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Fresco M1 Released
rajan r writes "The first release after 18 months, Fresco, previously known as Berlin, released M1 or Milestone 1. The release notes here, screenshots here. The original 'press release' follows: 'I'm proud to announce that milestone 1 of Fresco (formerly known as Berlin) has (at long last) been released. A lot has changed since the last release, but this isn't that surprising, since the last release was more then 18 months ago; most of the real work for the past few months has been behind the scenes (changing hosts, a new web site infrastructure, improved build system, an issue tracker (hooray!), better documentation (and more to come), etc.). Source (no packages at the moment, but debs will be available soon, and the tree contains .spec files for building your own rpms) The name change. Enjoy! -- Nathaniel '"
The only thing holding back Linux from World Domination is X's suckiness and slowness. 97.5% of the people using X don't need network transparency which slows X down by 15% in some cases. Unfortunetly, too many apps and GUI libraries depend on X (ex. GTK and QT).
Okay, how about Berlin? Still doesn't ring a bell? You mean that you don't know about this obscure package referenced only by unknown product names that the unbelievable overwhelming majority of the public has no knowledge about? Good then, we won't bother including a simple description of what the hell it even is.
P.S. It's a system for tracking calories from consumed donuts.
(Okay, actually I think CORBA is gross, period.)
-Kevin
You are right: We need to do roundtrips for the few calls we need to make. Fortunately Fresco is designed not to need much kommunication in the first place: We are not poshing pixels around. The Display server has all the information needed to rerender the (transformed) GUI of any application running at that server. The only calls between client and server happens when the server informs the client about a statechange.
The demo application uses a bandwith of about 1.9kBit/s... That's because the server pings the clients to check wether they are stoll alive.
Regards, Tobias
In an earlier comment somebody said, "Fresco is not X: Yes, we do not extend X. X is good, we do think so too, but it has certain shortcommings we do want to adress. Improving X is not an option: We'd need to carry along tons of code we do not need and blow the code size out of proportion (example: xlib, networking code)."
X may be good but sometimes it is simply too slow and, worse, the documentation does not go out of its way to explain properly the speedups that are available.
Ok, there's shared memory pixmaps and shared memory images but the documentation is incomplete.
When you need speed and don't care about hardware-dependency you can use Direct Graphics Access module - DGA. But where's good documentation for DGA? Is there anything faster than DGA in X? Where's the good documentation?
Why oil price increase equals economic trouble (Score: Interesti
Everyone is saying,
1. "Why?"
2. "What's wrong with X?"
3. "It looks like crap."
Nobody realizes the answers are easy.
1. Why not? They want a better, simpler windowing environment.
2. Read the page. There are performance issues, resolution issues, and network issues. They also hope to add an X compatibilty layer at some point.
3. It's not done, not by a longshot.
Frankly, a rival project is a good thing. Good luck to Fresco for doing something that no one else dares, writing what could turn in to an X substitue.
I wish there was some there was some way that I could be outside playing basketball, in the rain, and not get wet.
Surely there are deeper issues with a Vector based display that is resolution independant... The rest of the computing world does not use this approach, so how do you remain compatible?
I am not talking about software applications here, but everyday things like webpages (images in a web page are not generally resolution independant) and games.
Hardware is the same. My monitor is an LCD device with exactly 1280*1024 pixels. With a 100% vector display it would be awful to look at all day. I like the ability to be able to turn on or off 1 pixex, or subpixel, on my monitor.
You end up with an awful and awkward looking experience just for this "feature" which actually isnt all that important.
I agree, an intro as to what Fresco is would have been useful. And would probably have saved the owners of http://www.fresco.org/ loads in bandwidth costs. I'd suggest that the slashdot editors consider a brief introduction on each article or lay down some guidelines when posting articles so readers aren't doing a lot of headscratching. Luck!
I have a very small mind and must live with it.
-- E. Dijkstra
I think it's also neat that PicoGUI supports multiple (programming) languages simply by having a documented net protocol -- language bindings talk directly with the renderer over the net, instead of wrapping some C interface.
PicoGUI is also small and cross platform. It's certainly not as old as Fresco, but it looks like they're going to lap Fresco pretty easily.
On another front -- what's Fresco's comparison to NeWS? NeWS, a competitor to X from Sun (late 80's?), had some concepts that were similar to Fresco (and PicoGUI). Considerably more display logic was on the server (renderer). It apparently had lots of bugs and issues, but it actually did reach a usable state. Have they learned from this predecessor? Neither project seems as flexible (NeWS used Postscript for its widgets, so new widgets could be nearly arbitrarily complex)... that flexibility may have been NeWS downfall.
Anyway, it always seemed like a neat idea and an important project to learn from.
You open source guys never learn anything. What linux needs to compete with Windows is a decent software installation program.. not another freaking GUI. Users want to be install a program off the net and be up and running in minutes not play around with command line switches
I don't see what Berlin/Fresco has to do with the X Window System. Fresco used to be an X11 toolkit, but now it's something completely different.
None of that stuff worked because resolutions were and are now too low. But if you look at the future, the OLEDs that will run at 600dpi, the LCD that IBM just released last year, the T221, you'll see that the whole resolution game is about to change in a big way. The way scaling works now will fail to work in a heterogeneous environment where some folks have 1024x768 displays and others have 10 megapixel displays both comprising the same area, especially when both those folks want to use the same apps. MS Windows and X as they are now will break down horribly. The only programs that will look good when resolutions get that big are xeyes and xlogo. :P
So, do you make comments like this on CNN? "Where the heck is Israel and what's the big deal about the west bank? Sheesh, can't you guys put a short history lesson about each area and the conflicts involved in every article?"
"No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."
--James Madison
Hey it's you again!
Maybe you should actually pay a little more attention to the news. You see the news actually introduces lesser known subjects without presuming that every reader will run off to check a encyclopaedia to see what it is. The West Bank, which is basically the news equivalent to "Linux" in the technology world (as far as commonality) might not need an introduction, and is a stunningly ridiculous example for you to bring up, however most other lesser known news stories DO have sentences describing the location and why it matters.
Moron.