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."

Comments

Not only can, it does. (obligatory)

[oblom]

The system can run completely off the CD, without needing to be installed on the harddrive."

At least that's what the server seems to be running from.

When is X12 coming out?

[Anonymous Coward]

X11 really is ancient.

Re:When is X12 coming out?

[Soko]

X12? Geez, I need to pay attention. I was waiting for XIII to be released...

Soko

Themes schemes

[vasqzr]

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.

Right. Because themes are the most important thing, ever. This isn't an media player, it's a GUI.

Re:Themes schemes

[NanoGator]

"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.

something i always wondered about

[b17bmbr]

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).

Re:something i always wondered about

[m0rph3us0]

Do you realize that most of X being "slow" is really XFree86 being slow.
In fact some X servers for Linux are FASTER than Windows.

Check out the benchmarks

Re:something i always wondered about

[tuffy]

Even Xfree86 isn't all that slow - so long as it's got decent drivers to work with. But people tend to load lots of Gnome/KDE stuff to get their machines to look/act more like Windows, then complain that their machines run at Windows-like speeds. But X11 is easy to blame because few understand what it is or what it does; kindof like a "not invented here" syndrome for the open source world.

Re:something i always wondered about

[tuffy]

Excuse me...but I run both Win98SE and Redhat 8 with Gnome, and I can truly say that Windows is the faster of the 2.

That shouldn't be too surprising, since Win98 is 3-4 years older than Red Hat 8. Gnome (and KDE) has added *a lot* of stuff since then that'll make your system crawl. But to get an idea of how fast X11 itself is, try making a dummy account with a .xsession (or .xinitrc on occasion) file containing the lines:
#!/bin/sh

twm &
xterm

Make the .xsession file executable and then login to the dummy account. (The account will log-out when you exit the xterm) I think you'll find the speed faster than Win98, and I hope it'll demonstrate exactly where Linux's desktop slowness comes from.

Old sztuff repackaged

[Lumpy]

Hmm, I've been using an embedded linux with a NON X gui for at least 2 years now....

it's called picogui

Plus you dont have to buy it, and it's much smaller.

Competition...

[zzxc]

Competition in open source projects is mostly a good thing. This new GUI may make X11 developers improve to keep up. However, different projects like this also create lack of standards. This may require people to use two GUIs, with different applications running on each one. With Windows, every version retains legacy compatability for almost all applications written for a previous version. However, this becoming popular would make it required to run two GUIs to run all Linux applications. Rather than expecting developers to conform X11 emulation should be implemented.

On alternate graphics layers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Alternate graphics layers have been around for a long time. Some of them have significant advantages over X11.

So far the only one which has really gained prominence is the frame buffer device that most modern Linux distributions use when booting. There is even a port of QT to that, and it is sometimes used as the only graphics device in embedded platforms. It has the great advantage of being really lightweight, but it is probably even slower and much less featureful than X11.

Another one is the Y server, which was used in some PDA's until public outcry over lack of source compatibility forced the manufacturer to put in X11 instead (remember that, Slashdot?). Before that there was also svgalib. I don't think anyone cried over that going away.

The issue is support--there are tons of toolkits and applications available for X11, and the networking features are neat and useful once in a while (very often for some people, including myself). Others start with a base of pretty much nothing. That means that it is really hard for them to gain acceptance, even if they are superior from viewpoints such as being smaller, faster, and easier to program.

I personally think that we are going to be stuck with all the cruft and slowness of X11 for a very long time.

X10 is critical technology!

[Thud457]

I used to just hate when blonde hotties broke into my house and start taking their clothes off!

Thanks to the miracle of X10 security technology, I no longer have to worry about that. THANKS X10!

Really?

[truthsearch]

With Windows, every version retains legacy compatability for almost all applications written for a previous version.

When Rob Short, the vice-president of Windows Core Technology, was asked, "How many applications will transfer over from [Windows] NT4 or 2000 [to Windows Server 2003]?" he answered: "I'm not sure what the exact number is for taking an NT4 application and running it -- it's in the high 60 percent. It's not 90... Most of the time, if the application is following the [security] rules then it will run. But I must admit the rules haven't been well publicised."

Full Windows backward compatibility is a myth.

Yes, they are important.

[ethnocidal]

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?

XFree86 good, not bad

[0x0d0a]

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.

Re:XFree86 good, not bad

[0x0d0a]

from what I can tell all it does is serve fonts and networktransparancy.

X is responsible for actually rasterizing and displaying every pixel that you see on the screen. It renders fonts, yes, and very nice antialiased ones. It handles network code, yes. It (well, it and Mesa) do 3d hardware rendering -- in Windows user terms, all of the video card drivers in Windows combined with DirectX. It does hardware scaling -- if you play a movie, Xv is used to display the thing. It handles combining multiple monitors via Xinerama. It acts as the intermediary in copying and pasting data between apps. X deals with tablets, joysticks, mice, keyboards and handing off data from them to apps. X provides framebuffer access to memory. Unlike Windows, X lets you fine-tune precisely what timings are used on your monitor, if you want to squeeze the last little bit of performance possible out of your monitor.

if you want to do anything usefull you have to add a window manager

Sure. X could have included a window manager, but the folks that write it realize that different folks prefer different types of window managers. Some prefer really simple WMs like twm, metacity, or kwm. Others prefer glitz and don't care about plenty of overhead, and use enlightenment. Others like poking at and customizing their window manager, recoding bits of it while it's running (a la emacs), and use sawfish. The list goes on and on. Most *ix folks tend to feel a bit irritated when being forced to use the Windows environment -- there's no possibility of choice, and relatively little of customization.

a cut & paste manager

Well, you *can* use a multi-clipboard program, (of which there are a collection to choose from) but Windows doesn't provide this functionality natively either. Just as with window managers, this modularity is done deliberately. Distributions can prepackage a multi-clipboard program if they like -- so the end user experience can be "there's one, it's preinstalled, and I don't have to worry about it" -- but you aren't *forced* to use any single one.

a toolkit of somesort (gtk for example)

Again, Windows happens to force people to use a single widget set. I'm not a tremendous fan of chunks of the Windows set (anyone that's done gtk programming and Win32 programming knows that layout in gtk is *much* better than the forced pixel-level layout used in Win32 and the Macintosh Toolbox), but it can't really be changed for backwards compatibility reasons.

X is modular. If a widget set falls behind the times, a new one can be produced. I'm not sure if you've ever seen Athena, but it was one of the earlier widget sets available for X. I suspect that most desktop users would not like the way it operates. With Windows, you'd be stuck lugging around Athena forever. With X, you can simply move to something newer, like gtk.

hell even windows 3.1 does far more then X and can be cut down under a meg and still be 100% usefull, not to mention that adds a multitasking ( a bad one but still) to the OS (dos)

Win 3.1 and X are completely different beasts. They don't do even remotely the same task.

Win 3.1 is marketed differently. X *has* a partial equivalent in Windows, but you cannot obtain it separately from the rest of Windows. However, it's really irrelevant. You'd never use X without a kernel, so the fact that Windows 3.1 does scheduling isn't really useful.

(i.e. drag and drop doesnt work 80% of the time unless all you use is kde apps)

Drag and drop cooperation between gnome and kde is relatively new. Yes, it was added recently, and it takes a while to get in. I used Mac OS in the 7.x days, when drag and drop support was added...and the same thing happened -- actually, it was even worse, if anything.

I'm not saying that X is unilaterally more featureful than Mac OS or Windows. Drag and Drop is a particular weak point that's being added to a lot of apps right now. Overal