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 '"

Comments

Confusion

[faeryman]

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.

Some basic facts:

[t_hunger]

Some comments on other comments that are bound to pop 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 /. experiences I know that these misunderstandingfs/questions are bound to crop up.

Regards,
Tobias

It's been a long time...

[jregel]

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.

Why Berlin is now called Fresco

[Jeremy Erwin]

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".

For God's sake

[qwijibrumm]

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.

Re:You know, Fresco...doesn't ring a bell?

[JabberWokky]

Yeah, I get pissed when I go to sports sites and they talk about all these teams and games and RBI, yards passages and other technical terms. I expect them to explain it to me in every article summary too. Fuckers. Tell you what - you go beat up on the sports sites for assuming you know something about sports, and I'll go beat up on the technical sites for assuming you know something about tech.

(Oh and I *REALLY* hate the sites that link to other sites that might have further information... like they expect me to *read* something about the subject. Ha! FAQ and search engines? Not for me my bucko - I want it spoon fed!)

--
Evan "Played golf and cricket in school, still have only a dim idea of how (American) football works"