Posted by
timothy
on from the version-number-fever dept.
meisenst writes "Lindows 2.0.0 is out, and features, among other things, the ability to browse Windows network shares and map them as you would on a Windows machine. The ISO release notes are here(1), the announcement is here(2) (for now, anyway), and some screenshots are here(3). Looks good!"
Lindows 2.0.0 is out, and features, among other things, the ability to browse Windows network shares and map them as you would on a Windows machine.
All this for the same price as Windows!
Re:Another step in the wrong direction
by
tokki
·
· Score: 0, Troll
Here comes the "X sucks" post again. What is wrong with X? Why break all compatibility just to ditch X? Why ditch X at all?
Here comes the "X doesn't suck" post again;)
1) There are no good alternatives. Period. DirectFB doesn't support nearly as many cards, and Berlin isn't even ready.
That's hardly ever been a reason not to make a change. If that was the reasoning years ago, open source and Linux and FreeBSD never would have come to be. There are several good candidates to choose from, personally I'd like to see something done with OpenBeOS. BeOS was a wonderfully full featured and elegant GUI, as well as very easy to use.
2) Network transparency. Some people claim that it's useless today but that's just false. It's still being used in corporate environments and it's becoming more and more important in the embedded market. If you want to create an alternative, it better be network transparent.
While that is useful for the corporate and geek environment, it is absolutely useless for a consumer. There are several alternatives to network transparency while still mainting the capability, such as making a GUI that is capable of being network transparent, but not by default.
3) X is proven. It's more than 15 years old now. Don't think X sucks just because XFree86 isn't the best implementation.
X is proven in the sysadmin and engineering environments. However, it has failed in the desktop realm.
4) X is extensible. Nearly all shortcomings can be worked around using extensions. Take a look at XRender for example. Or DRI. Or DGA. And in the near future: translucent windows, screen resizing and rotation (RandR or something).
Nearly all of X's shortcomings perhaps, but not all. Developers still have to choose whether to develop in KDE, Gnome, or X by itself, or develop their own widget sets (ala Mozilla). They have little idea of what type of environment a consumer would have.
5) X is fast enough. No X isn't slow. Moving windows doesn't seem to be smooth, but that's because of the communication between the window manager and the window, not because X is slow. When I switched to Metacity, moving windows suddenly became *a lot* smoother.
X by itself might be fast, but to get it to anywhere near the usability and even asthetic qualities of other GUIs, it becomes slow. Thus I still say "X is slow", or perhaps more accurately, "the X environment is slow".
Yes, X communicates through sockets. But locally, pixmaps (95% of all traffic) are transferred through shared memory (at least XFree86 does). CPUs are becoming faster and faster, so socket overhead should become smaller and smaller.
Of course, assuming that the driver is good and fast.
Just another example of how X was designed with a completely different set of requirements than those that apply to a consumer desktop.
6) XFree86 configuration is currently complicated. But that won't stay that way. Why ditch XFree86 and replace it with something new and incompatible when you can just improve XFree86? The developers are already planning on getting rid of XF86Config completely and go for hardware autodetection.
That's a major step, but how will it handle driver updates? Will grandma have to recompile her kernel?
While not totally X-related, the split between KDE and Gnome is only making things more difficult. Competition generally benefits all, but it's creating a rift between an already niche market.
If the desire is to keep X and open source desktops in the realm of the geek, then these steps are fine. But if there is really a desire to get them onto the desktop and bust the Microsoft monopolies, these flaws I've listed and many others need to be addressed by X or by a new GUI.
Slashdot Mirror
Lindows 2.0.0 is out, and features, among other things, the ability to browse Windows network shares and map them as you would on a Windows machine.
All this for the same price as Windows!
Here comes the "X doesn't suck" post again ;)
1) There are no good alternatives. Period. DirectFB doesn't support nearly as many cards, and Berlin isn't even ready.
That's hardly ever been a reason not to make a change. If that was the reasoning years ago, open source and Linux and FreeBSD never would have come to be. There are several good candidates to choose from, personally I'd like to see something done with OpenBeOS. BeOS was a wonderfully full featured and elegant GUI, as well as very easy to use.
2) Network transparency. Some people claim that it's useless today but that's just false. It's still being used in corporate environments and it's becoming more and more important in the embedded market. If you want to create an alternative, it better be network transparent.
While that is useful for the corporate and geek environment, it is absolutely useless for a consumer. There are several alternatives to network transparency while still mainting the capability, such as making a GUI that is capable of being network transparent, but not by default.
3) X is proven. It's more than 15 years old now. Don't think X sucks just because XFree86 isn't the best implementation.
X is proven in the sysadmin and engineering environments. However, it has failed in the desktop realm.
4) X is extensible. Nearly all shortcomings can be worked around using extensions. Take a look at XRender for example. Or DRI. Or DGA. And in the near future: translucent windows, screen resizing and rotation (RandR or something).
Nearly all of X's shortcomings perhaps, but not all. Developers still have to choose whether to develop in KDE, Gnome, or X by itself, or develop their own widget sets (ala Mozilla). They have little idea of what type of environment a consumer would have.
5) X is fast enough. No X isn't slow. Moving windows doesn't seem to be smooth, but that's because of the communication between the window manager and the window, not because X is slow. When I switched to Metacity, moving windows suddenly became *a lot* smoother.
X by itself might be fast, but to get it to anywhere near the usability and even asthetic qualities of other GUIs, it becomes slow. Thus I still say "X is slow", or perhaps more accurately, "the X environment is slow".
Yes, X communicates through sockets. But locally, pixmaps (95% of all traffic) are transferred through shared memory (at least XFree86 does). CPUs are becoming faster and faster, so socket overhead should become smaller and smaller. Of course, assuming that the driver is good and fast.
Just another example of how X was designed with a completely different set of requirements than those that apply to a consumer desktop.
6) XFree86 configuration is currently complicated. But that won't stay that way. Why ditch XFree86 and replace it with something new and incompatible when you can just improve XFree86? The developers are already planning on getting rid of XF86Config completely and go for hardware autodetection.
That's a major step, but how will it handle driver updates? Will grandma have to recompile her kernel?
While not totally X-related, the split between KDE and Gnome is only making things more difficult. Competition generally benefits all, but it's creating a rift between an already niche market.
If the desire is to keep X and open source desktops in the realm of the geek, then these steps are fine. But if there is really a desire to get them onto the desktop and bust the Microsoft monopolies, these flaws I've listed and many others need to be addressed by X or by a new GUI.