Slashdot Mirror
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
For the non-french speaking under you: Xouvert means "X open".
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.
Uhm, there are actually not that many X servers. It's not like windowmanagers or anything like that. Besides , the goal of Xouvert is to get their changes back to XFree
Xouvert represents far more then merely tranparent windows etc, it represents a move to a more recognisable OSS model of working. XFree86 is charterised by a fairly closed development process, long patch intergration times, and close control by the steering group. I am greatly looking forward to seeing a true open source methodolgy accelerate development.
"To any truly impartial person, it would be obvious that I am right."
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 !
..is an answer to Apple's Quartz 2D rendering capabilities.
Linux isn't going to make a dent in the desktop world until it's significantly better than MS windows, not just politically, but in ease of use, quality of rendering, integration, etc, etc.
Linux already does OpenGL. Take the next step; Apple's already shown you what to do.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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.
The subject pretty much says it all ...
Read this or this for more info.
Death to ESD/ARTS today!! (and maybe even JACK, if we can low enough latency).
Sunny Dubey
As said before this guy appears *not* to be a Dev on the Xouvert project.
Have a read through some of his previous posts on other topics.
Thanks.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
I've seen MAS demoed on a couple of shows already and I did like what I saw. They are aiming for professional quality sound delivery with extremly low latencies which definitly is a good thing. MAS of course is network transparent of course, but the network is just another input-/output device to MAS (like a soundcard), you don't have to use it for local playback. It is a handy feature though: You can pipe your sound to an effects mashine for processing, something that might come in handy in a professional environment.
Regards, Tobias
I think the following should settle your fears.
//end direct quote from site.
From their site
"Many of the visually impaired have finely tuned auditory sensibilities, allowing them to react quickly to sound. From its beginning, MAS was designed to handle timing issues exceedingly well. It was optimized to provide tight synchronization of multiple media streams. More importantly, for users dependent on audio cues, it is designed to stop some functions and start others quickly. For example, a user, hearing the opening syllables of a menu option, can either select it or move to another option without waiting for a complete articulation of the option. MAS's original accessibility requirements, developed with leading accessibility authorities, included:
* Ability to stop utterances quickly
* Controllable low latency
* Format independent media handling
* High audio quality
* Multiplexing--with priorities
* Small memory footprint
* Synchronization of multiple media stream
"MAS enables low-latency Internet conferencing and telephony. Automatic bandwidth measurements and MAS's dynamically-switchable CODECs insure that the conference quality scales from 56K modems to T1 lines".
"MAS integrates with a compatible X11 server on your desktop. It processes graphic information locally, alleviating the need for network transmission of uncompressed graphical content. Graphic events are easily synchronized with audio events for professional-quality multimedia and accessibility-enabled applications."
"MAS handles network-distributed media processing and intricate format configuration tasks. It continually measures system performance and adjusts its actions depending on the available system resources. The longer it runs, the better it knows your system".
Obviously this has been designed for performance/scalability.Of course the real trial is actually running it for yourself but give it a chance before you write it off.
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
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.
"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.
Xouvert includes MAS giving the X server its very own sound server.
Just in time for X-MAS. How convenient.
No matter how many of my rights are taken away, somehow I still don't feel safe. -Frigid Monkey
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.
You have correctly identified the competition to MAS: JACK. Some of my colleagues and I have been wondering aloud whether one could build a nice interface to JACK for network audio. It looks like the answer is yes.
As you correctly note, the real issue is latency. Servers like MAS cannot generally promise reasonable latency on the local side: latency matters there (indeed, it's all that matters).
Dmix looks cool too, but as folks have pointed out, it's going to be tough to get it to work with the range of systems X runs on. Unless it's optionally layered atop JACK...