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DirectFB: A New Linux Graphics Standard?
Spy Hunter writes: "Some people really dislike the X Window System. DirectFB seems to be the answer to their prayers. Building on the framebuffer support available in recent Linux kernels, DirectFB adds hardware acceleration, input devices, and window management. It has been made (and LGPL'd) by Digital Convergence as a Linux video/television solution, but it is much more than that. It has the potential to replace X for Linux desktops. You want a transparent terminal? How about a transparent video player? Development is proceeding rapidly, with a GTK port and even an X server for legacy apps in progress. Could this be the future of the Linux desktop?"
(a) DirectFB is a thin abstraction layer over graphics hardware; ideal for blindingly fast games, video rendering, etc. Sure, that could be useful.
(b) The X window system is a network-transparent graphical desktop environment based around the client-server paradigm. Sure, that could be useful.
You can't really have it both ways. It would probably be true to say, though, that the need for (b) is dying out, and the need for (a) is growing. But that's not what the headline was saying.
These sigs are more interesting tha
There's a standard X extension (?) called LBX that comes with XFree86 and others. Check out the LBX Mini-HOWTO if you are interested.
Cheers //Johan
Installed the Bubblemon yet?
I keep seeing people dissing X as a horribly inefficient system that is long overdue for replacement, but the justification always seems to be a myth.
First off, the complaints are generally levelled against what they see in a particular implementation of the X protocol, not the protocol itself. There seems to be no acknowledgement that while X servers of the past may have had implementation problems, that we have moved on and produced much more efficient and well-featured implemntations, particularly XFree. Through X extensions, XFree has become an X server that keeps the good of X, and improves on the bad aspects of older X servers.
The main gripe I see is "X is slow!!". Well, with XAA, X gets the same sort of acceleration as Windows display drivers for ordinary stuff. This requires that good drivers exist for your chipset, which is a good bet nowadays, but not as likely as Windows. Not XFree's fault, and it's clear that any FB based solution won't help matters in this regard (driver support)
People also have complained about 3D performance. XFree4 has DRI which really works well to address the issue. For Video playback, there is XVideo which provides good access to hardware scalars and filters. There is work being done on an XMovie extension that could provide access to hardware video decoders, such as the MPEG-2 decoder on All-in-Wonder cards (though I haven't heard much about it lately). Another complaint I hear is that it is ugly, that it lacks the bells and whistles of 'modern' systems. Well, there is now the XRender extension which can be used to provide translucency (if anyone bothered to implement it) and in turn provide both anti-aliased text and sub-pixel sampled font rendering (ala Window XP's cleartext).
Those who complain about X and say it needs replacement need to be a bit more educated. If you look at the projects that have aimed to replace XFree in the past, you see a very interesting pattern. Berlin is a good example of this. They set out to provide things that at the time people said "X cannot accomodate these features", but by the time Berlin progresses to any usable state, XFree has most of these features in XFree4. Let's face it, XFree in particular is a good system that can continue for quite a long time, and has only improved with age, contrary to popular belief.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
however being able to ssh into any box and typing export DISPLAY=my_local_box:0.0 and then being able to run all the the remote Xapps on my box is is one of the greatest features on the planet.
Ouch- allthough your command to start the X proggie will be secure, the windowed program itself will be going over an unsecure channel if you use that method. (all your click are belong to them)
You should really look into X-forwarding (read man ssh).
Regardless- I too like the network transparency that is offered from X. If the damn X protocol would support SSL or something like it natively, then it would seriously speed up secure remote graphical logins. (search google for tcp over tcp to see why)