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Linux Desktop Without X11
A writes "Rocklyte systems have announced the first version of their Athene Operating System. It is a desktop and embedded operating system built on the Linux kernel, but without the "aging X11". Instead, it uses the SciTech SNAP graphics system with which it is possible to completely re-theme the desktop to look like the famous AmigaOS GUI or another famous UI. For backwards compatibility, an X11 server is also available in the system. The system can run completely off the CD, without needing to be installed on the harddrive."
I wish them luck. I want to have a choice, instead of being forced to use X11 for GUI on *nix :)
why is linux so beholden to X? yeah, i love it's network transparent features ( i use in my class every day), but, look at what apple did with essentially a kernel and subsystem. they could port aqua to linux, since it already compiled under gcc anyways. that might be a huge commercial ticket for linux. certainly there is nothing that says you can't run a proprietary windowing system on top of the kernel, is there? app compatibility would be a huge issue, but like apple's X11, it could run rootless, and almost be unnoticable (except for the widgets).
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
It's ok to emulate something else if your familiar or comfortable with it, but I'd like to see an OS released that allows you to create your UI just how you want it, and not just pretty borders, colors, etc. Stuff like how it handles file structures graphically, selection of tiled, paned, or stretched work panels. Total control over ALL aspects of a GUI!
You seem to connect themes with simple bitmap changes, and the like. I agree that simply offering this functionality is less than important.
However, with 'true' theming, the internal function of the GUI (and OS) is loosely tied with the graphical layout and function of the GUI. What does this means? It means that a single system, properly configured, can handle many different interface styles. You could simultaneously offer transition interfaces to users from different GUI camps - Windows, MacOS, NeXT, etc.
This is an immensely important feature for this reason. While many see theming as eyecandy, properly implemented it can serve a very useful purpose; fit the GUI to the user, not the user to the GUI. It should also allow new interface styles to be prototyped - what better way to develop usability than to look at what people with the skillset to change the interface think works best?
Would it not be possible to port KDE to QT/Embedded so that you could run KDE in the framebuffer without X11 at all? There would be a lot of work to do, but the toolkit which KDE is based on already works in the framebuffer.
Most people that dislike X don't understand it.
My favorite complaint is that it's bloated or eats too much memory. It's bogus -- X uses relatively little memory itself, but pixmaps are stored in X instead of in apps. So Linux GUI apps tend to use less memory than they would with a Windows-like environment, but X's memory usage go up.
I actually sat down and modified some code to query X how much memory is being used by each program in pixmap memory. This is memory that would have to be used under Windows. Little things -- gkrellm, a simple dock program that I have running, caches about 2.7MB of pixmaps in X all by itself. This doesn't show up as gkrellm memory usage in top, but it *is* being consumed by gkrellm.
X11 allows network transparency, 3d support, hardware scaling of video, support for more font formats than Windows does, zooming in and out. When combined with a window manager, the X11 architecture is incredibly powerful and flexible.
I wish people would stop complaining about and learn to use X's features.
May we never see th
Please make up your minds, people. X11 was certainly fast enough on this speedy beast, and hasn't inherently gotten slower since. If you want something *smaller* than X11 to drive graphics, you'd better be prepared to write lots of code to handle niggling details like window displaying - in the graphics libraries. Ick. Projects like Berlin try to add *more* features to the windowing system that X11 doesn't have, which isn't necessarily bad. But it's not going to be *less* bloated than X11 is now.
But "old" and "bloated" is going to be a contradiction when one considers the advances in hardware over the 10+ years I've been using X11.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
X11 isn't as Bad as everything thinks.
The way I see X being slow is that widgets need to be on server-side instead of client-side. Right now the client Draws everything useing X primitives, sending the raw data (pixmaps, whatnot) to the server over the network. Now if the server had the widgets on its side the client would just have to tell the server the type, size, position of the widget, Instead of sending a pixmap.
This would help things such as less bandwidth, less cpu overhead for eash client.
Maybe this could even be implimented in a X-
extentsion
Maybe I am just showing my ignorance here, But an idea is an idea.
Yeah, this was sort of a revalation to me recently. I just got a new machine at work. Of course it came with Windows (XP Pro) installed on it so I played with it for a few days before blowing it away and putting RedHat 9 on it. I was sort of hesitant to do so because windows in XP seemed to pop up fast and the whole system seemed very responsive (not that I was doing anything heavy duty.) Another plus is that font rendering is actually better than Windows, and about equal with Macs. That's really nice.
Anyway, now that I've got RH installed (w/XFree 4.3.x) I am very happy to say that X seems just as responsive as Windows, even when I am doing something heavy duty, and I'm using KDE as well. This was the first time in about five years I've used any kind of Windows, it was a nice validation of X as far as I am concerned.
XFree, at least without propriatary drivers, might not be great for games, but it makes my development life a lot more joyful than other non-networked windowing environments would, and that includes the kludgy windows terminal services crapola.
"If I could re-theme my hardcoded windows GUI, themes would be the most important thing, ever. "
You can re-theme it. Check out this thread here.
Here's what my desktop looks like. It's customized with my own (in progress) artwork on it. And yes, those are buttons and multiple desktops there. Some of the stuff there is default, and some of it I added on my own.
So yes, you can modify your 'hard-coded' theme. Somebody's already gone through all the work to do it.
"Derp de derp."
I'm so happy to hear someone finally ditched the X windows. Now maybe we can get some decent applications without needing to code the whole UI experience every time.
This may be the one.
Can anybody strip down Knoppix http://www.knoppix.de/ or Topolpgilinux http://topologi-linux.sourceforge.net/ or this new distribution to get a tiny core set of applications which would be a good end user CD-bootable Linux desktop?
Our IT people would love to have a graphical rudimentary cd bootable stripped down linux package to which a few open source applicatios could be easily added.
This is the other way round instead of Knoppix adding in as much as possible.
What exactly is your point?
X running on RedHat 8.1 with my Athlon XP 1800+ is slow when compared to the WinXP UI. And I don't play games on Linux - that's what Windows is for - I code.
Admittedly, some features a novel - such as the whole UI-over-TCP thing. Great. It would be nice in some situations, I'm sure. But I'm not going to 'look beyond what's good enough for the PC in my bedroom right now'. Why the hell should I? After all, I'm using my computer now and I want it to work to the best of its ability.
Now, I've had my little rant, don't take it to heart - my point is, make a point. What do you feel is so great about X that we should simply forego the PCs in our bedrooms because of some greater, only-known-by-you good?
The Internet is old. Is that a reason to ditch the internet? - I hear stirrings of people looking into it. SMTP is old too, everyone uses it whether they like it or not, and look how fucked up it is.
... just got back an hour or so ago from my weekly supplies run to town. One of our stops is the church thrift store, girlfriend and I enjoy that random "deal" shopping. I always head to the electronic junk and hardware, she splits to what I call the "imelda marcos" area. Anyway, myself and another customer are staring at this old xt bundle, commenting on what we are running now. The dude actually starting complaining about xp, said NO WAY would he pay that to upgrade, but he was really bogued out about what he was running, which is ME. SO, here's my chance, I ask "Hey, ever try that "linux" stuff?".
yada yada, he sounds enthused already,he's heard of it, I'm the first person he's ever met weho's used it,he asks how much it is. I sez, "well, 30-40 clams from the vendors with manuals and stuff low end, or you can.." I only got that far he goes FOURTY DOLLARS FOR AN OPERATING SYSTEM?? WHERE CAN I GET IT????
No lie. Then I drop the next one, "well, you can download and burn it for free,too, or clone companies will sell it to you for like 5-10 bux whatever, oh ya, comes with one zillion programs, too"
He's floored, gonna try it.
One person at a time
(hey spider tools, you might have an incoming)
People complain about "bloat" because of the 100 megabyte image it installs, as well as the 10 megabyte resident set. People complain about "slow" because of the significant overhead on interactive and multimedia applications.
X11 is still in the marketplace because it is standard; on technical merit it is a clear loser. As a comparison, look at the Microsoft graphics layer. It is much faster for local programs because it doesn't insist on shoving everything through sockets. It is also faster for remote display because Microsoft controls the toolkit and has higher level primitives that allow more to be drawn based on a single message.
X is powerful, sure, but face it: any Turing machine is powerful. X is an inefficient nuisance that gets in the way of doing things well. The only advantage that X provides to Linux is that it is a standard that makes porting applications easier. Discarding Linux and moving to Windows would be a giant leap forward for lots of people, but not all. For those of us who prefer Linux, a higher level graphics layer could be much faster, allow for a tighter network protocol, and promote consistency in Linux user interfaces.
Wow, until I put it that way, I never knew how hard X sucks!
I was a NeXTStep user in the early 90s and loved it. Fast forward to 2003. I recently got fully OSX'ed and think this new NeXTStep is a severly dumbed down and spray-painted and obfuscated Frankenstein.
I suppose Carbon was needed because none of the corporate commercial software houses would port anything to Cocoa, but the result is shameful.
TROLL! Mommy, mommy!!!! Master Bait said something bad about OSX!!!
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
hmm, and the last 30% is iether internaly made software that theycant make up theyre mind about or connected to that graphics system they use to replace X11...
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Your analogy is inherently flawed
I think his analogy is more inherently flawed due to the fact that if you buy a mushroom from a shop and it turns out to be poisonous, you can sue them, and they can't turn around and say "well, you shoulda read the fineprint that came with the mushroom. it states that the mushrooms are not sold with any expectation of being eaten and if the purchasers chooses to consue the mushroom then he must take responsibility thereof. indeed the mushroom is in no way certified to even be a mushroom, it may very well be a diving mask. no recourse is available against the mushroom vendor or mushroom supplier. this mushroom is not to be used in mission critical or life affecting situations. you are not allowed to make any duplicate of this mushroom, this includes taking a photo of it or even drawing it with a crayon. the physical characteristics of this mushroom are trademarked, copyrighted and patented. if you are unhappy with the conditions attached to this mushroom then you may return it to the vender who supplied it to you (with the purchase of a shopping trolley) and ask for a refund on your mushroom. he will likely inform you that he is unable to do this but you can certainly ask.
etc, ad nauseam
dave
Isn't it about time that the windowing system was directly implemented into the kernel?
It certainly could be done without breaking compatibility with current console applications. After all, linux IS a monolithic kernel. I'd go as far as reccomending that some sort of graphical interface be intergrated into the POSIX standard. Limiting unix to a 640x480 console is ridiculous. Apple's been doing this since 1984 - long before X11 was drafted or Linux was created.
X has so much potential to be great, but after 11 years, it has failed to show it. To me, that is a flawed system.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
You can find out of date picogui stuff at sourceforge, but why does picogui.org only come up with advertising for the webhost? Has picogui not been paying their bills, or is the site down right now?
NeXT also did some Display Postscript things that weren't as cool as NeWS, but still were good display environments.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
the less useful machine. I thought Bill was the leader in this area. Must we emulate everything?
The X window system is what makes a Linux machine multi-user. It also makes it useful as a multi-user machine at the same time.
The core of UNIX power comes from the multi-user philosophy. X was crafted with the same goals in mind. That is why they both have been around for such a long time.
Both of these things come at a small price; namely, a requirement for some basic literacy with regard to the system and how it works.
YOU CANNOT HAVE THE POWER WITHOUT PAYING THAT PRICE.
I did not spend the last 7 years learning these things only to have my environment dumbed down for the sake of those not willing to step up and actually learn something about the machines they say they need.
All of those folks wanting a frame-buffer only system really don't want multi-user systems --or at least don't want useful ones. Or, more likely, just flat don't know better.
As for those folks asking for X emulation, I ask this?
If the X window emulation does what X is supposed to wouldn't you have what you have with X right now plus added overhead? Why not consider using a toolkit to make the X development easier while not ruining the multi-user nature of Linux?
Win32 machines are multi-tasking machines. Sure, you can run processes as more than one user, even run applications on your machine as more than one user, but in the end, you still have only one desktop.
Many of the problems come from that one desktop and its close intergration with the rest of the OS. This is the same shit that Microsoft and Apple to a degree have been pushing all along. We don't need this.
For those that think we do, read again. WE DON'T.
Common arguments:
- The network display capability makes X slow.
Bullshit. The fastest graphics systems around have always used X. Want to see a sweet X server that does the network display thing nicely. Get any SGI IRIX machine and examine the X environment. 3D capable display, both in a window and full screen, on screen video in real time with sizeable windows, network applications, speed. All have been present for longer than the more capable win32 environments have existed. Local display requests do not go through the entire network stack. This combined with the excellence of UNIX and Linux network stacks make this a moot point anyway.
X is hard to configure.
Each year this is much less so. Soon it will also be a non issue. We have gone from hand tweaking our display to spin the CD and choose the type of display. Give it a bit more time and you will soon get all the little features you think you need as well. All without any sacrifice of the multi-user values that make Linux and X what they are; namely, better than everyone else.
Nobody needs all that extra capability.
Well, that is because most of them do not know what they are missing. We need to keep the power in the box by default; otherwise, we will end up running the same way others on more limited systems do now. Is that worth it?
X is old.
Well so is UNIX. Does that make it bad? No, if it were, it would be dead long before now.
This is long enough. If you actually want to see more take a look at my journal, there is plenty more in there for the reading.
To sum this up:
If you really don't understand what X and UNIX is about, just spare yourself and get a nice wintel PC and get it over with. Maybe split the middle and get an Apple. (I *like* Apple BTW, that's not the whole point here...)
If you want to actually take some control over your computing environment and have the ability to exercise choices, step up and shut up and start using X.
It will be worth your time in the end.
Blogging because I can...
> You can re-theme it.
I disagree. Your screenshot shows that you can change the bitmaps. And that you can replace the shell. But that's not what I consider true theming.
First of all, theming should at least be able to change the size of widgets. In Windows, that's impossible. All the software is designed with absolute positioning of widgets, so changing the sizes of widgets would make the entire scheme fall apart. Java supports this - it has good layout managers, and they are commonly used. You can resize controls without making everything look horrible. There are other advantages to layout managers, also - fonts can change size (accessibility!) with less impact, there's better window resize behavior, etc. (Incidentally, I was really disappointed to see that OS X uses absolute positioning extensively. It has a really good UI, but there are low points.)
Second, themes should be able to change the look and the feel. You've changed the look. The feel of programs is the same. I really like to see a one-to-one correspondence to looks and feels. Ideally, all of the software on my computer would have the same, customizable, look and feel. But failing that, I hate it when things look different but behave the same, or look the same but behave differently.
I particularly hate the "native" themes that Mozilla, Java, gtk/Win32, etc. have. I see the mostly-native look and expect native behavior, but there are subtle differences that bother me all the time. Things like wheel button behavior not matching up.
I also dislike single application that goes against the grain with UI conventions. I let a few get away with it - cross-platform applications, mostly, especially ones with a relatively-common framework such as Java's Swing), but Winamp in particular bothers me. It looks horrible, its scrollbars are broken, etc. If they had just used the native widgets, they would have expended much less effort for a better result.