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Qt On DirectFB
Ashcrow writes "The feasibility for DirectFB to replace XFree86 just a little stronger thanks Maurizio Monge very first alpha release of Trolltech's Qt library for use in DirectFB. You can check out some screenshots or go straight to the source. And yes, it has been released as Free Software."
DirectFB has a multi-application core, and also a specialized X server that runs on it. You can run GNOME on it already, adding Qt/KDE to the mix only _increases_ the number of apps that can be run on it natively.
And so far as the "features" of X... the only feature X has that DirectFB doesn't is network independence, which very few users need, and those who do can use VNC or the DirectFB X server.
Site is kinda slow... one, two, three, karma please?
Your X server also needs root access, and for much the same reasons. X needs to muck with the registers on your video card, for example. Nowadays, there's a little setuid program called "XWrapper" that gets access to everything it needs, then drops its privileges and loads the main X server on top of itself.
There is at least one project (KGI) that attempts to rationalize all this. It puts the privileged functionality in kernel space, then exposes it all in a safe manner. Linus has not been receptive to this design in the past, preferring the X mechanism.
1) As many have said over and over, XFree86 is not slow. It runs great on a 486. Try using a faster WM.
2) Transparancy/hardware rendering. For some reason people think XFree86 needs to be tossed out completely in order to get this. Check out this interview statement from David Dawes (XFree86 developer):
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.
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All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
X in itself is very fast and pretty slick. Try yourself by kicking gnome/kde and trying OpenBox or some other fast WM. The difference on slower machines is pretty big.
I have a feeling that some n00bs confuse X with their Window Manager and Docks and Panels etc.
HTTP/1.1 400
Not exactly. GDK is an *abstraction* layer with multiple backends, the X11 one being the most prominent. To quote from the GTK/GNOME developers' website: "Instead of directly building on top of the X Window System, GTK+ introduces an intermediate layer, GDK, which isolates GTK+ from the details of the windowing system. This simplifies things for the programmer and increases portability." See the webpage. Through GDK backends, GTK has been ported to MSWindows as well as DirectFB(see also here).
I hope that helps.
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dissertus scribendo latine videri volo.
um. actually X selections are more powerful than other systems at allowing cut-n-paste and drag-n-drop of non-text. X selections let the pastee and paster negotiate on a prefered file format based on what they have to offer and what they can accept.
Just because people who write apps for X don't seem to use this functionality, don't blame X11. if the app writers are too lazy to use the power of X selections, I don't see why they would suddenly for some new system.
http://notanumber.net/