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Y Window System Project Started
cuppm writes "Y, Mark Thomas's final year project for his masters degree, is back in active development (outlined here). Here is the email I received: '...Y development is about to start up again. If you are interested in participating, the website is at: http://www.y-windows.org/. There are links to mailing lists there, and you can download the latest development snapshot, which should compile this time :o). I apologise if I did not respond to your email personally. I was on holiday in Japan when the story broke, and by the time I got back I had over 80 emails about the subject, many of them in depth. If you had specific points that you'd like to raise, I suggest re-raising them on the y-devel mailing list.' So for all those who think it's time for a X replacement, here's your shot. And for those X lovers, use Y's extensibility to make it X compatible." See our previous story for more background.
Sounds like a good reason to switch to Y Windows!
...A replacement for my antiquated X Windows.
Is this successor to XWindows actually YWindows, or is it simply XWindows-1K?
The Y-windows site was Slashdotted 30 seconds after it was posted! A new record! Go Team!
(aahhadabahahah why windows)
Hi there
Maybe the XFree86 4.4 licensing problem would bring more people to using Y.
I find it highly unlikely that I would consider another future desktop additions. It would be more prudent to patch and hack on the labors that have already been provided ensuring both stability and security before adding other extensions. The whole damn planet has gone desktop happy.
there aren't :)
And for those X lovers, use Y's extensibility to make it X compatible.
So basically it's "Y-XFree86", right? There might be prior art here, I've heard people say that for years.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Um... Women don't have a Y chromosome.
Women are XX, men are XY.
If it had been called "Y Don't You Do The Dishes, Bitch" then we might be laughing with you, and not at.
HTH -- ~Darl
I think you mean for men only -- (normal) men have XY sexual chromosomes, women are XX.
3... 2... 1... Trademark infringement lawsuit from The Open Group!
Quickly followed by a name change to "Y-windash".
These sigs are more interesting tha
...except for the fact that women are XX and men are XY.
find / -name *base* -exec chown us:us {} \; su -c someone 'export UP_US=thebomb' for f in great justice ; do sed -e 's/zig//g'
Y?
Because I gotta!
God, I hate this. Yes, X could do with replacing because it's very old and crufty, but I hate the fact that a major factor in people wanting to change is the X license change.
It's the GPL that should be changed, not the X license, but very few people are brave enough to admit it, because they don't want to distance themselves from their open source friends.
graspee
Y-dash would be more internationally accepted, Windows being trademarked and all. I'm surprised X can be used internationally, given the recent Lin---- news.
With the current rash of stories about how many problems X has, YOU THINK!?
This wouldn't be a big fucking deal or newsworthy otherwise.
Y, Mark Thomas's final year project for his masters degree
Nope, actually it was his final year project for his bachelors degree, ie his fouth year project.
Um... Women don't have a Y chromosome.
Don't worry, most women he sees on the net are XXX probably, so he wouldn't know anyway.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I was reading an old book on X Windows the other day and the naming came something like this:
Stanford had an operating system called V where they developed a windowing environment called W. MIT needed such a windowing environment for the Athena project and borrowed the W system from Stanford. They made so many improvements over time that it no longer resembled the W system so they named it the X Windows system. Over time 11 versions were developed as more and more Unix companies got interested. But by then MIT had its needs met so an X Consortium was formed that developed the X11 system from revision 1 to 6 reaching the X11R6 release that we have now.
Wake me up when we get to Z-windows...
Well, it neighter has a X, nor is it a window-system. If anyone is to file a suite, then
it is Microsoft as they are the only ones to have
anything to do with "windowS"
1: Do you use X on linux?
2: No. Y.
1: I was just wondering, what do you use?
2: Y!
1: I'm just curious, now will you please tell me what you use if you don't use X?
2: Y!
ok, that was sorta lame, how about...
tech Support: What desktop environment do you use?
user: ummm why?
tech: You use Y? Ok, so what you wanna do is...
user: What? I don't know what you're talking about.
no comment
Y did you put a link to Goggle on your homepage?
We all use Goggle every day, there's no need to do something ghey like that.
Instead, try some fucking (ass, in your case).
Buenos Nuit, you finnish asswhole.
> because they don't want to distance themselves
> from their open source friends
Um, you do mean free software friends right?
Thank God. Finally, someone has decided to quit bitching about X Window and finally implement a system of their own.
For any programmers out there that are even remotely interested in getting Linux On The Desktop, consider this a call. A super-awesome rock solid kernel cannot be the end-all be-all for Linux. We need to have a good windowing system, one that's faster and more reliable than the competition. From what I know, X Window could use a great amount of improvement in those areas. This is your chance to make things better, and Get It Right The First Time.
--Stephen
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
How much work it will take to get KDE on this thing. Should be a case of hacking Qt a bit.
YDE sounds much better than KDE as well!
You forgot,
Y? Because we LIKE you! M-O-U-S-E!
There are two kinds of fool. One says, This is old, and therefore good. And one says, This is new, and therefore better.
I did enough homework of my own already...I'm not about to help somebody else do theirs! ;-)
find / -name *base* -exec chown us:us {} \; su -c someone 'export UP_US=thebomb' for f in great justice ; do sed -e 's/zig//g'
*lol* Dude, this is propably the coolest sig I have seen in a long time ! :-)=)
Cache
Three points:
a)it looks like the only reason development started again was because of all the Xfree86 licensing hubbub(which isn't going to be around much longer, because Xfree86 will most likely cave). If the project did not have the merits to succeed before, I do not see how things have changed in such a way that it will be successful long-term, and this was a blatant "look at me" attempt. Y was dead, FreeDesktop was humming along quietly.
b)Most of the "I'm going to replace Xwindows" projects are doing so because its supposedly "slow" and "bloated", and we see a large number of posts in every Xwindows-related story on slashdot claiming the same thing. Most of them are wrong.
c)We already have an interesting, viable alternative(FreeDesktop)...and it's got heavy involvement with the major developers of Gnome and KDE, the two most popular desktop systems. Everyone is playing Chicken with Xfree86, while hedging their bet(and strengthening their position with Xfree86) by starting work with FreeDesktop. Y is nowhere to be seen in all of this, especially if it's only got one guy- versus a whole group of some of the best Linux programmers around.
Please help metamoderate.
What is it that is in the gpl and X license, That is incompatble? That is the issue right?
I don't feel like reading pages of both to find
out, and I have the feeling many slashdotters don't either.
As for Y-windows, last I looked I like it. Heres hoping that it will take off. Its like x But with builtin widgets.
Taken from their site:
About Y
I've got tired with the state of desktop GNU/Linux. Most of the problems that I see with it can be traced back to the underlying window system, X. So I decided to write its successor...
Y was my final year project for my masters degree at the Department of Computing, Imperial College, London. I set out to design and begin the implementation of a modern windowing system. The Y design has the following features:
Network Transparency
Contrary to popular belief, supporting network transparency does not reduce the speed of the window system on local hosts. Further, with Y's in-server knowledge of widgets, applications run over a slow network can appear almost as responsive as local applications (especially when compared to an X application).
Modularity (plug-in style: dynamically unloadable and reloadable)
Unload an old video driver, load a new version. On the fly. No restart in sight.
In-server implementation of widgets
Y specifies a core set of widget classes. Objects of these classes are stored in the server, where they are closer to the user and thus more responsive from the user's point of view.
Consistency and Themeability
Y widgets use the currently loaded theme to render themselves. Since all server widgets are using the same theme, all widgets appear consistent throughout the desktop. Client applications can also use the theme's drawing operations, allowing specialised widgets to make themselves fit in with the look-and-feel.
Support for hardware acceleration
The Y design can make use of hardware acceleration to speed up rendering operations. This can even include the use of 3D-accelerators' textures to draw windows with (someone has already implemented a prototype of this which is very smooth).
Better internationalisation, localisation, and accessiblity
In-server widgets means there can be exactly one current language, one complex input method system for languages that require them, and one set of accessibility features.
Some more information can be found in my individual project report. If you have any more questions, ask them on the appropriate mailing list.
The current implementation is, however, very basic. It needs a lot more work before it will be usable on a day-to-day basis.
For the folks asking "What's wrong with X?", I suggest you seek out the X windows chapter of that seminal work on the subject, "The Unix Haters Handbook" by Simson Garfinkel, et al.
Me? I take a cue or two from the output of 'xdpyinfo'. When something requires more than 20 different extensions to fit in the modern world, it's perhaps time for a re-think.
But if Y is going to work, the some level of backwards compatibility might be reasonably expected. Personally, I would suggest library level shimming rather than protocol level (that is, Y windows should come with a libX11 that implements the X API but talks to a Y server).
I'm a little surprised, in fact, that Apple didn't do such a thing for OS X. Rather than toss in an X server, they could have supplied a libX11 that simply implemented all of the calls in DPDF. One less bell to answer, one less egg to fry.
An X server is still nice for remote display situations, but honestly: Who does that anymore (and could they not be accomodated with VNC)?
Since lots of hillbilly-types pronounce "windows" like "winnders", I think Y-Windows should be called "Yonders".
Fantastic. New users find the selection of different toolkits for X confusing and inconsistent both in appearance and behaviour. One standard toolkit will help with newbie usability greatly - though whether it will stand the test of time remains to be seen. Windows seems to be doing just fine with it's standards though, so I rather suspect the same will apply to Y.
There is nothing like a little competition to hot things up - perhaps this will also give the languid Xfree86 project the kick up the backside it needs.
I wish the Y project the best of luck!
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
So why is it going to succeed where these failed? :
fresco
YAX (Y Ain't X)
The Y Window System
Oh never mind. What's the point?
Stick Men
Yeah GPL and Xfree 4.4 may not be compatible with each other. but that doesn't mean one has to change for the other. that applies to both Xfree and GPL. If someone is starting a fork or a brand new project that doensn't mean its necessarily bad. Diversity is good. just like we have KDE and GNOME its better to have alternatives. Just my thought.
wait, every time i sit down in from of my M$ windows machince i ask, why windows?
Evolution or ID?
Abbot: Are you using X Windows?
Costello: No, Y
Abbot: I just want to know
Costello: Y
Abbot: Look, All I want to find out is what controls your display?
Costello:: I just told you?
Abbot: Told me what?
Costello:: No, "What" is the name of the window manager....
Abbot: I am not talking about the window manager!
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
It still has some broken links, though.
Worst. Joke. Ever.
YINX (y is not xwindows)
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
Males have an 'X' and a 'Y'. Sheesh.
But, an eXtension to X11 extended from Y,
would produce Kleinfelter's Windows.
So how is Mark Thomas and why should we care about this? New GUIs are a dime a dozen these days. Unless he's the same Mark Thomas that is the comedian/satirist why should we care?
Oh whoopy. It's yet another GUI system that will die a slow lingering death because nobody will actually use it... X is slow, crufty and old but it works and is supported.
Can anybody say bad publicity attempt for a random project?
It is actually called "Y Windows", so we won't have pointless arguments about it really being called either "Y" or "The Y Window System".
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
And how long will Y windows (lame name, i'm sorry) wait before they get NVidia drivers? Or will the X drivers be compatible?
in any case, this does seem more than a little interesting, especially from the standpoint of someone who would like to hack X but is a bit daunted by the vastness of it.
I would encourage students to look through the source code. To grasp and understand what goes on behind the scenes for a windowing system, before the project gets enormous. Besides the tar file is pretty small, maybe you can contribute while the project is in it's infancy and not intimidating.
"It takes many nails to build a crib, but one screw to fill it."
I wonder how RMS would feel/feels about the fact that 1) and 2) are LGPL'ed. They really oughtn't be, in his world-view.
... and some modularity."
Option 3) is really kind of a joke, afaict. More of a McDonald's order than a programming project. "I would like
Still, this headlined Y project does seem to mostly be an attention-grab.
About a year ago, I had started work on something I called YX (yes, the pun was intended). It didn't get very far, I'm glad that someone is working on such a project. I definitely intend to help with this project, though.
I have discovered a truly marvelous
So we are not happy with the X licensing hmm?
And now we have;
o Xouvert
o XDrive (sp? rename?)
o Berlin (rename?)
o DirectFB
o Y
Could someone Please enlighten me why y? and none of the other?
If someone is so knowledgable to do a comparison I'd glady appriciate it.
-mo
W Indows
hit #y-windows on irc.freenode.net if you want to chat about Y.
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
I use remote X applications all the time. And I also use VNC.
..Jeff Keegan
seven syllables explain TiVo: kee gan dot org slash ti vo
Don't DRI's GEM, XEROX Star, GEOS, DesqView, NeXTStep, BellCore's MGR, Sun NeWS, MultiTOS, AmigaOS, Plan 9 rio count, and Berlin/Fresco count?
Is it just me, or is their logo surprisingly similar to that of GTK+?
Historically "X Windows" is not the proper name.
...
But
"X" is too short and ambiguous.
"The X Window System" is too long.
"X Window" implies a single window.
X Windows.
X Windows.
X Windows.
Plus, it verifies and uses "Windows" as a generic term for GUI.
Is now the time to renew my plea for a "+0 Obvious" mod?
I think a +0 Pedantic mod would be nice too, allow me to bury the pedants along with the trolls. (For those new to slashdot, pedantic posts frequently get modded to +5 Informative.)
Women are XX, men are XY.
...unless you are dating a lizard or bird, where the situation is reversed.
Skinner: Not the interrogative, but rather a windowing system with the unlikely name of "Y".
Chalmers: Well that's just great, Seymour. We've been out here six seconds and you've already managed to blow the routine.
[storms off, muttering] Sexless freak.
Escape Pod Films: Sketch Comedy and Web Series
Shame on you, mods.
kinda lame of them.
Don't ya just love Imperial's domain name
:-)
ic ac uk (if you forget the dots).
even better when Sunsite Northern Europe was..
src ic ac uk (again foragetting the dots)
ah the heady days of the 1990's..
The Y web site doesn't tell me what license this is to be realeased under. Anyone here know?
For Y to be remotely usable for me, it would need good support for OpenGL on nVidia and ATI graphics cards...for which (annoyingly) we only have binary drivers.
So - my questions would be:
1) Can Y use GLX protocols and work with existing (binary only) OpenGL drivers?
2) There is mention that Y can use hardware accelleration on 3D hardware. My concern about this is how much of the valuable 3D resources such as texture map memory it consumes. Generally, X runs plenty fast enough without using those resources and I wouldn't want to impact my 3D capabilities in order to make the 2D windowing system run ten times faster than it really needs to run.
Certainly X needs updating - it's old and it shows it's age.
www.sjbaker.org
Um... Women don't have a Y chromosome.
Well...occasionally they do, if you know what I mean, and I think you do...
Because it wouldn't be a proper intarweb page without one.
X Windows was not created by morons. It has a decent architecture. It is portable.
The real reason people want to replace X Windows is that it isn't GNU, it doesn't use autoconf, and it can actually compile on something other than GCC 3.3.5.6.1.8.3.2.4! Not only that, it doesn't rely on 1,300,215 GNOME libraries! God, X must suck!
This isn't flamebait but the damn truth.
Vote in November. You won't regret it.
There are none outside of most ppl appear to suck at setting it up...
The actual X11R6 server setup rocks and XFree86 4.3+ really hight lights that. The real problem comes in with the software that is thrown ontop of it.
The problems come in in that...
1: every one is to lazy bitching about toolkits to write a theme engine to make them look a like or a common config program...
2: some ppl have no clue how to config X properly...
3: a bit of work could really go in to stream lining gnome/kde...
4: gtk could probally be a bit more optimized...
X
X11
X Window
X Window System
etc
It's premature. We're not even at X12 yet. Hell, we're not even at X11r7 yet!
: )
maybe we can merge Y-windows with Fresco
http://www.fresco.org/
Here I sit back, reading slashdot on a pentium 166MMHX, with 80M of memory, through Galeon and the X Windows System on a OpenBSD machine.
I read the posts that say X is slow.
X is currently using about 5% - 7.5% of my processor. It jumps up to about 15% when I change windows. MPG123 consistantly uses more CPU then X. Galeon tends to use more CPU then X as well.
I read the posts that say X is bloated.
X is currently using 15MB of memory/8MB resident. Galeon is using about 16MB / 27 MB resident.
As for hard to set up, linux distros usually set up X for me. There are even several configuration utilities shipped with XFree86.
I also tend to use the network transparency of X, which is easily accomplished through ssh -X.
Don't know why you guys keep having problems, but may I suggest bloated OS installs and bloated WMs?
FVWM + XFree86 works for me!
After playing Zelda Wind Waker on gamecube I realised how crisp and clear the graphics could be without demanding a powerhouse machine to render the graphics. Why not have an window system that uses cell shading technology that uses 3D hardware acceleration to provide users with something that is pleasing to look at but doesn't require a beast of a PC?
Why? Because I gotta!
:)
Couldn't resist
___ This sig is in boldface to emphasize its importance!
Funny that I should read your post right after opening the Y Windows project report. The very title of the report is "Y: A Successor to the X Windows System"
Let's see.
W indowsWhyWindows
ZedWindows
WhyWindows
ZedWindowsWhyWindowsZed
I'd say the inital letter is less important than the trailing 's'. XWindow (no S) always seemed clunky - and I'm sick of the pedantic among us wailing about those who did tack on an 's'. A name change would be worth the effort just to make them shut up.
The Y license is less free than the new non-free X license. Wow, that's a big improvment alright.
I don't like X11, but I'm not sure jumping to a new letter is the solution. I think X12 would be a better compromise. ;)
If they'll replace the default cursor with a Y instead of an X.
I was at Stanford during the development of W/X, as a user of early version, but not a developer of X. It was a time of rapidly evolving technology, so some standards they guessed right, while others were kludges. The technology was the workstation, a computer small enough to put into the office (the size of half-height file cabinet) and enough power to run UNIX. PCs were way too underpowered to run UNIX and bit-mapped graphics. Apollo (absorbed into HP) was the UNIX king, but all its standards were proprietary. Sun was just a couple years old and its standards were half-open, half-proprietary- a practice they continue to this day. DEC (absorbed into HP) was willing to tolerate UNIX on its min-VAXes, but not write all the missing parts- especially window graphics. So they essentially delegated that to Stanford and MIT with hardware and R&D grants. So there was a lot of R&D then on how to do client-server computing and graphics.
The primary problem at that time was the availability of a suitable object-oriented programming language. Everyone knew that was the future of software. The UNIX crowd preferred something related to C. C++ was very unstable, while ObjectiveC, based on on SmallTalk, was good but proprietary. The fledgeling company NeXT (in the Stanford industrial park, later absorbing Apple Computer) decided on ObjectiveC. The Stanford W/X group decided to use neither of these but invent a quasi OOP extension to C in the Xt Toolkit. And XWindows has suffered ever since.
Read this thread:
Fresco Problems
Looks like they are far from a usable system
X isnt slow: What is layered on top is slow
X is a standard: People break that standard with layers on top.
XFree is old: My wife is over 10 years old too.. so what? ( X11 is even older )
Xlib sux: Ok, ill give you that one.. but programmers arent forced to use low level libraries.. Ever hear of QT?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Mine has a built-in web browser, MIME extractor, yEnc support and a display engine optimized for fleshtones.
I call it "The XXX Windowing System".
Dear idiot,
People like the GPL because it gives freedom, it protects freedom, and can be used by any project - so compatiblity is available to anyone that chooses to use it.
My recollection is that MS-Windows and XWindows were both invented around 1985. MS-Windows was typical Bill Gates vapor-announcement to co-opt Macintosh popularity (introduced in 1984). However, XWindows did not really supplant MS-DOS until version 3.1 around 1993, when both hardware and software became decent. Then it became a best seller and a trademark.
Also there wasnt really a single commercial entity behind XWindows to sue. It would look bad to sue MIT.
The essential program for Y which will let it get anywhere has to be an X server. Then people can migrate to it without being disconnected from their X applications. Something nice with a rootless mode, like X runs on MacOSX.
"You know you want me baby!" - Crow T Robot
troll
If you run 'startY' within X, Y will appear as a Window on X. This is because Y dosent use its own graphics routines, it uses SDL. Hence it will run on any hardware SDL supports. I couldn't get any applications on it to work though :(.
read my post
I write code.
Since Lindows lost its case to Microsoft, is now Lin---s. I don't see how you can have any hope to even use the word windows in a new project [I assume X-Windows is grandfathered in?]
Or maybe the Windows problem only apply to operating systems?
I am afraid the new windowing system will just have to be called "Y Win---s" [pronounced wince]
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I kind of like the way that X calls are low level, and that frees people to build nice widget sets like GTK and QT on top of those base Xlib calls. That's something that X does right, IMHO. And having the network transparency at that level is good too. However, I find Y's idea of a network transparent widget set intriguing, as I don't yet have a high-speed connection at home. I'm not saying get rid of network transparent Xlib, but I think building a network transparent high level widget set could make applications be nicer to run for me over a dial-up modem. Granted, apps would have to be ported to this new widget set, but still, I think it could be worth it. Maybe the X guys could pick up this idea.
TZ
What about the Berlin project and all the other x rewrites?
X windows is a strange project as every 3 month we see structural change, forks and so on.
Microwindows now has a xlib ABI compatibility.
Adds a whole new meaning to The Mark Thomas Product
Y?
(www.mtcp.co.uk)
--- My dad's political betting
Guys, the reason why we are all still using X is not because windowing systems are so hard to create, it is because we all have so much software invested in X now which would somehow need to be ported over.
No, an X emulation layer is not going to solve it. What is the point in having a new window system if all of my apps get bogged down by an emulation layer? Why bother?
I wish the Y developers the best of luck. But first they must put down their C++ compilers, crack open the source to Qt, GTK etc and have a good look inside and see how these toolkits work and realise that they can't change anything above this software layer. They can only work inside the widget toolkit layer and below. People (developers!) are not going to switch the toolkits their applications use.
--
Simon
You need to separate your thoughts about the GUI ( WM ) from the subsystem ( X11 )...
X is the subsystem, its not supposed to be flashy..
That's the job of the widgets and window managers you stick on top of it..
Its also where most of your problems come from too, X is actually rock solid.. its all that crap we run on top it to make it pretty that causes all our woes... ( except for that damned new license )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Well, if there was ever a more clear-cut case where something should be developed in the D language I've never seen it.
-- thinkyhead software and media
Yeah, right, and how well do the XFree86 drivers perform on UT2K4 with everything turned up? Do they support my Dual DVI card? TV-Out? I didn't think so.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Quick questions what's harder to rewrite? the legalese of XFree's newest licensing or a windowing system?
I don't think XFree will keep the language that's in the licensing once they get enough pressure from the distros.
A rewrite of something as complicated as X (and everything that depends on it!) Go read some joelonsoftware and get some opinions on ground-up rewrites.
I'd rather see concerted efforts to overhaul the driver effort and acceleration rather than recreate the world.
Rewrite X: booo!
Refactor X: yaaay!!!
Because AA should be built into *the server*, and not *the client / toolkit*.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
I'd sure like to know where you are getting this "super-awesome rock solid" linux kernel from.
make it "Rx" (replacement for X), and make the logo just like the prescription symbol.
Get it?!? The whole X and Y chromasome thing!?! HA HA HA!!! GET IT!?! GET IT!!!!
oh man... 28 hours [non-stop] of FreeCiv really messes with your head...
Karma: NaN
(-1 Flamebait)
damn filter. why do I have to post a body?
OSnews or slashdot should review them all in one big article and compare the strengths and weaknesses.
Because consistent look and feel is very important? Because it speaks volumes for the overall design that has gone into the OS? Because it's aesthetically pleasing?
One cannot put these things aside as unimportant, because they are surrogates for cues that people use on a day-to-day basis for things like selecting a mate or procuring products such as food. Some examples that spring to mind:
People are animals. Sophisticated and intelligent animals, but animals nonetheless. To treat the basic instincts we all possess as "trivial" is to ignore the basic truth of existence.
Maybe a quick experiment would help: drive up and down the strip in a late model civic with a nice paint job. Now repeat the process in a Ferrari which has every body panel painted a different color: yellow, red, silver, black, blue and white. Any idea which will get noticed for all the wrong reasons?
HBH"Smart is sexy." -- D. Scully ("War of the Coprophages")
Finally some REAL humor around here ROTFL!!!
:)
F'n funny.
Does this mean it could be ported to Win32, BeOS and AmigaOS?
Actually, I've yet to find any piece of software that manages to stay intact when I fire a photon torpedo at it.
New users find the selection of different toolkits for X confusing and inconsistent both in appearance and behaviour.
I was a Visual Basic developer for about 6 years before I tried Linux. Finding I had to pick a toolkit to start GUI development was unusual but not at all confusing. I looked at the differences in API, available widgets, supported platforms, etc, and dove in with one. I don't see the differences as inconsistent, but as a variety of preferences among different people. The variety of toolkits is a great asset to me as a developer. On Windows I barely had a choice!
As for end users there's no selection involved. They pick the apps they want to run and their distro installs the dependant toolkits. They may have different looks, but I've never heard of a person confused because buttons looked different.
Developers: We can use your help.
How many proposed new window systems named "Y" have there been at this point? Because I first heard this joke in like, 1988.
(The gag being that there were earlier window systems named V and W.)
(Also let me take this moment to say "C++: it's not just a name, it's a grade.")
(Thank you, I'm here all week. Try the veal.)
Not too long ago, before the advent of P2P, web browsers, and other crazyness, the words "Client" and "Server" were pretty simple. A "Server" talked to multiple "Clients" at once, but a "Client" could only talk to a single "Server" at a time. (Unless you were FTP proxying, but that was about it.) Also, a "Client" was the one starting the connection.
So, X, being capable of connecting to multiple applications was the "Server", where applications, only connecting to one X, and initiating the connection, were "Clients", pretty much by definition.
Of course, now, things are a LOT more fuzzy. But this was the mid-80's.
I get the "whole your base are belong to us", but I don't get the other part. Can someone enlighten me?
Because it looks like a fork to me...
Y was designed to
a) learn something about network programming
b) implement a replacement for X11 of which Mark Thomas think that it is:
1) too slow
2) place too much burden on the programmer
3) no standard toolkit
4) reaching its software lifespan
5) too complex.
ad 1) It is correct that X11 is unusable on less than 10 Mbit connections (this could be changed, see below).
ad 2) Unless you use the raw network protocol, it does not place burdon on the programmer. It is true that everything above Xlib was ill design (especially the Xt, and athena widgets), but this crap has been replaced long before. -- The only environments that still use Xt are Motif and KDE apps. In contrast GTK and GNOME use the raw Xlib.
ad 3) It is true that the toolkit (Xt, Xaw etc) should have been implemented on the server-side. But this was not possible until now; what X11 indeed needs is a toolkit on the server-side. Of course this toolkit should be extensible, that means that it should be possible to dynamically add new widgets to the set of available widgets living in the address space of the X11 server. Moving the toolkit to the server would also reduce the network overhead thus addressing problem #1. Of course, this requires more memory on the server-side as the server must now be linked with an interpreter language such as Mono, Java, Guile.
Another drawback would be that the actual widget-communication protocol would essentially be proprietary.
Note that Y only defines a small set of widgets on the server-side and that there's no mechanism to dynamically extend this set. So the communication overhead with Y is almost the same as X11 (it may be better or worse in some areas).
4) I think it's clear that this is a nonsense argument. For example no one would seriously argument linux, as it is 10 years old now, has thus reached the end of its lifespan.
5) Yes, some functionality provided by the X11 client libraries and by certain X additions was complex. But most of this crap has already been thrown out, e.g.: Xprint, Xt, DisplayPostscript, the broken X11 I18N implementation.
What Y promises to deliver is:
1) A non-dynamically extensible object-based system on the server side implemented in raw C
2) A message passing system that is as efficient as X11's (it may be better or worse in some areas, see the Clock example which has a huge overhead).
3) Yet another toolkit implemented in C, but this time on the server-side
4) Modularity. This is indeed a strong point for the Y system (compared to XFree86). However, the new Xserver [www.freedesktop.org] attempts to address this issue, too.
5) A client library for C++. Whow. Ehm, what is wrong with Qt? Should all people throw away their work just because somebody thinks that some software has reached the end of its lifespan (whatever that may mean!)?
Anyhow, I suggest to read Mark Thomas proposal anyway. It isn't that bad; at least Y has a theoretical background; in contrast to other attempts such as picoGUI [www.picogui.org]
Y-Windows forced to rename itself to Y-Win---s (pronounced Why Windash) in some countries.
Wake me up when (and if) they actually deliver anything. Judging by broken HTML on their site they won't.
But ylogo cannot be even as half sexy as xlogo
You can defy gravity... for a short time
I read the posts that say X is slow.
One of the first sections in the original "Y Window System" paper listed the problems with X. It started off with "X is slow." However, it made a very specific allegation. It was not that X is slow per-se, but that it is highly sensitive to latency. Yeah, we all run X11 applications on our local desktop, and they're lightning fast. We can even run X11 applications from machines close by on the LAN. But very few people ever try to run X11 applications across 20 hops of the internet. Unless you have somehow ensured very low latency connections, you're gonna have lag city.
The X Protocol is very verbose. It's one of the reasons that there have been projects to try to compress or otherwise remove redundancy from the protocol. But, at some level, it's the protocol itself which needs rethinking when it comes to speed.
My two cents...
Good point.
When tigers are dead and gone, which could be fairly soon now, viruses will still be here. I will venture to speculate further that when all the mammals are gone, viruses will still be here.
I'll bet that the Sun folks are laughing bitterly now...
Where I ask my self "Y, Windows?"
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
Microsoft say they can't have the domain 'windows' and they have to find y-window.com, or something... :)
:)
Y-window has some very nice features, alas X has a hell of a lot going for it to disapear, and with trends towards abstractions rather than intergrations, I fear Y has a fairly dim future ahead with X steaming ahead once the current bumps are resolved (or we switch to freedesktop's X
How many people swap out the engines in a car that still runs fine? How many people are still running Windows 98 on old hardware and will upgrade their OS when they buy a new PC?
Whether things freeze at XFree86 4.3, the X people return to sanity and things continue onto 4.4, or Y replaces X altogether... Joe User (especially at a corporate desktop) is going to notice the brand of underlying windowing system about as often as a husband notices the brand of shoes his wife is wearing.
The distros will make up their own minds. For the commercial ones, the default will be the one they feel helps their distro meet the qualifications of: does it go, does it look nice, and does it run on standard unleaded?
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
...except for the fact that women are XX and men are XY.
I know it's not as common here in the Bay Area, but must women are still looking to make use of the Y chromosome.
---- Just another spud server.
However, I'll demonstrate by answering them.
> X is too slow
On the contrary, I fnd it's quite fast with a good accelerated AGP card. The network transparency is a very nice feature that I use regularly.
The original document outlining Y specifically says that X is fast. Locally. But you try running a very interactive X11 application across a many-hop internet connection with lots of latency and then you'll see just how slow it is.
This is one of the problems with X, that the protocol is very sensitve to latency and is very verbose. Unnecessarily so, IMHO.
Does that mean the speed issues are such that you shouldn't use it on a desktop? Certainly not, as testified by the thousands of people who use it for such every day.
That's why we have things like GTK.
Again, this is addressed directly by the PDF:
> Xfree86 is over 10 years old
So am I. So is UNIX. So are most of the theories in Computer Science. Shound we throw them away?
Of course not. But age can certainly bring problems. Again quoting the PDF:
In summary, X is just fine.
For many purposes, yes. But it's starting to show signs of not being able to cope with what window systems are being asked to do in the last 5 or so years. It's worth revisiting now and again.
squeak!
The earliest win32 could have been is with Windows 95, so that's 9 years.
the screenshot showed alpha blending on multiple windows. http://www.y-windows.org/about.html. scroll down to the bottom of the page. this isn't your normal kde-style 'transparency' that blends with whatever you have on your desktop, its actual transparency, which is a feature i would like to see on a major window manager. unless maybe i missed it in gnome and kde.
As I walk alone I wonder what went wrong
With our love a love that was so strong
And as I still walk on I think of
The things we've done together
While our hearts were young
I'm walking in the rain
Tears are falling and I feel the pain
Wishing you were here by me
To end this misery and I wonder
I won-won-won-won wonder
Why why why why why why she ran away
And I wonder where she will stay
My little runaway run-run-run-run runaway
I'm walking in the rain
Tears are falling and I feel the pain
Wishing you were here by me
To end this mesery and I wonder
I won-won-won-won wonder
Why why why why why why she ran away
And I wonder where she will stay
My little runaway run-run-run-run runaway
Run run run run runaway.....
Gary Dunn
Open Slate Project
Remote display situations allow for true multi-user computing with a GUI.
:)
Vnc exports an entire desktop session, which is pretty useful, but it falls way short of what X can do.
Want to share an application? Host it on one common application server. Better, want to allow 10 people to use an expensive application requiring expensive hardware? You could just buy them all nice boxes, then get a floating license, then install it everywhere... or get one nice box, install the app, then let users remote it to where they are. The second way is a lot cheaper from both an admin and hardware standpoint.
X allows the administrator and user to make best use of all computing resources on the network however they see fit. Solutions like VNC let people share single user desktops and can create many single user desktops for many users to use, but they do not allow multi-user computing to happen the way X does.
Remote display combined with true multi-user design allows X to play hard in the enterprise computing space. Take a hard look at LTSP for one example of this. Read about the city of largo for another couple.
At home here, I have several machines that all run UNIX. I have them all integrated onto one desktop. It is hard to tell which machine is doing what --it just works.
With X you can have one machine serve fonts, another manage your windows, yet another handle the actual physical display, yet another serve an application....
My point is this:
There are *lots* of people using remote display. It saves them time and money because they can design compute environments that suit their needs and budget where single-user systems cannot. (win32 is single user, for example)
Most folks that think others don't use multi-user display systems simply have not been exposed to them.
VNC will not serve as a replacement for a large number of situations. It does do what it does well however, I am not knocking VNC
The problems with X are presentation, for the most part. We need to work hard on good tools to configure the environment for those that don't know how today. The powerful multi-user features of X are probably one of the best features Linux (and UNIX in general) has to offer. Why throw a serious advantage, along with years of software away, only to produce another broken display system?
We already have lots of those. --They don't really do anything that helps people save time and money. X does that.
Blogging because I can...
From what I can see it allows "themes" but does not allow "Window Managers". I see this as a significant weakness.
Thanks, GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
And also wanted to replace X-Windows
the windows with an X a Y or maybe a Z!!!
Even if Red Hat is the standard, didn't they state that they don't agree with the new license of X, and that they will work with Debian, Mandrake, et al, in order to get something else working? If so, then this is a good time for someone to point them all to Y.
ah, but when the earth is dead and gone, so will viruses be, probably. So the sun is at the top of the food chain.
a rewrite of X isn't the answer, and thus calling it X12 would be intelectually dishonest.
But... what about build the policies into server/protocol extensions, *and* give the users the power to enable/disable extensions system- or app-wise (so slow servers can run many, many apps)... etc. etc. etc.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Which won't work on other X implementations, or older versions of XFree, or versions where that module isn't loaded (e.g. where an old configuration is used
I used to think that too, but recently I had to build Gnome 2 on HP-UX (with HP-UX's proprietary X server, not the XFree86 port).
It uses XRender on the servers that support it, and falls back to client-side rendering on those that don't. You do need the XRender client-side library, but thanks to fd.o, that's no longer tied to XFree86 -- they offer a standalone autoconfed version.
It works great.
DNA just wants to be free...
The reason they are still extensions and not moved into the core is that that would essentially mean X11R7, and a loss of upwards-compatability from a server persepective.
So, doing that would actually make the compatability problem worse, not better, without gaining much else.
Regardless, I don't think Y is a waste of effort, anyway, succeed or fail. If you look at my posting history a few years back, I was a major supporter of Fresco (at the time, called Berlin).
I don't think Fresco will ever take off at this point (CORBA being just a weeee bit too nasty, among other things), but a lot of people benefited just from the work that was spent on it. Actually some significant Berlin/Fresco alumni are now taking their experience to FreeDesktop.org, too.
Y has fewer obstacles to an active life, I think. There's no shame in reinventing the wheel (look at the array of specialized wheel designs out there!), but just be aware that you may end up repeating the design you intend to replace.
The design goals of X11 were also a "...protocol that people can support (and hopefully, extend) to add things that [its designers] didn't think of (or that aren't practical) yet.". Realistically, the only way to achieve that is through something like X11's extension mechanism. If Y takes a similar approach, it'll end up facing the same evolutionary pressures as X11.
DNA just wants to be free...
In fact, given how an X server must be able to service several connections simultaneously, I would think that it would be easier to implement as a multi-threaded application.
The primary reason of which I can think not to do this may be that different platforms implement different threading packages/libraries.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
I'd really like to see clause 2c dropped (it's a very good recommendation, but having it mandatory is obnoxious + causes compability problems).
I'd also like to see it a lot simpler/shorter and more compatible with other copylefts.
>X is slow I don't need more than 2Mb texture memory to run gui's in win98, 2k, nt, or scaled-down XP, but I do need some graphix memory to run X. I also need lots of processing. If I want to build a router with GUI, i have to use 300Mhz, or better, and half of the time, the gui will unexpectedly fail. To me, lag is unacceptable in a GUEnv., especially when it causes the system to crash. Moreover, X does not sufficiently take advantage of GPU-accelerated graphix, thus, there is an upper limit on how fast I can make it by adding an AGP card, all that the AGP adds is the ability to apply and store textures. >X places to much burden on the programmer the fact that it does not have a native widget set and requires gtk is the proof that too much burden has been placed on the programmer: someone had to _program_ gtk. Beyond that: no room to talk: not a programmer. >X has no standard how many GUI's/widget sets/window managers are there for X? .: why? -> _no_standard_ for what the base linux desktop should look like.
>Xfree86 is over 10 years old
Still not completely compatible with technologies developed to accelerate gfx (see above). It does not readily support new hardware, and tends to be incompatible with it. In most cases traditional config is still CLUI/Terminal Only or requires 3rd party apps to configure. Too many of these apply
In Short
Linux is not ready for the desktop, becuase no user will ever suffer X; replace it!
Can I be a Luddite too?
Surely that should be "+/- 0 Pedantic"?
GPL is against static linking of GPL and not-GPL libraries into one same executable binary file.
But novadys, in word of DLL and SO - what can stop my proprietary software from using GPL code ?
I think this war has not point at half of flames.