Slashdot Mirror
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.
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!