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First Xouvert Milestone Released
An anonymous reader writes "
The first milestone of xouvert, the X-server replacement has been released. Xouvert includes MAS giving the X server its very own sound server. Nice. :) Also, just noticed that enlightenment quietly released an update to the 0.16 series.
" (Here's a link to the Xouvert download page.)
People complain about X a lot, but when it's all boiled down there really isn't much to complain about. X is a great windowing system.
I have been pwned because my
yet another X server/manager to try. *sigh* It'd be nice if we could get everyone to focus all their energy on making the current X managers to play nice rather than go off and make more. freedesktop.org is a nice start towards fixing the linux desktop, methinks.
-jp
"In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice, they are not."
It seems at least to me that the freedesktop.org x server (kdrive) is where the interesting stuff is happening, but we'll see how the Xouvert guys get on.
Just nice? It's excelent! This is the biggest X Windowing achievement since first actual implementation of X Windows.
It is in human nature to assotiate visual and audio information in the process of percepting it. Therefore video without audio mean seriously broken usability. That's why I think all these years X Windows has been developed in essentially wrong direction. The made in recent XFree86 versions transparency, which is really just a candy, while so important prime functionality was missed all the time.
I am really happy that MAS in Xouvert now. I am going to switch to Xouvert as soon as possible. Good-bye, XFree86 - thank you for keeping me in the void silence all these years.
Less is more !
No you're not. Check his post history, he's just an idiot ;).
Xouvert has its own sound engine, MAS. If Xouvert catches on, does this mean that the sound engines of KDE and gnome will become obsolete, or will they collide with MAS?
If they collide, it basically means that KDE and gnome will have to support both X11 and Xouvert. I'm not sure if that is achievable. On the other hand, if they don't collide what's the use of MAS? I'm pretty happy with the way it works now. So I'll then continue working without MAS.
Please login to access my lawn
Read the explanation on the freedesktop site. There they mention the fact that people developed X on really old VAX machines. I even ran X myself on an old VAXStation II which had several times less memory than your average palmtop computer, hardware which happens to run X as well.
why not use alsalib or libaudiofile?
Well, ALSA is the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture, and any X11 replacement would have to serve FreeBSD and the Hurd as well.
As far as libaudiofile goes, I'm not sure it is strong enough to serve as the basis for an entire array of audio uses.
> can anyone tell me what network-transparent sound is going to offer me besides bloat?
Maybe ip-phone on X-terminals.
Ok. I see now. I just didn't realize before that standards organizations like IEEE are just stagnating the development. What a revelation! How far our technology would have developed already if we just didn't hang on to standards. Who the hell needs consistency anyway?
a lousy GUI that will remain lousy forever
Linux desktop will remain lousy as long as the distro manufacturers refuse to create a common set of rules for a standard Linux application toolkit.
Having such a standard would not stop a pro like you from reconfiguring your desktop to your liking, but it would make the initial desktop look the same on every distro and thus easily adapted by a newbie.
On a more personal note, the mishmash of different toolkits (run xawtv and some kde applications side by side and you'll see what I mean) just makes the GUI look so goddamn ugly and cumbersome to use ("now did I move the scrollbar in this application with the mouse middle button or with the left?" etc.).
The owls are not what they seem
A consistent GUI allows for the things you learned in your word processor to be reused in your browser, e-mail client, etc. Thanks to the thousand of toolkits, desktop environments, support libraries, sound backends, printer support solutions, etc. that's plain impossible in X. So a user has to spend lots of time relearning how to do simple tasks for each application he uses (and mixing them up after learning them). That ruins productivity!
Wether someone runs one or onehundred word processors is absolutly irelevant to the GUI consistency discussion.
Regards, Tobias
It's not a bad thing, unless you are doing something wrong...
Or unless somebody thinks what you're doing is wrong. Better to just say, "On the internet you're going to get logged and there's not a whole lot you can do about it."
After checking out the following screenshot: http://freedesktop.org/~keithp/screenshots/sharp_s hadow.png and then reading the contents of the X-Chat window, specifically, "I'm hoping to do things that won't be fast enough with 2D/3D hardware as it exists today.", I have to ask: Who really wants all this shadowing, and translucent windows, and animated desktop graphics? I mean seriously, what's the point? Does it help you get you work done? Does it increase your productivity? I see it being more of a nuisance and distraction.
It certainly shows that Mr. Packard works for HP, what with him writing software that would require users to purchase new hardware just to have the next generation desktop. Hell, the desktop might as well be free, if we have to shell out the dough to purchase a new video card.
Because it's cheaper and good enough. That combination wins every time. It does not have to be better.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
"Also, just noticed that enlightenment quietly released an update to the 0.16 series."
uh... that was over a month ago, on November 5th. It was a good little bugfix release, though.
Why keeping a project in an alpha/beta state is a bad idea. I used to use E a long time ago, but they never went 1.0, and all the distros just started ignoring it, so now I use Sawfish.
This is a real pet peeve of mine. There are many OSS projects that do this. OpenSSL, anyone? The question is, why?? There must be a stable enough "beta" version of E that could be considered production quality, and should have been bumped up to 1.0 release status. I know that this is the case for OpenSSL, and a lot of other OSS projects out there. The fact is companies and non-hackers don't like adopting software that's advertised as "beta" quality. If you wan't your project recognized in the Real World, step up to the plate.
I know this sounds like a whining rant, but I belive that the plethora of OSS projects forever stuck in a "beta testing" phase is one reason for hesitation for mainstream adoption of Linux.
Asking for consistency between desktop environments is unreasonable. For one thing, it imposes a burden on developers who are ultimately trying to scratch their own itch. For another thing, nobody asks for consistency between MacOS and Windows environments, yet KDE and gnome have no reason to be any more similar than those two. The fact that they both use the same server application (X) is irrelevant - the projects themselves are as different as chalk and cheese (one written in C, one in C++; one using bonobo for IPC, one using something else, one focussed towards strict HIG, one using different UI guidelines etc.) and it is quite remarkable that they coexist as well as they do. If you stick to one or the other then you get consistency, just as you want. If you mix and match, that's your lookout.
Besides which, have you ever really considered the "consistency" of Windows apps? Internet Explorer has a different feel to Office apps, which in turn are different to apps made by third parties (nobody will convince me that Windows Explorer's CD-burning capability shares anything in terms of look or feel with Roxio CD Creator, or that Excel is consistent with Quattro Pro).
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
And, I would guess, many OS X users were seduced by the oh - so - beautiful user OS X user interface. I don't use OS X, but I wish I did, at least, if it was open source. (I need to be able to hack my OS.)
OS X uses translucency, antialiasing, smooth shadows around windows, window warping, and 'fancy' things like the launcher bar thing (sorry, Mac users, I don't know the name of it!) at the bottom of the screen. Have you ever actually used OS X? Try it. Go to CompUSA or something and play around with a G5.
Apple's interface makes you forget you're looking at simply a matrix of pixels, which is displaying rectangular regions called 'windows'. The smoothness of everything *far* surpasses anything I have seen in X. I've used KDE, Gnome, Fluxbox, IceWM, and others. I've tried hundreds of themes. I've made my own themes. But I still have no good visual cue where the bounds of the focused window are. The drop shadow is, IMO, a great feature. Your peripheral vision picks up the area of the focused window automatically.
I could go on and on, but the point is, some people *do* care about having a beautiful desktop. It is also a usability feature and can make a person more productive.
I spend 70% of my life looking at it, and I want it to be beautiful, dammit.
Dr Superlove 300ml. I use my powers for awesome