Slashdot Mirror
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!
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.
Nothing beats ducttape and a trashbag
I may be new here, but will someone give a quick rundown on what exactly Y windows is and how it is different or is an improvement over X windows or any other windowing system?
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
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.
I think the renewed interest in Y-Windows may be doe to the licensing concerns about X's new license not being GPL compatible.
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-dash would be more internationally accepted, Windows being trademarked and all. I'm surprised X can be used internationally, given the recent Lin---- news.
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...
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
> because they don't want to distance themselves
> from their open source friends
Um, you do mean free software friends right?
Would you care to explain why the new X licence is better then the GPL licence (which is what you imply)? I don't feel I know enough about the subject to comment either way, but when making a contentious (on /. at least) statement like that it'd be helpful if you could explain your reasoning! (And I'm curious anyway ;-) )
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?
Try reading for once, GPL version 3 is supposed to take into account the incompatiblities with the new Apache License, and xfree86 4.4 new license. Then again it isn't out yet either.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
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.
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)?
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...
This is all taken from the PDF file.
I for one, am all for standardizing a window system. That's not saying that we can't have competiting Window managers, but there is standard of the communication to the windows system. This is (IMO) what is holding back Linux from the desktop.
Every Super Villan uses Linux.
While we're at it, more questions:
1. How hard is it to port an application to Y? (Is Mozilla going to come any time soon?)
2. How fast is it on older machines/PDAs? Is it mostly designed for new, beefy systems? (I noticed the 3D accel stuff, but is it required?)
1. 2.
The GPL should be less like a virus-- infecting whatever code gets close to it.
It should be more like a tiger-- going out and hunting down other code to kill.
It still has some broken links, though.
YINX (y is not xwindows)
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
I may be new here, but will someone give a quick rundown on what exactly Y windows is and how it is different or is an improvement over X windows or any other windowing system?
Simple, Y is One Better.
Just like my amplifier, which goes to 11.
I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."
Isn't this the reason people switched to X to start? I am having trouble remembering now, but didn't X replace motif because of license issues? Maybe it's time to do that again?
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
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.
I think a lack of standardization/uniformity is what's hurting the Open Source movement. You can't get that many people together, and have them agree on -one- way to do things. Everyone is out to push their own little twist. The result is a bit chaotic to anyone looking from the outside. (And to some from the inside as well, I'm sure.)
Hate 'em as much as I do, the one thing MS has done well is ensure compatability. Obviously there's problems; but the basic principles of windows applications are near uniform. I don't think you can say the same for a lot of OSS. Chalk it up to people being sheep, if you want, but until there's one clear leading force, Linux (sadly) won't succeed on the desktop.
I for one, am all for standardizing a window system. That's not saying that we can't have competiting Window managers, but there is standard of the communication to the windows system. This is (IMO) what is holding back Linux from the desktop.
Most agreed. If this project does take hold and considerable development efforts begin, I believe this could be the answer for Linux finally taking over on the desktop/workstation market.
X's bear of UI's make unnecessary duplicate effort on both parties (ie: KDE/Gnome). While they both might be good, a lot of code functionality is duplicated between them. If this was removed and put into the window server (Y), it could drastically improve usability and turnaround times for next development releases.
I think the $75,000 question is what can we (userbase) do to help promote the development and adoption of this? I, for one, would love to join the development team and if ample time is available, I just might do so. I highly encourage other coders who have time to spare to join as well.
# fuser -v
#
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+?
"one thing MS has done well is ensure compatability "
Should read " enforce conformity "
OSS should support a standard "default" for things -- but still allow customization. I guess some people would argue that's what RedHat is.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
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.
this is the question that is going to make or break y windows (or berlin or whatever the "next" window manager is)
if you want an example of a successful transition of a key technology look at two examples from apple. that's right, apple.
it was a lot of work to keep that backwards compatibility, but it's what made the transition work.
so. the lesson: invest a lot of time and effort into backwards compatibility. lots.
2 1337 4 u!
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
Come the revolution we'll be glad for it.
Now obviously some people do run applications remotely, but most don't. Therefore I wonder if X (or Y) shouldn't be run rootless on top of a fast local desktop rather than drag the whole desktop down by running underneath it.
Shame on you, mods.
I'm with you, with this caveat though.
X is not a GUI system. It is a display system. Ratpoison, for instance, requires X to run, since it runs in graphical mode as opposed to text mode, but is not a GUI.
As such replacing X really has nothing to do with replacing your GUI.
There is something to be said, however, for occasionally replacing old, crufty systems with newer shiney ones that work better.
In the case of X though, since it's function is so low level, arguements as to what is meant by "better" abound.
KFG
You are simply citing the differences between OS and any company.
In Open Source Development there is a Naturally driven variations. Think if it as leaves driven before the wind. Eventually most of them end up in the same place.
With any company, you do as the boss says or you're toast. Any questions?
I think there is a lot of merit in having variations in WindowManagers. I will fight that to the death. But when you have to apply layer upon layer of Glue Code to get some really useful, it implicates a problem exists. And when the various solutions are all inconsistent and independently parallel to each other, you have another implication of a potential problem.
If done correctly, most of this new code implimentation wouldn't require a visual (user aware) change to any of the existing Window Managers. However it might provide for a more consistent approach so that all buttons, labels, etc. appear the same. Today that doesn't exist unless you choose to use only a certain base library for your graphics (eg: Qt)
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...
As long as it's network transparent I don't care either. If I can tunnel apps over my SSH connection from one box to another then it's pretty useless for me no matter how fast it is.
Because it wouldn't be a proper intarweb page without one.
>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.
>X places to much burden on the programmer (XLib)
No argument that raw Xlib is a bit hard to use. That's why we have things like GTK.
>X has no standard
I have no idea what this means. X IS the standard for unix-like operating systems.
>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? Having been enhanced and debugged for 10 years is a big plus, rather than a minus.
In summary, X is just fine. Y may eventually be better, and they're welcome to try to get it there, but these arguments haven't won me over. It's wonderful to have alternative implementations to point out the flaws in existing systems (so that they in turn improve), but to say the new system is fundamentally "better", well, that's going a few better arguments than this.
Unless there's some history that I'm unaware of, motif is a widget set that ran on top of X -- analogous to GTK+ or QT. Motif was not under a free license. There is another project, Lesstif, which was supposed to be compatible with motif, while being free -- that may be what you're thinking of.
Of course, at this point, Motif is pretty much dead, at least on the free Unix desktop, because it was succeeded by more technologically advanced widget sets. I don't think that we will see any migration away from X until the alternatives provide a similar jump in technology.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
It's premature. We're not even at X12 yet. Hell, we're not even at X11r7 yet!
: )
You could just run an X server on top of Y until a native Y app is made. If the window manager works properly, you shouldn't even notice the difference.
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"
Where law ends, tyranny begins -- William Pitt
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.
Oh, so like SCOs code then?
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. ;)
Xfree86 is over 10 years old
I resent that the fact that something is over 10 years old is good enough reason to replace it. I'm over 10 years old.
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.
Firstly, how can a graphics system depend on a DE framework when the DE runs on top of the graphics system
:p
And i take it that by not being GNU you mean the license isn't compatible with the GNU GPL.
And it does use autoconf.
Other than that I agree that XFree isn't complete crap, and the developers deserve a great deal of respect, but it still has some problems, and it's not really moved with the times, and if Y windows takes off it will be be so much better than XFree
And hopefully we may see a snowball effect where XFree falls on it's arse and all the developers join Y Windows
My only concern about the proposed Y Windows framework is will it eventually have GTK and Qt libraries?
it says on the website that it will have a server-side widget set, but there area a LOT of applications that are written using the GTK and Qt API's, id this is indeed the case then Y Windows will never ever be accepted by the majority of users, especially if Y apps can't run on X.
...these aren't my real teeth.
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".
"Should read " enforce conformity "
This might be insightful if not for the fact that Microsoft's dominance is a result saying "we likem", as opposed to Microsoft putting a gun to tens of millions of people's heads.
"Derp de derp."
Grr. I left an important word out of my post.
"fact that Microsoft's dominance is a result saying "we likem"....
That's supposed to say
"...fact that Microsoft's dominance is a result of the market saying "we likem"..."
Sorry for being confusing.
"Derp de derp."
X is a single-threaded client/server application which provides windowing services and network transparency.
Since the terms 'client' and 'server' tend to be redefined every year or two by the Xfree team, nobody else really knows which is which any more. X interfaces directly with video drivers and also with the window managers.
The problems are fairly numerous and unfortunately difficult to fix:
Single-threaded X is forced to share its timeslice with every client (?) program, which leads even people like Linus to complain about GUI latencies on 4-way systems with top of the line hardware. Not so cool. Kernel 2.6 contains some hacks to kludge around this problem, but the underlying issue still hasn't (yet) been addressed. Considering Xfree's Design by Committee creed, it never will be fixed. You might say that X is rotten by design. You might more accurately state that X is 1980 technology, and wasn't meant to do the things that modern users expect as a matter of course (eg. 3D low latency, non-stuttering graphics). There isn't an elegant solution aside from ditching X entirely.
From the other end, the Xfree API is a big mess of kludges. Extensions have proven an excellent tactic to obfuscate and uglify code.
just like the humble blood clot... turboporsche@telus.net
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
Most 'new' things are generally 'better' than old things.. That's because most of the time new things are simply the logical evolution of old things. (Disclaimer: You can find thousands of counter-examples for this, there are obviously a lot of factors involved here.. but I think the basic point holds).
The Y proposal is very evolutionary. It uses the collective experience gained from the successes and failures of X to build a better mousetrap. I would certainly expect it to improve upon what X does while keeping those things that work and work well. A LOT has changed in terms of tools, technology, and know-how since X was designed... why not put those idea to work in a new system?
Turn s60 photos into awesome videos with mScrapbook for all S60 3rd edition phones!
Xfree86 is over 10 years old
And that means it shoud be scrapped? Win32 is also over 10 years old, do you think we should just scrap that too?!?
Oh, wait... point taken. I'm going to go download Y now.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
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
"You are simply citing the differences between OS and any company."
Yes, that rather was my point. That, and the assertion that it's the very differences between the two products that gives MS the edge in the desktop market. A windows box is a windows box is a windows box. If I need to change a setting, or install a program, the process is virtuall identical, even across windows versions.
The same cannot be said for Linux, and therin lies its failure in the desktop market. The big problem is that the majority of people in the world don't like to learn. They want to know as little as possible to get by in the world. Needing to learn 6 distros of Linux doesn't appeal to a lot of people. With Windows, you learn one version, and the rest don't change.
Don't get me wrong, I love what Open Source is; I just don't think it's capable of pandering to the lowest common denominator.
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)
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")
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.
Saying Xlib is a burden like saying accessing files by creating a hardware interrupt is a burden.
Accessing files is easier using the C library functions or even C++ streams. Likewise, other libraries are layered on top of Xlib in the same fashion.
It also seems that you can't decide whether X needs replacement or XF86 needs replacement. There is a difference.
err, viruses are older then tigers on the evoultion ladder and still are more adaptable then a tiger to new threats.
maybe more people should start useing the lgpl as this removes the codelinking "problem" that the gpl have.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
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.)
XWindows was being worked on in 1983 at MIT. That would be X10. It was developed for DecStation 100's, which were 1280x1024 1-bit display screens (this is why X does pretty good with modern resolutions but is really stupid with color, somewhat different than Windows which was designed for much smaller resolutions but assummed at least 16 colors were available).
The X11 most people are familar with was developed in 1985 and really appeared in 1986. It had a different (worse, imho) rendering model (the old one had a current point and moveto/lineto like PostScript). It also introduced the seperate window manager process, Visuals, multiple colormaps, and the wacky font-naming scheme with the dashes (before that fonts were named things like "fixed12" for the 12-pixel tall fixed-pitch font).
> Hate 'em as much as I do, the one thing MS has done well is ensure compatability. I have to disagree with you. In every single new version of excel, my old macros stopped working.
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]
Whats your point, old man? :)
SuDZ
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
Do you realize you have obsoleted yourself? :-)
"I think this line is mostly filler"
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...
It's possible what they called "Motif" was using some earlier version of the X server that wouldn't run anything linked against the X11 libraries; by the time I was there it was pretty clearly only still around for backward compatibility and no one I knew of actually still used it. I believe they killed it off completely the following year.
On the other hand, it's also possible they built their own complete non-X windowing system that used the Motif widgets separately, just to avoid using MIT's superior system. You never know with CMU...
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
Where I ask my self "Y, Windows?"
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
Yeah... Like new Coke!
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.
Nonsense. Microsoft's market dominance is as a result of a bundling deal signed in 1982 with IBM, and since that time, dirty tricks to ensure monopoly control.
Microsoft have killed all competitors to come along by offering a favourable OEM price on windows/DOS only to vendors who ship every computer with a Microsoft OS installed.
Even IBM wouldn't bundle their own OS/2 on their computers because it would mean adding more than a hundred US dollars to the price of each machine they sold with windows on it.
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.
"Nonsense. Microsoft's market dominance is as a result of a bundling deal signed in 1982 with IBM, and since that time, dirty tricks to ensure monopoly control."
The courts would disagree with you.
"Derp de derp."
squeak!
X has no standard
:)
thats because X *IS* a standard.
In July O7, I got a mac pro. There's no punchline. Just endless joy and wonder.
You're so stupid.
The server is the part with a listening socket. Eg, your "X" process.
Clients are programs that connect to a server and speak the X protocol. These are the programs that use X.
This should be a pretty clear explanation of the terminology, that anyone with any idea of how X works should understand.
Second, XFree does not "redefine" anything. X is a protocol and set of libraries to which XFree86 conforms.
If you knew anything about X you would not be spewing forth such ignorance.
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
Perfect examples: to set up a dsl connection on Slackware, the command is "adsl-setup"; on Debian it's "pppoeconf". "Sndconfig" only works on a few distros. Some distros -Slack, Suse, RH- can install to more than one hard drive, while others -College Linux, Libranet- won't, even though Windows 98 (!) could use more than one hard drive.
Of course, the huge thing is drivers. How many people give up on a distro because it doesn't support something important, like the graphics card, even though another distro that's 6 months older does support it?
Frankly, none of this would be a problem if the developers would be a bit more considerate of the users. Why can't you have both "adsl-setup" and "pppoeconf" as valid commands on your system? Why can't you have the "sndconfig" command bring up the utility to configure the sound? If there's no driver for the graphics card in the distro itself, such as for a Nvidia card, why can't it use the nv server until you install the driver? Answer: they obviously don't care.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
So the courts are always right?
Well, from what I gather, the court rulings are a matter of 'fact' when they're against Microsoft, but they're corrupt when they're not against Microsoft.
"Derp de derp."
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.
X != XFree86. There are already some forks, that is nearing productivity level: Freedesktop's XServer (KDrive), Freedesktop's XFree86 (XFree 4.3) and Xouvert (XFree86 4.4CVS), all three compatible with GPL.
(yes this can be compared with sex)
The GPL is interesting in that it has a built in profit motive, ie, I'll give you this to use as you will, and if you improve and distribute it, I get to see the changes, also under the GPL. Trading ideas for ideas. It's a license for people who want to be paid in kind for their work. It takes away people's incentive to take it, close the source, and go off in their own direction. It offers a center of gravity that keeps the whole project moving forward, while at the same time offering both ability and incentive towards interoperability.
How do you think the GPL should be changed? I think share and share a like works better than do whatever you want with my work, so long as you keep the copyright statements in it.
Brave enough to admit the GPL needs changing? I would be, if I agreed with you. More to the point, I'm not foolish enough to say it needs to be altered when it suits my purposes as a programmer. It's not like just because something was written under the GPL you couldn't write something else that did the same thing under another license. The fact that doesn't happen all that much should show that many, perhaps even most people find it quite workable.
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
Firstly, how can a graphics system depend on a DE framework...
:p
It wouldn't suprise me at all if they figured out a way. I think a circular dependency would fit very well in the kernel/Yserver/GNOME hierarchy, as GNOME is already so complex that a little icing here and there seems pretty harmless, right?
And i take it that by not being GNU you mean the license isn't compatible with the GNU GPL.
For better and worse, it is freer than the GPL. All the UNIX vendors and cross-platform people like Hummingbird all use the X codebase for their products.
And it does use autoconf.
XFree86 uses the same imake system that genuine X11R6 does. It's actually quite a bit easier to debug X's build system than it is to figure out where 'configure' went awry.
And hopefully we may see a snowball effect where XFree falls on it's arse and all the developers join Y Windows
Only if the Y Windows people study history really really hard will they improve on X Windows. X Windows is two decades in the making by dozens if not hundreds of people, so I predict a very long very hard uphill effort for any X replacent. Not to mention that GTK and Qt are each the efforts of many people over the last decade. To say that X is entrenched would be quite an understatement.
Vote in November. You won't regret it.
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...
IANAL, but I thought court rulings were closer to interpretations of fact. As such they are arbitrary(although judge are in theory chosen because they are fair, objective and evenhanded individuals, everyone is subjective on some issues). They are tend to be booed on slashdot when they ignore the realities of computing, and the (written or not) rules geek want enforced. They tend to be cheered when they help police the "pack". Microsoft being a particularly loose cannon in this regard, and court decisions being their modus operandi for many things, court decisions where Microsoft is involved tend to get booed more often.
As a layperson, I was disappointed that a court finding that Microsoft being in illegal monopoly could not do anything to remove that monopoly, just light fines, and wait for the market(and Geeks working on open alternatives) to correct itself. Now I imagine lawyers find this make perfect sense, but to me, any fine below the size of Microsoft's publically known "war chest" was ridiculously small, considering the nature of the offense.
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...
:: boggles ::
And you still read Slashdot?
this has nothing to do with microsoft, I'm putting for the idea that the courts aren't 100% corruption free. i mean the DOJ won, and MS was going to be split untill bush came into office...
What I read about the final judgement doesn't say anything about Bush's influence on it. I have NFI if he said anything or not. But I do agree with the ruling that said that MS hadn't set out to build the monopoly, what they were in trouble for was maintaining it afterwards. There has to be some truth in that. Windows 95 was VERY popular when it came out, it had a hell of a hype wave. Around that time, PCs running Windows were the thing to have in order to get on the net. Thus, the de-facto standard was born, as well as a monopoly for MS. Microsoft could not have bought that success, nobody could have.
Anyway, I forgot why we were discussing this point heh. I do agree, though, that they were not punished severely enough. I don't feel adequate steps were taken to lower the barrier of entry. At the same time, though, I don't feel that anybody's really trying to enter, either. At least not with a strong enough effort.
"Derp de derp."
When compared to other windowing systems, X is slow. Y has network transparency too.
The fundamental problem with X is that you essentially use two layers of widget sets. The application does the grunt of the work while the windowing system just does what its told. Now before you say "yeah, but that's a good thing." remember that this makes buffering/double buffering very horrible.
X is a standard, but who the hell programs in Xlib anymore? We're talking standards on a higher level, as in window management extensions and the such.
XFree86 is 10 getting old. There's a difference between people (how many different genetic revisions of YOU has their been?), computer science (theories), and actual code.
Actual code is complex. Computer science is a relatively new field compared to things like mathmatics. The problem with code is that you're almost bound to the techniques around the time when you started. As well as the archetecture designed for it. Theories and ideas can be changed or completely rewritten. They are ideas and ideas mold very easily, code doesn't change as easily as concepts.
The problem with X is that you really can't change its archetecture and that's why Y is being written from scratch, because new techniques, newer archetecture designs, etc. will make it much easier to work with.
X windows has served me well over the years, but I think a replacement needs to come along, I hope Y is that replacement.
As the bloke creating Y (and numerous others before him) has pointed out, allowing it to be network transparent DOES NOT make X slow. When it's run locally, you just use unix domain sockets instead of TCP ones.
Regardless, you will STILL need a client-server architecture of some sort to allow more than one process to be able to use the system without them all tripping over each other.
I quite fancy the idea of Y, I'd already thought it'd be a handy extension to X to allow programmable server-side widget sets, that GTK etc could use directly if available. It's been suggested that an extension could be added to Y to give an X compatibility layer, which'd help. And whilst we're looking at starting afresh, perhaps we could find other (genuine) things that we don't like about X, hmm? Things that it'd be too hard to implement cleanly whilst still being able to call the thing X, you know.
Anyway, it'd be a change to have a less clumsy name than "The X Windowing System". I've always hated that- although "Y Windows" is a bit flawed in itself (as somebody's Abott+Costello joke earlier demonstrated). I know that X was the successor to "W", just like C was the successor to B (from BCPL)... but do we always have to follow these lame naming patterns? I suppose it gives the thing a sense of "officialness", but...
Be careful! New moon tonight.
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.
Bullshit. Winamp, the propellerhead-apps, Adobe programs, even different MS programs have different widget sets and non-standard UIs.
(That's no reason for us not to try to be better than that, of course. I'm not denying that we have problems.)
>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?
Everyone in my family uses Linux with no problems.
They have access to XP, but they have no difficulties with the fact that I do not have XP available and in some cases, prefer Linux.
My 13 year old son prefers WindowMaker
My 12 year old daughter prefers KDE
My wife couldn't care less as long as it works
To make a statement that Linux should be the same across distributions is a farking joke. You're essentially telling all these people who are trying to define themselves as being difference from the competition shouldn't be allowed to do so. What are you, Socialist?
I'm not saying that they shouldn't have some effort for consistency, see LSB for details, I think that they are all trying. But at the same time, it is truely capitalistic to allow them to have deviations at the same time.
I for one do not believe that Linux has failed as a desktop computer. I think it's simply not been recognized as such by as many people. The difference you cite is popular awareness and not functional performance.
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.