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Berlin Packages Released For Debian

Posted by Hemos on from the more-fun-with-graphical-displays dept.

A reader writes: "Berlin ? testing packages for Debian are available from the Debian website and should soon be moved to unstable, according to their the Berlin consortium website." The Berlin website (which looks great, IMHO) has an excellent architecture FAQ - the Berlin vs. X is very well done.Update: 09/01 12:41 PM GMT by H : A number of people have e-mailed me about some....wonkiness...if you view the Berlin vs X page using Internet Explorer. I'd advise using something else.

4 of 349 comments (clear)

  1. A few bits about Berlin by ..... · · Score: 5, Insightful
    All right, I am not a Berlin developer, but I have been interested in this project for quite a while, and I have read through most of the stuff on their website.

    I see a lot of things being thrown around, without any real understanding (although anyone from the Berlin project is welcome to smack me around). Here are some clarifications:

    1. OpenGL.
      Why use OpenGL? Well, according to the FAQ, it is because it is a stable API that already does a bunch of what they want. But that is missing the point -- Berlin is not OpneGL-only. OpenGL is one of the several available toolkits used by the server to render the app. In fact, the most advanced toolkit currently bundled with Berlin doesn't use OpenGL at all.
    2. Toolkits.
      People here are talking about QT, GTK, etc. The purpose of these toolkits is
      • to make X programming less painful. OK, in the future, there could be some sort of Xtoolkit->Berlin wrapper that would 'port' over applications with a recompile. But an important but unheralded aspect of Berlin is that it is designed to present a consistent programming interface that is not painful to work with.
      • to give consistent looknfeel to apps. Berlin would do this at the server level. Berlin uses a single consistent set of widgets (a 'toolkit') to render the entire screen. That is why they talk about universal theming -- it would be like in installing GTK and then having the ability to switch all your applications to use GTK on the fly. Want QT? Install QT. Flip a switch. Now all you apps render with QT.
      • to integrate with a desktop. Berlin doesn't deal with this, but it could be easily extended.
    3. Corba.
      Berlin uses corba. Yes. Corba can be slow. Yes. But the trick is to see how they are using corba. For local operation, the call to the orb can be highly optimized... Just a couple of pointer jumps. (This is not much different than with X, where it uses TCP/IP to communicate with internally, even on a standalone machine). For remote operation, the corba orb shouldn't be the bottleneck the network should. But using corba gives the option to redirect displays, just like X.
      The difference is that, whereas X sends thousands (or millions!) of directions over the wire saying 'Paint pixel(x,y) green', Berlin says something like 'Put a button a this point in the screen graph' (where the screen graph is part of the Berlin prgramming model). The server has enough smarts to draw and position the button itself. Hence, Berlin has the possibility of being faster than X, even with Corba, because it has to give fewer commands to the server .. sometimes many orders of magnitude fewer commands.
    Well, that is all I can think of for now. But I think Berlin is one of the coolest projects in a long while, and has the ability to transform Linux just like Aqua/Quartz did for BSD.
  2. Who's choice? (was Re:Resolution Independence) by glenebob · · Score: 5, Insightful
    In other words, Berlin takes the Mac approach of taking UI decisions away from app developers. Themes, schmemes, that's not real choice.

    It is real choice, just not so much on the part of the developer. This approach takes the choice away from the developer and hands it to the user (in the form of theming). The user gets consistency and choice - isn't that who is supposed to be controlling his/her own desktop?

    Personally, as a developer, I don't want the choice of look at feel. I want to choose an API and I want to design the data bindings to UI components, and a default layout for the UI. I want the user to worry about the rest; how the pretty widgets look, key bindings, even how the UI is layed out if he/she wishes to go that far. I don't want my apps to stand out as being visually different any more than needed. There is absolutely no logical reason for one button to look and behave differently from any other button.

  3. Did this happen to anyone else? by Skuld-Chan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I clicked on "Berlin vs. X" faq where it proceded to open up 10 trillion browser windows. Wierd - luckily I was able to gain control of the system again.

  4. What's wrong with competition?! by defile · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm suprised that so many people are not only unsupportive (which is sort of reasonable, if you don't care you don't care), but that they go as far as being outright hostile.

    These folks are trying to push the state of the art. You may think they're misguided, you may think they suck, but that doesn't invalidate what they're doing or who they are. They have their dreams and seem like they may just realize them. Who the fuck are any of you to insult them? At least they're trying something.

    If X is a better system, it will still be here in spite of Berlin. I don't see why anyone is so threatened. Berlin could be a smash success without ever displacing a single X installation.

    Also, competition is good

    I'll never understand how some people who scream about civil liberty, free speech, intellectual property issues, and the rejection of old-world dogma/family-values-crap can still be so closed minded about competing open source technologies that they consider a threat to established traditional technology.

    You'd think that the general Slashdot reading population would be more supportive of change.