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freedesktop.org xlibs 1.0 Released
Daniel Stone writes "A short time ago, freedesktop.org xlibs 1.0 was released. Simply put, this is the collection of libX11, libXext, and other little-used libraries that kind of power your whole desktop. The xlibs team at fd.o are now maintaining all these libraries, and more, and we're going to be making releases as part of the fd.o platform, which is far more wide-ranging, but it still forms an important part of the platform. Share and enjoy!"
What is your definition of "Doesn't depend on"?
They both use xlib exclusively for drawing!
QT (and possibly GTK) exists in a version for embedding/framebuffer devices, but that's not the version you see in everyday KDE/Gnome.
With great numbers come great responsibility!
And X is NOT slow. For what it does, it does it quite efficiently, and it even has network transparancy thrown in for "free", because of the way it works. Just because the code base of XFree86 is a bit aged and has accumulated a lot of cruft over the years, doesn't mean the initial design is flawed. It was ahead of it's time, and it's still relevant.
Oh, and X works pretty good for me. Haven't seen a crash because of X in years. Maybe it's something else (buggy driver? broken hardware?) that's plagueing you. It's not X, in any case.
XFree86 Has Not Merged With X.Org (see News)
[23 January 2004] http://www.xfree86.org/
So have they merged or not merged?
Don't forget to remove the line containing "killall X" in your crontab !
What's the DBUS ?
/., I said something silly instead.
It's dthing you get on to go to work in when you don't want to get dcar out of dgarage mon.
Or, put another way, I don't have a fscking clue so, in the greatest tradition of
One more question. Whats the diffrence between the freedesktop xlibs, and the xlibs in XFree86 ? I understand they forked from XFree at one point. What did they change/improve ?
D-BUS is the replacement for DCOP. "Agnostically" written in C this time to help GNOME developers swallow (not so agnostically though since Glib kept sneaking in, but fortunately got replaced in the end).
It does have a few neat features that DCOP doesnt. Like being system-wide, and thus support signals from the kernel (implemented by HAL) and signals from other non-desktop application like Apache.
Every single X program uses xlib directly or indirectly. So GTK always uses it, and QT uses it except when using a framebuffer directly or using some other underlying mechanism (like non-X11 Mac, IIRC).
Chances are that X isn't what's crashing for you, but rather some program running under X (unless you have hardware problems, a bad driver, a corrupted X server, or something like that). X is also generally quite fast, but most programs (such as any that use GTK or QT, except for really recent ones) use it extremely badly.
Actually, what is generally slow about X is that is doesn't have the drawing primitives that modern interfaces want to use, so they have to implement them inefficiently with the available primitives. Present development is helping to rectify this situation, however.
x.org == X Consortium
X11 == X Window System 11
X Window System == A windowing system, consisting of a client and a server that communicate via an open protocol. Many different vendors distribute X clients and servers, commercial and free.
The X Consortium manages the X protocol and distributes a reference implementation of clients and servers. XFree86 is a fork of the X Consortium implementation that was originally intended to run on x86-class machines -- thus the name. Freedesktop.org is a loose coalition attempting to corral all the competing *nix desktop software into a cohesive whole by setting up standards. They also provide support for a project that is working on an improved client and server for X11.
And X is NOT slow.
He is right about X not being slow. The problem is the perception thats X is slow. X is what is visual to the user, users either blame KDE/Gnome or X.
Take a pre-emptive low latency linux kernel and run X on it, its like night and day, its smooth, fast, which proves its not X but the kernel.
Windows cheats and loads the gui extremely fast, but if you watch your hardrive light, and tool tray, you will noticed things are still being loaded in the background. The system is busy for a few more seconds. You can load an application, and it waits till after the services start.
So, X seems slow compared to other OS's.
1. Long delays to get into KDE/Gnome, and actually use the system.
2. Slow response on user input.
3. Multitasking, switching apps pause the system.
4. Loading directories in ICON/Image view takes longer than windows.
5. Lindows has everything running as Root for a speed boost.
I predict we will see pre-emptive, low lantency kernels as standard on Mandrake and Suse. Preemptive kernels are now standard on 2.6.x (well, if you check the box). And even more pre-linking to help boot time.
BSD has the same issues. Apple's X server does seem faster than both Linux & BSD. I'm only running window maker on it, so its not an exact match, but task switching and running gimp does seem more reponsive.
Could the answer be the mach kernel osx uses? Maybe we need a new suite of benchmarks for user interaction. (os+X+wm/etc).
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I code in my SecondLife
I can't agree more. I recently wrote a fairly complicated proxy server and using glib (combined with the gnet libraries) has completely saved me. The glib routines for building quick hashtables, lists, and dynamic strings (all in C) make so many aspects of my life easier. By using a glib dynamic string as my input buffer, I can easily grow it to accomodate the incoming data rather than having to do all the realloc stuff myself.
I think glib (at least the routines for data types -- lists, hash tables, strings, etc) should be in the C standard library. The gobject stuff, while useful, should always be in a separate library.
The fd.o xserver is about 1 mb, and the X11 libraries to drive your apps weigh in at around 1 mb or so stripped, I think. At least on my fd.o installation they do. Also kdrive + libs + gtk2 + apps runs comfortably on a device like the Zaurus. Of course that's with no openGL stuff, or xinerama or xprint. But it does include freetype, xft, xrender, xdamage, composite, etc. The basic libraries are quite compact. If you really look at it, 1mb for kdrive, 1mb for libraries, plus maybe 5 mb for gtk2, an X11-based enbedded environment (supporting just one kind of display hardware) is very light and competitive with the Qtopia framebuffer system. Given that, I can't see any reason do use qt-embedded or gtk-fb for most things.
Some of those things in your list are not really libraries providing an api, but rather utilities, many of which on an embedded environment aren't needed.
X11 - The protocol spoken by modern X servers.
x.org - Formerly the X Consortium, an organization of X-using businesses, like the OpenGL ARB. They are responsible for changes to the spec.
X Windows - Shorthand for X Window System --- refers to the whole thing, servers, libs etc.
freedesktop.org - A new organization dedicated to making standards for the *NIX desktop. For example, they have specified a common MIME framework, common menu format, common window manager specification, etc. Many of these, (ex. the window manager specification) have already been adopted. They are also an umbrella project for other projects for improving the X desktop. For example, D-BUS which is the new messaging system developed for KDE and GNOME, is a freedesktop.org project. Keith Packard and others are also developing a new X server under the freedesktop.org umbrella. This new X server already supports complete-back buffering of windows (each window gets its own buffer, like OS X, to make moving windows smooth and free of redraw) and window compositing (for transparency, shadows, other effects). They are also restructuring the driver API to support OpenGL independent of X, so the X server can sit on top of OpenGL and use it to accelerate drawing. At the same time, they are also introducing new extensions (Xfixes, XDamage, etc) to allow applications to access the extended features for the new server, as well as working on existing extensions (XRender) to improve their implementation (add acceleration via OpenGL, for example).
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
AFAIK DCOP doesn't depend on Qt directly and has C-bindings. The problem is with depending on C++, and depending on Qt for communicating with KDE-programs. Many KDE-programs uses the Qt-internal structures to stream over DCOP, that makes it very difficult to communicate with them without Qt.
The headline that got put on the press release was misleading. The reality is that X.Org has been reformed to be more like the GNOME Foundation. There will be open elections to appoint a board. Votes will no longer be obtained through monetary contributions; in other words, any one can have a vote and be elected, no matter their affiliation. The actual information handed out by X.Org should be posted on their site in the next few days, which includes the mission statement and aims of the project.
Some developers that have at one time or another been associated with XFree86 are participating in the reformation of X.org. How that translated into "XFree86 and X.org have mereged" in the headline is beyond me.
Harold