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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 '"
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.
I'm wondering why they changed their name from Berlin to Fresco. Why was it called Berlin in the first place, and what made them decide to change it? Kitchener, Canada used to be called Berlin prior to around 1910 or so. Why is everyone dissing Berlin?
I had some early failures trying to get Berlin up and running on my system -- just compiling the (highly unstable) prereqs was a chore, let alone having to upgrade my compiler to compile Berlin. I hope this time around it doesn't take me a week to even "try" it, because I've been a steady believer in the project (well... any project to replace X).
MORTAR COMBAT!
If you're like me and have no idea what Fresco does, check out the intro, an FAQ and FrescoVsX. I was reading about this project last night, and since Slashdot doesn't really explain what everything is, these provide some answers.
,
faeryman
Debian packages are available from http://non-us.debian.org/~waldi/ . Note that the fresco packages require the omniorb4 packages.
(Okay, actually I think CORBA is gross, period.)
-Kevin
personally, i'm waiting for the graphical server previously known as prince.
Really, half a sentence of what this Fresco is about would have been helpful in the introduction - e.g. "Fresco is a windowing system derived from a powerful structured graphics toolkit" (from the page). This would save readers not familiar with the project from having to click on the article to find out whether it interests them, and it would reduce the slashdot effect a bit.
I know, it's a novel concept, an introduction actually introducing the readers to the subject...
Stupidity is mis-underestimated.
Network transparency is the only thing X has going for it. In fact, it's the only thing I miss on my Mac. DPS can do it on my NeXT and X can do it in Linux, I wish Apple would implement something like xhosting or NXHosting in Quartz.
Some comments on other comments that are bound to pop up:
/. experiences I know that these misunderstandingfs/questions are bound to crop up.
*) Yes Fresco uses CORBA and it is a good thing. It gives network transparency and language transparency for free. Yes, we know it is slower then using raw sockets, but CORBA is the only thing available powerful enough for our needs. It's not bloat if you need the features;-)
*) 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).
*) Fresco is not x compatible now. Support for that can and will be added later. Options for that are manigfold, See our FAQ for more infos on this topic. Again: we do not see that extending X is a good idea: Extending X will result in apps using that extension not being able to run on the unextended X. Fresco apps don't do so either. Both, an extended X and a Fresco with compatibility layer can run X apps. NO, there is no compatibility layer yet.
*) We do not write drivers. We can use whichever drivers are supported by our rendering backends. That's a surprising lot. You can run Fresco in a window in X, using your XFree-driver too.
*) Fresco is device independent. So changing the screen resolution will not make windows smaller and you can print everything you can display on screen. That's a good thing (if you want your windows to become smaller you adjust their zoom factor).
*) No, Fresco is not about rotating windows. We can rotate windows, we do so in our screenshots. That's basically because making windows not rotateable would require us to write code to prevent it! And it's an eye catcher.
*) No, this is in no way ready for the end user. Developers are welcome.
That's the basic things I want to get straight early on. From earlier
Regards,
Tobias
Regards, Tobias
I hope it is can be the replacement to X that most of us have been waiting for,
for benifit of people not familiar with fresco:
they have moved the window manager and the toolkit portion to server thus achieving (hopefully) consistant look and feel , they use corba heavily and i guess it has some replacement of X protocol , but i have not been able to find from their site.
~561
Transparency is also a big part of anti-aliased text. Some people like that.
Spinning window thingies isn't so important, but it shows the flexibility of Fresco. Although a window at a 45 degree turn isn't easy to use there's talk of using something like that to grab user attention. When an application needs your input rather than flashing on the toolbar or taking focus it could appear for a few seconds slightly transparent and rotating slowly - you know, like out of the Exorcist. Features like that are what's bring ing Hollywood to Linux, and I for one welcome it.
--Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all
I have watched the Berlin project for several years, remembering the initial idea to create a graphical system written in Assembler, a change of project leaders and the decision to use CORBA.
I don't think that Fresco will replace X anytime soon, if ever, but it's an interesting technology demo that will surely influence other projects. Playing around with the Quartz technology in MacOS X has convinced me that better and more interesting ways of doing graphics are possible - the Fresco project, by using device independent rendering (OpenGL / Postscript) and an ORB merges some of the advantages of X and DPS / Display PDF.
Fresco consists of a number of interlocking projects, each named after an city (Berlin, Warsaw, Prague, Babylon). The "Berlin" program was the window server, as well as the entire project. To avoid confusion, the project name was changed to "Fresco". The window server is still called "Berlin".
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
I bet Fresco will be finished before Xrender has image transformations, true hardware alpha channel, etc.
X is just now getting anti alaised fonts and everyone is saying X is so great, we are about a year away from the release of Xfree5.0 which is supposed to have the finished Xrender, only one guy is working on Xrender (Keith Packard)
The founder of the X project Mr. Dawes claims they are just now beginning to focus on
Quotes from David Dawes David Dawes: There has been some work on a new rendering model for XFree86 that provides some more advance composition techniques (including transparency), this currently being implemented in software. For XFree86 5.0 we'll be investigating this as part of our review of rendering models, and seeing if a hardware implementation would not be more appropriate.
Currently Xrender is still in the planning stages, its at about the same level as Fresco, not really useable to anyone but perhaps Keith Packard and a select few developers, its unfinished, its beta but to users and not so skilled programmers its vaporware.
I'm looking towards XFree86 5.0, which will be the next significant step in XFree86. We're only just starting to think seriously about it. We'll start by re-evaluating what we would like from a graphics/windowing system, and not limit ourselves to the ones that currently exist. With XFree86 4.0 our main focus was on the device-dependent component of the X server (DDX), and to do that we needed to provide a more modular infrastructure. The features that came out of that process showed how much it was needed, and it has given us a solid DDX base from which to expand into other areas. For 5.0 I expect that we'll move more into the device-independent (DIX) and protocol areas as well as making some adjustments to the DDX area based on our experiences with 4.x.
Ok so for Xfree86 5.0 they will focus on improving the rendering, and bringing X to the levels of Aqua, but by the time 5.0 gets here expect Longhorn to be released, and expect OS 11 to be released by Apple which takes things to the next level.
Linux needs to do more than just keep afloat and compete, Linux has to dominate to beat Microsoft.
Currently the only thing preventing Linux from taking the desktop market, is the fact that the currently Linux interface doesnt look polished enough, theres enough programs for grandma, theres games, theres plenty of office apps, the casual user can use Linux, the only reason they wont use Linux is because OSX is better than Linux.
Why buy a Linux dell laptop for college when you can get an Ibook thats just as powerful but better?
Why get Linux if its just like Windows? This is why Windows users would sooner switch to Mac.
X is now one of Linux's biggest bottlenecks, along with the fact that they have no music apps and not enough file sharing apps.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
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.
Nonsense. The orignal poster was referring to the supposed suckyness of the X protocol and design. While it does have its drawbacks and disadvantages, they have precisely nothing to do with the usability and user friendlyness of the Linux desktop. You can build a really great app on top of X - Mozilla for instance - or you can build a real bitch of one that your average Mac or Windows user wouldn't have a clue about, e.g. XEmacs.
What will be (and already is) making Linux suceed on the desktop is a friendly desktop environment, such as KDE. The underlying windowing system that it uses to draw on the screen is largely irrelevant.
X is not getting in the way of the Linux desktop succeeding. It has all the important features now: font antialiasing, video, on the fly resolution switching, several great looking toolkits to choose from, and the network transparency is just a bonus. In fact I'd find it pretty hard to work without it.
When you're developing software, having "transparent spinny" thingies is part of testing what you're trying to accomplish. But you probably wouldn't realize that.
The point of Fresco is very similar to the point of Quartz on MacOS X. It's a composited windowing system that doesn't "fake" sophisticated rendering like X currently does. Translucent windows now work by taking a "screenshot" of the area occluded by the window, then adding the color values together. This is a hack. A composited render draws things from back to front, taking into account a Z axis position and the alpha bits in a color block (RGBA) (this is fairly layman, but gets my point across).
I don't know why you're considered insightful for this, but rest-assured, we need a project like Fresco to develop a better windowing system. In the future, computer displays aren't going to be treated as fixed-pixel dimentions with static elements. A computer screen will be like a piece of paper. Elements will be drawn by real-world measurements (x centimeters versus x pixels) such that the number of "dots" will become arbitrary. Things will have to rotate freely. Alpha-blending will be absolutely necessary for proper hinting. And so on and so forth.
X11 is great, but very arcaic. It must go away in the future. Apple's got a good lead -- and pretty soon Microsoft will duplicate their efforts. We've got to be in that game too.
Why bother.
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.
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