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X11 Alternatives?

Posted by Cliff on from the tired-of-singing-that-same-old-tune dept.

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?

13 of 28 comments (clear)

  1. Fuck, Damn. Bollocks. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Ie. curses.

  2. DirectFB of course by augros · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  3. Old timers will remember... by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Many years ago, when Slashdot was young, and moderation not yet a dream...

    There were endless discussions of Berlin, and how it was going to sweep Linux and the BSD's into the graphical future, from the chains of a graphical past.

    X is still here in 2002, and its progeny will be in place 15 years from now. It will be worked on by CS students who got their MS working on various "Berlin's".

    BTW: Who remembers Sun's NeWS - a DPS-based windowing system with network transparency? Why doesn't Apple license the old sources for a model at extending Aqua on the wire? They will just re-invent this stuff again on the Quartz layer of 2005. Oh, well....

    --
    "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
    Never been known to fail..."
    1. Re:Old timers will remember... by RevAaron · · Score: 2

      They wouldn't need to license NeWS. NeXT's DPS had those same capabilities as NeWS. NeXTSTEP and OpenStep's display system was Display PostScript, and one could run an app over the network by passing a -NSHost or -NXHost (depending on the version of *STEP) flag. Yes, X- or NeWS-like app networkability, not something VNC-like.

      This fantastic ability was lost in the transition from DPS to Quartz, which is Display PDF. They didn't want to keep having to pay up to Adobe for those PS rights. They just didn't bother porting -NXHost to PDF from PostScript, I suppose. Damn shame though.

      --

      Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
    2. Re:Old timers will remember... by Matthew+Weigel · · Score: 3, Interesting

      They just didn't bother porting -NXHost to PDF from PostScript, I suppose.

      Nah, from what I read it was a design decision - keeping all the layers necessary to do that was a real performance hit, so they cheated and cut through some layers of abstraction. And, given the performance of Aqua, I can't say I blame them.

      --
      --Matthew
    3. Re:Old timers will remember... by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 2
      Thanks for this bit of info!

      I worked like a dog on an old slab in the early 'nineties, but it had no NeXT peer in the SFSU media lab for this kind of stuff...

      To think, I had no opportunity to send bit-mapped roaches scurrying on the lab-techs mega-pixel displays! (That's what the SS2's with color were for)

      --
      "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
      Never been known to fail..."
    4. Re:Old timers will remember... by spitzak · · Score: 2
      NeWS was much better than DPS, in that everything (including the creation and management of windows and events) was PostScript. This made programming it considerably easier.

      One unfortunate fact of NeWS is that too many people thought it's purpose was to preview PostScript before printing it, which is all DPS is useful for. That, and Sun's stupidity at not giving it away for the same price as X11, killed it.

  4. Obvious Answers by Pauly · · Score: 3, Informative

    1. Re:Obvious Answers by Gill+Bates · · Score: 2

      I don't think so.

      From Berlin's home page:

      Berlin is a windowing system derived from Fresco, a powerful structured graphics toolkit originally based on InterViews. Berlin extends Fresco to the status of a full windowing system, in command of the video hardware (via GGI, SDL, DirectFB or GLUT) and processing user input directly rather than peering with a host windowing system. Additionally, Berlin's extensions include a rich drawing interface with multiple backends, an upgrade to modern CORBA standards, a new Unicode-capable text system, dynamic module loading, and many communication abstractions for connecting other processes to the server. It is developed entirely by volunteers on the internet, using free software, and released under the GNU Library General Public License.

    2. Re:Obvious Answers by Gill+Bates · · Score: 2

      Never mind - you're right. They need to fix their f***ing home page, though.

      Our project has been renamed Fresco from the old "Berlin", and most if not all references to Berlin now refer to the Fresco project.

  5. Lots of links by RevAaron · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    --

    Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
  6. X11? I Hate Their Popups by Servo5678 · · Score: 5, Funny
    I hate X11's popup ads. They're everywhere and they annoy me. I'll never buy an X11 product, ever!

    Wait... X11 are the hidden camera people right?

    Oops, my mistake...

  7. Re:X11? I Hate Their Popups by Bklyn · · Score: 5, Funny

    Silly programmers and their off-by-one errors.