X11 Alternatives?

James Skarzinskas asks: "X has been, in general, the most widely used and acknowledged to many as the 'graphics of Linux'. During the last few years, projects like the Linux Framebuffer have really taken off and related projects have shown real potential. I'm just wondering if the Slashdot community knows of any less-public alternative to X; perhaps even using the Linux framebuffer?" Aside from SVGALib, what other graphical infrastructures exist for Unix-based systems?

Comments

DirectFB of course

[augros]

Well, of course, there's DirectFB: a system to render directly to the framebuffer, and using hardware acceleration when available. While still in completion for workstation window systems, it offers excellent performance and a well thought out infrastructure. But since it is geared toward embedded systems it will be a while before it has drivers covering the majority of video cards (though it is doing quite well as it is), has multi-application support (working on it) and a complete API. Still, worth a look at --especially since it already has a Gtk port. It is for those who "prefer alpha transparency to network transparency". They get my vote, and development support for the next Unix windowing system. Quartz, eat our dust.

Obvious Answers

[Pauly]

• Berlin Consortium
• QTopia
• PicoGUI
• Relevant Freshmeat Trove
• Google's Linux specific engine results

Re:Obvious Answers

[Anonymous Coward]

Berlin is now called Fresco

Lots of links

[RevAaron]

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.