ) "responsive gui first, then let the application do their jobs". Directfb is an atempt in the right direction. For a modern (alpha blending, antialiased) desktop you need to be the most efficient comunication between the hardware acceleration of the graphics chip and the application that uses it and the x-protocol just is not that.

Don`t get me wrong, having remote x terminals is a realy boutifull thing, but *not* at the cost of a single machine desktop speed, I am back getting the leaked BeOS dano to work to celebrate this birthday ;-)

I know the 64 meg version of 8500 aiw was limited to 800x600 while you could get 1024x768 with the 64 meg aiw 7500(while using both tv and monitor). I tried the 7500 aiw, but was dissapointed with the display when watching dvd's on my 17".

I'm thinking about matrox's g450 dual head, as I can run this, while I cannot do so with the latest ati radeon.

why the hell is everybody so intent on making some sort of BE/Linux hybrid?

Not to "save" the BeOS legacy/religion/apps obiously, but to save the linux kernel with all its drivers/features/fans/developers/sponsors/bouty from becoming a platform used for running nothing but posix webservers on headless pc hardware while it can be better (in design) then OSX for (even old) pc hardware.

This BefrankensteinAtOS is just a step toward what is my dreamworld:

- a cheap Nforce like mainbord with onboard graphics(nvidia, nuff said),audio(dolby 5.1 encoder),network(100mbit is 100mbit) and firewire (usb is now a "legacy connector" ;-))

- A dvb-c card

- two or four Clawhammer cpu`s

- Cooling that makes sense, not noise

- a linux-based kernel that loads directly from eeprom instead of an ugly old bios that doesn`t even understand todays harddrives. but still load ms-dos 3.00

- no more X, just every bit of experiance nvidia has with performace drivers

- A really fast gui, just try going back from Be`s Beos to windows

- a simple gui and cli shell that doesn`t eat more reasorces then it offers functinality but has a noice look and feel

- configurable translators

A filesystem that is fast, doen`t need complex journaling couse the oswrites metadata in a recoverable order and the hardware is fast enough to offer reasonable fast recovery anyway and has optional metadata (like the BeFS mime filetype)

I think this is really close to what others on slashdot want, note the lack of "evil" technology (except for perhaps nvidia).
After reading it back I found it also lacks girls and a social life but then again you can`t have it all ;-)
I guess for now I will have to do with the dano leak....

What they mean with "Ip over MPEG" is nothing else than IP over DVB - Digital Video Broadcast. DVB is the digital television standard in Europe, and NOKIA is a major player in it, as is Fujitsu-Siemens and others. There exist three DVB transmission styles:

• DVB-T (terrestrial, antenna)
• DVB-C (cable)
• DVB-S (sattelite)

and a similare audio-standard, named DAB - Digital Audio Boradcasting. DAB will replace the FM tuners over the years, and DVB will replace the conventional TV broadcastings.

Still we do not know what "IP over MPEG" is, right ? Well, DVB transmissions consist of a subset of MPEG2. I think this is what they meant with this. I have such a DVB-Card in one of my PCI slots. Together with my USB Host-To-Host bridge, my D-Link NIC this is the third (never asked for, since I use DVB for Television only) network card I have in my system. The DVB standard not only transmits audio/video but also (since we are talking digital, you guessed it...;-)) generic information, as in this case, TCP/IP packets. With this it is possible to use a sattelite (with the SAT version) as network-downstream. This still would require the upstream to go through a conventional method, however. I guess this will change in the next ten years, and DVB will become a standard way to access the Internet...

What is especially interesting are the things going on "behind the scenes", especially from an Open Source point of view:

• NOKIA is a major player/contributor to the MHP - Multimedia Home Platform specification/project.

  MHP is a standard, that will incooperate DVB but make it a real standard. At the moment each broadcaster tries to enforce its own modifications and incompatibilities on the users (Germanies largest broadcaster did so, some French pay-channel did, etc.), just as we know similare practices from M$.

• Now, another important developer of MHP is noone else than Convergence.De AKA LinuxTV.Org, AKA DirectFB (a related project is Diet LibC, for the interested).

  LinuxTV.Org also wrote and/or hosts the important (GPL'ed) software for the DVB cards on Linux, both the v4l compatible TV drivers as well as the IP over MPEG ;-) driver. In addition they host a very cool Linux project, named VDR, which makes a harddisk-video recorder out of any linux compatible PC with one ore more DVB card(s).

BTW: see also DirectFB stuff on Freshmeat and for Gods sake, have a look at this amazing GTK+ desktop with full aplpha blending or the "rootless X Server"(1) (2) or "ten MPEG Videos playing at once, blended, without framedrops". You will find their GTK+ patches here and the DVB stuff here

All in all this is perfect for embedded systems and desktop boxes as well as it will be for full blown deksktops. (Linux desktop without X, digital video and audio broadcast based on free and open standards etc.)

What they mean with "Ip over MPEG" is nothing else than IP over DVB - Digital Video Broadcast. DVB is the digital television standard in Europe, and NOKIA is a major player in it, as is Fujitsu-Siemens and others. There exist three DVB transmission styles:

• DVB-T (terrestrial, antenna)
• DVB-C (cable)
• DVB-S (sattelite)

and a similare audio-standard, named DAB - Digital Audio Boradcasting. DAB will replace the FM tuners over the years, and DVB will replace the conventional TV broadcastings.

Still we do not know what "IP over MPEG" is, right ? Well, DVB transmissions consist of a subset of MPEG2. I think this is what they meant with this. I have such a DVB-Card in one of my PCI slots. Together with my USB Host-To-Host bridge, my D-Link NIC this is the third (never asked for, since I use DVB for Television only) network card I have in my system. The DVB standard not only transmits audio/video but also (since we are talking digital, you guessed it...;-)) generic information, as in this case, TCP/IP packets. With this it is possible to use a sattelite (with the SAT version) as network-downstream. This still would require the upstream to go through a conventional method, however. I guess this will change in the next ten years, and DVB will become a standard way to access the Internet...

What is especially interesting are the things going on "behind the scenes", especially from an Open Source point of view:

• NOKIA is a major player/contributor to the MHP - Multimedia Home Platform specification/project.

  MHP is a standard, that will incooperate DVB but make it a real standard. At the moment each broadcaster tries to enforce its own modifications and incompatibilities on the users (Germanies largest broadcaster did so, some French pay-channel did, etc.), just as we know similare practices from M$.

• Now, another important developer of MHP is noone else than Convergence.De AKA LinuxTV.Org, AKA DirectFB (a related project is Diet LibC, for the interested).

  LinuxTV.Org also wrote and/or hosts the important (GPL'ed) software for the DVB cards on Linux, both the v4l compatible TV drivers as well as the IP over MPEG ;-) driver. In addition they host a very cool Linux project, named VDR, which makes a harddisk-video recorder out of any linux compatible PC with one ore more DVB card(s).

BTW: see also DirectFB stuff on Freshmeat and for Gods sake, have a look at this amazing GTK+ desktop with full aplpha blending or the "rootless X Server"(1) (2) or "ten MPEG Videos playing at once, blended, without framedrops". You will find their GTK+ patches here and the DVB stuff here

All in all this is perfect for embedded systems and desktop boxes as well as it will be for full blown deksktops. (Linux desktop without X, digital video and audio broadcast based on free and open standards etc.)

What they mean with "Ip over MPEG" is nothing else than IP over DVB - Digital Video Broadcast. DVB is the digital television standard in Europe, and NOKIA is a major player in it, as is Fujitsu-Siemens and others. There exist three DVB transmission styles:

• DVB-T (terrestrial, antenna)
• DVB-C (cable)
• DVB-S (sattelite)

and a similare audio-standard, named DAB - Digital Audio Boradcasting. DAB will replace the FM tuners over the years, and DVB will replace the conventional TV broadcastings.

Still we do not know what "IP over MPEG" is, right ? Well, DVB transmissions consist of a subset of MPEG2. I think this is what they meant with this. I have such a DVB-Card in one of my PCI slots. Together with my USB Host-To-Host bridge, my D-Link NIC this is the third (never asked for, since I use DVB for Television only) network card I have in my system. The DVB standard not only transmits audio/video but also (since we are talking digital, you guessed it...;-)) generic information, as in this case, TCP/IP packets. With this it is possible to use a sattelite (with the SAT version) as network-downstream. This still would require the upstream to go through a conventional method, however. I guess this will change in the next ten years, and DVB will become a standard way to access the Internet...

What is especially interesting are the things going on "behind the scenes", especially from an Open Source point of view:

• NOKIA is a major player/contributor to the MHP - Multimedia Home Platform specification/project.

  MHP is a standard, that will incooperate DVB but make it a real standard. At the moment each broadcaster tries to enforce its own modifications and incompatibilities on the users (Germanies largest broadcaster did so, some French pay-channel did, etc.), just as we know similare practices from M$.

• Now, another important developer of MHP is noone else than Convergence.De AKA LinuxTV.Org, AKA DirectFB (a related project is Diet LibC, for the interested).

  LinuxTV.Org also wrote and/or hosts the important (GPL'ed) software for the DVB cards on Linux, both the v4l compatible TV drivers as well as the IP over MPEG ;-) driver. In addition they host a very cool Linux project, named VDR, which makes a harddisk-video recorder out of any linux compatible PC with one ore more DVB card(s).

BTW: see also DirectFB stuff on Freshmeat and for Gods sake, have a look at this amazing GTK+ desktop with full aplpha blending or the "rootless X Server"(1) (2) or "ten MPEG Videos playing at once, blended, without framedrops". You will find their GTK+ patches here and the DVB stuff here

All in all this is perfect for embedded systems and desktop boxes as well as it will be for full blown deksktops. (Linux desktop without X, digital video and audio broadcast based on free and open standards etc.)

What they mean with "Ip over MPEG" is nothing else than IP over DVB - Digital Video Broadcast. DVB is the digital television standard in Europe, and NOKIA is a major player in it, as is Fujitsu-Siemens and others. There exist three DVB transmission styles:

• DVB-T (terrestrial, antenna)
• DVB-C (cable)
• DVB-S (sattelite)

and a similare audio-standard, named DAB - Digital Audio Boradcasting. DAB will replace the FM tuners over the years, and DVB will replace the conventional TV broadcastings.

Still we do not know what "IP over MPEG" is, right ? Well, DVB transmissions consist of a subset of MPEG2. I think this is what they meant with this. I have such a DVB-Card in one of my PCI slots. Together with my USB Host-To-Host bridge, my D-Link NIC this is the third (never asked for, since I use DVB for Television only) network card I have in my system. The DVB standard not only transmits audio/video but also (since we are talking digital, you guessed it...;-)) generic information, as in this case, TCP/IP packets. With this it is possible to use a sattelite (with the SAT version) as network-downstream. This still would require the upstream to go through a conventional method, however. I guess this will change in the next ten years, and DVB will become a standard way to access the Internet...

What is especially interesting are the things going on "behind the scenes", especially from an Open Source point of view:

• NOKIA is a major player/contributor to the MHP - Multimedia Home Platform specification/project.

  MHP is a standard, that will incooperate DVB but make it a real standard. At the moment each broadcaster tries to enforce its own modifications and incompatibilities on the users (Germanies largest broadcaster did so, some French pay-channel did, etc.), just as we know similare practices from M$.

• Now, another important developer of MHP is noone else than Convergence.De AKA LinuxTV.Org, AKA DirectFB (a related project is Diet LibC, for the interested).

  LinuxTV.Org also wrote and/or hosts the important (GPL'ed) software for the DVB cards on Linux, both the v4l compatible TV drivers as well as the IP over MPEG ;-) driver. In addition they host a very cool Linux project, named VDR, which makes a harddisk-video recorder out of any linux compatible PC with one ore more DVB card(s).

BTW: see also DirectFB stuff on Freshmeat and for Gods sake, have a look at this amazing GTK+ desktop with full aplpha blending or the "rootless X Server"(1) (2) or "ten MPEG Videos playing at once, blended, without framedrops". You will find their GTK+ patches here and the DVB stuff here

All in all this is perfect for embedded systems and desktop boxes as well as it will be for full blown deksktops. (Linux desktop without X, digital video and audio broadcast based on free and open standards etc.)

What they mean with "Ip over MPEG" is nothing else than IP over DVB - Digital Video Broadcast. DVB is the digital television standard in Europe, and NOKIA is a major player in it, as is Fujitsu-Siemens and others. There exist three DVB transmission styles:

• DVB-T (terrestrial, antenna)
• DVB-C (cable)
• DVB-S (sattelite)

and a similare audio-standard, named DAB - Digital Audio Boradcasting. DAB will replace the FM tuners over the years, and DVB will replace the conventional TV broadcastings.

Still we do not know what "IP over MPEG" is, right ? Well, DVB transmissions consist of a subset of MPEG2. I think this is what they meant with this. I have such a DVB-Card in one of my PCI slots. Together with my USB Host-To-Host bridge, my D-Link NIC this is the third (never asked for, since I use DVB for Television only) network card I have in my system. The DVB standard not only transmits audio/video but also (since we are talking digital, you guessed it...;-)) generic information, as in this case, TCP/IP packets. With this it is possible to use a sattelite (with the SAT version) as network-downstream. This still would require the upstream to go through a conventional method, however. I guess this will change in the next ten years, and DVB will become a standard way to access the Internet...

What is especially interesting are the things going on "behind the scenes", especially from an Open Source point of view:

• NOKIA is a major player/contributor to the MHP - Multimedia Home Platform specification/project.

  MHP is a standard, that will incooperate DVB but make it a real standard. At the moment each broadcaster tries to enforce its own modifications and incompatibilities on the users (Germanies largest broadcaster did so, some French pay-channel did, etc.), just as we know similare practices from M$.

• Now, another important developer of MHP is noone else than Convergence.De AKA LinuxTV.Org, AKA DirectFB (a related project is Diet LibC, for the interested).

  LinuxTV.Org also wrote and/or hosts the important (GPL'ed) software for the DVB cards on Linux, both the v4l compatible TV drivers as well as the IP over MPEG ;-) driver. In addition they host a very cool Linux project, named VDR, which makes a harddisk-video recorder out of any linux compatible PC with one ore more DVB card(s).

BTW: see also DirectFB stuff on Freshmeat and for Gods sake, have a look at this amazing GTK+ desktop with full aplpha blending or the "rootless X Server"(1) (2) or "ten MPEG Videos playing at once, blended, without framedrops". You will find their GTK+ patches here and the DVB stuff here

All in all this is perfect for embedded systems and desktop boxes as well as it will be for full blown deksktops. (Linux desktop without X, digital video and audio broadcast based on free and open standards etc.)

What they mean with "Ip over MPEG" is nothing else than IP over DVB - Digital Video Broadcast. DVB is the digital television standard in Europe, and NOKIA is a major player in it, as is Fujitsu-Siemens and others. There exist three DVB transmission styles:

• DVB-T (terrestrial, antenna)
• DVB-C (cable)
• DVB-S (sattelite)

and a similare audio-standard, named DAB - Digital Audio Boradcasting. DAB will replace the FM tuners over the years, and DVB will replace the conventional TV broadcastings.

Still we do not know what "IP over MPEG" is, right ? Well, DVB transmissions consist of a subset of MPEG2. I think this is what they meant with this. I have such a DVB-Card in one of my PCI slots. Together with my USB Host-To-Host bridge, my D-Link NIC this is the third (never asked for, since I use DVB for Television only) network card I have in my system. The DVB standard not only transmits audio/video but also (since we are talking digital, you guessed it...;-)) generic information, as in this case, TCP/IP packets. With this it is possible to use a sattelite (with the SAT version) as network-downstream. This still would require the upstream to go through a conventional method, however. I guess this will change in the next ten years, and DVB will become a standard way to access the Internet...

What is especially interesting are the things going on "behind the scenes", especially from an Open Source point of view:

• NOKIA is a major player/contributor to the MHP - Multimedia Home Platform specification/project.

  MHP is a standard, that will incooperate DVB but make it a real standard. At the moment each broadcaster tries to enforce its own modifications and incompatibilities on the users (Germanies largest broadcaster did so, some French pay-channel did, etc.), just as we know similare practices from M$.

• Now, another important developer of MHP is noone else than Convergence.De AKA LinuxTV.Org, AKA DirectFB (a related project is Diet LibC, for the interested).

  LinuxTV.Org also wrote and/or hosts the important (GPL'ed) software for the DVB cards on Linux, both the v4l compatible TV drivers as well as the IP over MPEG ;-) driver. In addition they host a very cool Linux project, named VDR, which makes a harddisk-video recorder out of any linux compatible PC with one ore more DVB card(s).

BTW: see also DirectFB stuff on Freshmeat and for Gods sake, have a look at this amazing GTK+ desktop with full aplpha blending or the "rootless X Server"(1) (2) or "ten MPEG Videos playing at once, blended, without framedrops". You will find their GTK+ patches here and the DVB stuff here

All in all this is perfect for embedded systems and desktop boxes as well as it will be for full blown deksktops. (Linux desktop without X, digital video and audio broadcast based on free and open standards etc.)

maybe you want to throw an eye at www.directfb.org

Apple were smart enough to ditch X and come up with a better graphical system. I wish someone would do the same for other UNIces.

The DirectFB project looks promising, and is almost finished (most recent release is 0.9.8). Of course, what really is there to such a graphics layer? Considering it piggiebacks on the Linux framebuffer console anyway, probably not much.

They have an X compatibility layer for running X apps. I see there is a patched gtk available as well, but is that enough to do anything? Now if someone could port a WM and a DE...

IMO, there's actually nothing wrong with X11, but rather XFree86. I understand that XFree86 needs to work on more platforms than Linux, but still. As a Linux user, having a completely separate driver system just for XFree86 is both redundant and annoying. Configuration is also a disaster (fonts anyone?).

DirectFB with an optional X layer sounds like the future for desktop Linux.

No, please, not another windowing system. X11 is fine for most purposes and, if you need something is does not provide, write an extension. There are more than enough 'alternatives' that are either designed for niches, have never been finished or will never get a significant marekt share. They don't have any significant advantage, at least as a general window system, and they lack applications. And despite those people who claim that X11 is sooo bloated (usually because they see the memory usage and do not realize that most of the memory is taken by pixmaps that won't take less space in other solutions) there are proofs like TinyX and WeirdX.

Not to mention that this has been on Linux for quite some time now. DirectFB supports translucent windows, as do a few other things (including KDE3, as mentioned previously). It's not terribly useful yet, as this would require rethinking much of the way people design GUIs, but some day in the future this could prove to be quite useful, especially in virtual reality environments.

Here is a good example of how alpha-blending can improve your productivity: just look as this old screenshot from a few months ago, showing GTK+ running on DirectFB. Aren't you glad that you can see all these windows at the same time? Think about how much desktop space you have saved by stacking them up. ;-)

Here is a good example of how alpha-blending can improve your productivity: just look as this old screenshot from a few months ago, showing GTK+ running on DirectFB. Aren't you glad that you can see all these windows at the same time? Think about how much desktop space you have saved by stacking them up. ;-)

Check DirectFB

Daniel

http://www.xfree86.org/~keithp/render/translucent. png .

And, an alternative to X http://www.directfb.org/screenshots/gimp.png

So every BeOS application will have to be ported to this Linux/OpenBeOS project. And then ported again on the next non-x version of OpenBeOS? Whats they point? Why not just help finish the DirectFB and then keep everything native on linux. X is not as fast as a framebuffer, and BeOS was known for its video editing abilities.

M$ finally dropped dos, lets drop xwindows.

DirectFB was discussed a few days ago on Slashdot in case you missed it.

So every BeOS application will have to be ported to this Linux/OpenBeOS project. And then ported again on the next non-x version of OpenBeOS? Whats they point? Why not just help finish the DirectFB and then keep everything native on linux. X is not as fast as a framebuffer, and BeOS was known for its video editing abilities.

M$ finally dropped dos, lets drop xwindows.

DirectFB was discussed a few days ago on Slashdot in case you missed it.

The DirectFB project is already doing this. They've got a setup to do entity rendering directly into the hardware framebuffer. Look around the site and see for yourself. It looks pretty impressive and does pretty much exactly what you're saying if I'm reading you correctly. GTK+ runs right now on top of DirectFB as well as directly on the system frame buffer. Gotta love GDK!

I'm glad you're annoyed. Without such simplistic 2D primitives inelegant hacks are all that's left to do. Hack after hack after hack. For those that find that this scratch needs itching there's goatse... or GGI, DirectFB, (Linux Only Framebuffer), or EVAS.

Check out directfb, which seems to be similar to Berlin, but also seems to progress at a faster pace. It too features alpha transparancy, and can run apps such as Gimp:

What of directfb and other candidates for The Next Big Thing? I think directfb is very cool from a graphics perspective, since it uses the full 2D and 3D capabilities of a card, and can fall back to software modes if necessary. It's also independent of X, has a Gtk+ port, ... Besides, we all know Rasterman couldn't code his way out of a paper bag... He could sell his code to the Olive Garden as genuine spaghetti.

Specs are a way to standardize a platform so that multiple efforts can strive for a common goal. Specifications, however, do not impede on proactive donations of GPL/BSD software.

Convergence Integrated Media, one of the companies involved, is contributing to Free Software via DirectFB which seems to be quite impressive.

In any case the corporate adoption of GNU/Linux as a viable platform should help spread copyleft fever. This is a Good Thing.

Specs are a way to standardize a platform so that multiple efforts can strive for a common goal. Specifications, however, do not impede on proactive donations of GPL/BSD software.

Convergence Integrated Media, one of the companies involved, is contributing to Free Software via DirectFB which seems to be quite impressive.

In any case the corporate adoption of GNU/Linux as a viable platform should help spread copyleft fever. This is a Good Thing.

Specs are a way to standardize a platform so that multiple efforts can strive for a common goal. Specifications, however, do not impede on proactive donations of GPL/BSD software.

Convergence Integrated Media, one of the companies involved, is contributing to Free Software via DirectFB which seems to be quite impressive.

In any case the corporate adoption of GNU/Linux as a viable platform should help spread copyleft fever. This is a Good Thing.

If you're at the NAB, check out the LinuxTV Box at booth E-2333/07. We have a linux based box with DVB reception (Digital TV standard in the rest of the world), a PVR, DVD-Player, MP3 and Audio CD playback, a fast graphics library (DirectFB, http://directfb.org) that allowes true transparent windowing with GTK support, a MHP (multimedia home platform) stack and of course the variety of network access you are used to from a linux box. On top of that we have a nice user interface that glues it all together.

We are a german company, convergence integrated media, with offices in berlin, san francisco and amsterdam. Most of the software is open source, check out http://linuxtv.org for more info.

Have fun,
Christian Wolff.