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New X Roadmap from Jim Gettys
A reader points to a roadmap on freedesktop.org that provides a good summary of what is out there for *nix desktops, with emphasis on X but also covering some other areas.
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Low level xlib (ie, generic level) support for X session movement from machine to machine.
This sounds a bit like screen implimented for X - you can take apps to work and back again without shutting them down, and keep apps running whilst restarting an X server. (With a bit of luck it will support echoing one app to mutliple windows as well.) It also allows for graceful app shutdown when an X server dies.
Up until now I have been using VNC to do this, but adding it directly into xlib should make it a good deal less clunky. Way to go guys.
Beep beep.
I don't mean to X-Bash- leave that for xterm and Konsole- but I, for one, am ready to welcome our YWindows overlords, whenever they get here. I like the idea of rewriting from scratch once in a while, which is why I love the idea of scrapping X and going with Y. I mean, X is good, no doubt, but it shows its age. Transparent windows, more often than not, only show the underlying wallpaper and not the interlaying windows. Often, X just locks under load. Still, it is, under normal business circumstances, stable and functional.
#define DRM chmod 000
Sigh. And what issues are these? Have you talked to any of the X11 gurus lately, such as Keith Packard. I assure you they very much do "get it" and are doing wonderful things to make an already amazing framework even better. X11 is an amazing piece of work, one that is still working well today, almost 16 years after it was introduced. With the new extensions being worked on to allow compositing and true alpha channel blending, and because of the brilliant way in which is being done, the capacities of X11 can rival or even surpass Apple's Quartz system. No more nasty hacks are needed to simulate transparency. Everything from true live matrix transforms (imagine live windows morphing in real-time, something that even OS X fakes) to 3-d capabilities (the composite manager can map the live windows onto surfaces of polygons and use opengl to render them) without fundementally breaking the X11 protocol. In other words, remote log into an old SGI box and your apps will still run and have these effects.
Dispite all the work that's being done to make X11 better, it's number one killer feature has always been network transparency. Fortunately many of the security concerns of this are being addressed; X11 will probably soon no longer default to tcp/ip connections, but rather use unix-style sockets only and have ssh connect them. (Very few people have a real good reason to not tunnel X11 through ssh anyway).
So things are looking really good for the Linux desktop and X11. I'm excited for the next year and hope to be able to contribute in some small way. We have 2 years to really develop some great features before longhorn comes out. Hopefully with things like the composite extension, we can have more capabilities sooner.
This is true, but when you have scores of employees (and let's face it, many of them are not especially bright) you may end up spending the better part of a day teaching them in small or large groups. I suppose a distinction should be made between large corporate environments and small operations where this isn't and issue.
Standing on the shoulders of giants.
Reading this document has given me a new respect for the X developers.
You can use a modern X server to talk to an X client on a 1990s vintage machine with no problems at all, yet X is pretty fast on modern machines, has pretty good 3D support and is being updated to add more and more eye candy all the time - without breaking backwards compatibility.
Their aims may not be the same as the ones you think they should have for your own use, but when compared against their aims they are doing very well indeed, and should be recognised for that.
Beep beep.
Back when I first got a PC capable of running X (1993?), I remember having to use Metro-X instead of XFree86. At the time I was blown away by Metro-X since: (a) it actually worked and was easy to configure -- no tweaking resource files all day, and (b) it seemed to cost money, which baffled me since I never figured anyone would pay for Linux software.
X, Fluxbox, RXVT, Bash. What more do you need?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
This is a very interesting article. The thing that I found most interesting is that it demonstrates that the open source community is now in the driver's seat with respect to X development. That's a real change from the old days when the X consortium wouldn't give the XFree86 group the time of day.
I know alot of people are down on the XFree86 group these days, but it looks like they single handedly destroyed the old X consortium.
"Very few people have a real good reason to not tunnel X11 through ssh anyway"
ssh, like lbxproxy and similar software adds significant latency to every operation to the point that our users made us take it out as the default, add to that the fact that on a multi-user server every single little bit of CPU power available is important. Encryption and compression are CPU intensive operations even a small increase in the load on a per process basis can significantly increase the overall load and reduce the number of concurrent users you can host on a box. That adds up to more money on more servers to handle the same number of users.
Basically, we tried ssh tunneling and while it's great on a small scale, i.e. individuals, it's a disaster for performance when hosting tens or hundreds of users, i.e. Linux in a corporate desktop environment.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
maybe because xouvert doesn't have anything to show? Fri Sep 26 23:57:50 PDT 2003 marks the latest news on the website, although its roadmap indicates a "release" for November. I guess we'll just have to wait a little more and see.
"Basic control over the X desktop" is largely a function of the window manager, not X. And as such, can be as easy or as hard as you want it to be. A WM like icewm takes almost no time to learn for someone coming from windows, while fluxbox is practically unnavigable for someone who hasn't read the docs (but an absolute joy for one who has). The few things that are actually X's responsibility are the middle click text buffer, changing resolutions with CTRL-ALT-+/- and killing the server with CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
If my memory serves me correctly, this was several years ago already.
And what basically happened, is the XFree86 guys did a big "fuck you very much, we'll stick with X11R6.3".
The X Consortium, realizing they were no longer in the driver's seat, had to change their licensing so that XFree86 would go along, and it would appear like the Consortium still had authority.
If anyone else recalls the actual events better, please pipe up. But the take away message is that for all intents and purposes, XFree86 is X.
And Stallman is so rabid about his ideology that he often hurts his own cause.
1) (partially linux specific) A way of getting DGA (or DGA2) to work for a non-root program. No sudo-stuff, no suid root, just a way for a completely ordinary user to use DGA without being able to crash the machine.
2) A standard way of getting an equivalent to the MSWindows Alt-tab and alt-enter for programs that run in fullscreen mode.
For example, an extension that the window manager can hook into, that allows fullscreen applications to run in an own workspace, and a xserver enforced keycombination that can bring back the window manager workspaces if the full screen application crashes.
The unix credo is to build tools that work well within themselves and interoperate well with others.
The (completely transparent) use of ssh for network compression/encryption is not a quick hack, it's an example of two well-designed tools working well together. When one is optimised/improved/whatever, the other automatically gains the advantages. Why would you change ?
Besides, if you claim X should be trimmed down to "remove the network transparency", surely you wouldn't want to further lumber it with compression and encryption ?
And another point - I think X has plenty of deficiencies (just that compression/encryption aren't one of them), and I'm open to good debate on the subject. I was mainly referring to those who use any X-related topic to say "X sucks"...
Physicists get Hadrons!
Just found this comparison of "The Other Window Managers". It's an interesting read.