Or simply a better system. For example, 90% of the objects everywhere I went in SL don't have any visible physics. They're just walls, for example.
More than that 90% (that would be 1500 physical objects in a sim, that's a pretty heavy load). They still have to be included in physical calculations.
I don't know what kinds of internal optimizations Havok (the physics engine) performs, but the point is it's not able to get any useful guidance in diong so from the builders.
It's certainly possible, and a modicum of care to make sure you're getting a client from someone who has standing in the community is wise, but demanding Linden Labs vet the client is overkill.
All it would take is one person noticing extra transfers in their transaction history to totally expose something like that, and with a direct link from the modified client to the distributor it would be relatively easy to track down.
And it's a lot harder to hide changes in patches to a client than you think, especially when most of them are posted to JIRA *and* actively examined and discussed in the developer mailing list. Anyone smart enough to even have a chance could make more money more easily and safely with a couple weeks contracting on the side.
Finally, there's MUCH safer schemes to get money through applications that support money transfers than a crooked client. Like, you could write a program that does something useful for SL users, and have it install a keystroke stealer in the client they are using. Lots more people are likely to use an add-on program like that, and the connection is indirect. In fact the program doesn't even need to be SL related... some bad guy with a botnet could add a bit extra to his bottom line by adding checks for installed copies of SL. Along with the information he's pulling out from his keystroke stealers looking for credit card info in web forms.
None of which require anything to be open source, since people have done the equivalent in closed-source software. Like Internet Explorer.
With the exception of Resident Evil 4, I've yet to play a *proper* Wii game (as opposed to one of those all-pervading tech-demo-cum-party-game atrocities) where the controller actually added to the experience, rather than being a distraction.
Because Second Life is connected directly to your credit card read-write, there are significant hazards associated with a client build from any source other than what Linden labs has vetted.
The recent URL exploit on Windows (it was a command line parsing bug, so wouldn't have impacted Mac or linux since applications don't parse their own command lines the same way) wasn't from any open source build.:p
I find it hard to believe that SL doesn't allow more than 160 concurrent users to log in simultaneously.
There's no "shards". The world is contiguous: you pause less than a second crossing from one sim to another and it's even possible to fly planes across multiple region boundaries at 25 meters a second (hitting a new region every 7-10 seconds depending on the direction you're flying) without losing control... you *can* still "outfly" the sims and crash but it's gotten a lot better than it has been.
Typically the SL server farm (grid) supports 20-30,000 users concurrently, and seeing over 40,000 isn't unusual.
It's a lot more servers than an Eve cluster but its also doing a lot of physics on in-world objects written and programmed by amateurs.
400, actually. That's 4 regions (called sims) on a 4-core server with up to 100 avatars per region.
That's with each sim doing concurrent physics calculations for 100 avatars interacting concurrently with 15000 unique objects in a 256x256x768 meter simulated volume, with each avatar running up to 1000 concurrent scripts. Anything from 10 to 1000 objects are independent actors that have to be taking into account for object-object collisions with a 1/45th of a second quantum. Maybe 1000 objects are running their own scripts, ALL THE TIME. And all content created by complete amateurs with no understanding of how to make physics run fast and making no attempt to establish collision zones or otherwise optimize the layout.
So each server is handling the physics for 60,000 objects, maybe 3000 being dynamic objects that cause as much load as a player in a regular combat game, and there's no optimization of the "level".
"Let's first make the system we've got today work the way it's supposed to work," Perlman said.
Start out by getting rid of algorithm patents. The first algorithm patent in the US, the UNIX setuid bit, was donated back to the public domain by Dennis Ritchie. Unfortunately that didn't seem to set a precedent... so let's set the clock back and eliminate all patents on mathematical algorithms, whether described as "formats", "software", or "protocols", just as if it had and all these patents on mathematics had been turned back to the public domain.
That would massively reduce the load on the patent system, and free Microsoft and the rest of us from this unwanted burden.
It's not "X11 versus MacOS", it's "X11 vs Windows and Quartz/Cocoa".
If it was "X11 vs MacOS", my mac would have to fight itself.
X11 lacks functionality that Quartz/Aqua provides, and vice versa.
I would like the option of replacing the native window management on OS X.
I'd also like the window management protocol on X11 to provide some features that are missing, that would *also* allow for applications to provide functionality that their users actually need without having to override the window manager. Why does the idea of adding features that would benefit users produce so much pushback?
X is a UI designed for Unix and VMS, that makes it a Unix UI.
X is a window system designed from the ground up to be independent of any operating system. It happened to be first implemented on VMS and UNIX because DEC donated hardware to MIT, but it's not designed for them.
That is, X11 is not a "UNIX user interface" the way the classic Mac GUI was a "Macintosh user interface" or the Windows GUI is a "Windows user interface" or Intuition is an "Amiga user interface". You *know* what I mean by this, whether you want to call it a "native use interface" or some other phrase that you like better, there's no question in my mind, the way you keep dancing around the point, that you DO understand what I'm talking about.
The fact that the default UI on the Mac isn't based on X11 has nothing to do with whether it's a desktop UNIX system or not. No, applications on OS X don't by default use the user interface you prefer, but that user interface is not any part of what makes something a UNIX system. A UNIX system with MGR or SunWindows or NeWS or any other GUI that has been written for or ported to UNIX is still a UNIX system. A UNIX system without a webserver is still a UNIX system. A VMS system running X11 isn't a VMS system with a UNIX user interface, it's not a combination of VMS and UNIX, it's a VMS system with an X11-based user interface.
A modern Mac is a desktop UNIX system that runs UNIX applications written for either Apple's user interface or the X11 user interface. AND, it's the most successful desktop UNIX. It may repay you to seriously think about why that is (and, no, it's not just marketing).
Instead of vibrating a motor so you can consciously react, it would be cool if it could send electrical impulses down the appropriate nerve pathways to make you involuntarily avoid the object.
This isn't quite as fast as the reflex arc, but it isn't a conscious response... it's a learned skill that becomes as automatic as any other. There's no link to specific nerve pathways that makes me unconsciously mash the brake pedal when I'm sitting in the passenger seat and another car swerves into our path.
I doubt that there's a "pleasure nerve" that could be so easily stimulated, but Niven had fun with that idea in Ringworld (1970)...
"You understand that I will use the tasp every time you force me to. I will use it if attempt to use violence too often, or if you startle me too much; you will soon become dependent upon the tasp; if you kill me, you will still be ignobly bound by the tasp itself."
"Very astute," said Speaker. "Brilliantly unorthodox tactics. I will trouble you no more."
"The puppeteer is right," said Speaker. "I would not risk the tasp again. Too many jolts of pleasure would leave me his willing slave. I, a kzin, enslaved to a herbivore"
The X11 user interface is not a "UNIX" user interface. It's a portable multi-platform user-interface that's popular on UNIX. It is not based on any of the essential UNIX API concepts (system calls, file descriptors, a uniform file namespaces, pipes, etcetera), but rather network protocols and libraries. It also doesn't interact cleanly with the UNIX shell environment as (for example) Layers, MGR, and 8½ do.
You might as well argue that HTTP and HTML are "UNIX" interfaces... they have the same relationship to UNIX as X11 does.
The Mac GUI is a second proprietary user interface, and it's also based on what was originally a platform independent API that happened to be originally implemented on UNIX.
If you want a UNIX+X11 environment, then the Mac's probably not for you, though it does handle X11 just fine in both multi-window and single-window mode. But if you just want a UNIX environment, it's great.
Technically, the Unix CLI is several UI's, given the choice of shells
Don't be silly, even extremely divergent shells don't differ as much as X11 window managers do. The fundamental breakthroughs (and they were breakthroughs) that UNIX introduced at the command line level are shared by all by the most arcane shells.
I thought the term Avatar in the context of multiplayer online games was invented in one of the dungeon style games on the Plato network (Oubliette?) in the late '70s.
That's basically what I think. They've got an economic model that mostly works... it could be better, and they've screwed some people over by changing the rules on them in the middle, but SL is where the money is. Of course that doesn't mean it's going to stay that way, but it's not like people are going to be happy starting from scratch as Ruth.
the Mac community spent an enormous amount of time trying to destroy Maynor's credibility
Maynor did everything he could to destroy his own credibility.
He misrepresented the nature of the vulnerability. Not because he was under an NDA, mind you, but because
[OSX was promoted as] being free of the viruses and malware that plague Windows,
It still is. Because it still is free of them. Not because it's "invulnerable" (people who talk about it being invulnerable - pro or con - shouldn't be trusted... and that includes you), but because it's a competently designed UNIX based OS that takes advantage of layered security. There's some aggravating design flaws that are bigger problems than a fixable bug in Wifi (yes, really), but the bottom line is that it's got a fundamentally more secure design than Windows in many areas that really matter, and THAT has a huge effect.
and even GNU/Linux doesn't have a reputation for being invulnerable
Wrong. Linux has been promoted as being a virus free haven for Windows users for at least as long as OS X has, and it's been pushed harder. And, yes, it ALSO has the advantage of a good traditional UNIX design.
But if Maynor REALLY wanted to show off, he'd have attacked OpenBSD.
and suddenly Maynor found there was a massive hole in that
So? People find holes in OSX regularly. And I mean ACTUAL holes unique to OS X, not holes shared by a lot of common devices. ACTUAL cases of the SAME KIND of hole (buffer overrun), even. This is not a "massive hole in OS X" at all, and if he hadn't turned around and (a) attacked Apple specifically, and (b) refused to disclose the bug itself (and I don't believe in an NDA that would have kept him from telling Apple about a buffer overflow in a Wifi driver), nobody would have said boo to him.
But he didn't act responsibly. He wanted to grandstand and he wanted to hurt Apple, specifically. I mean, he said he had a grudge against Apple right there on his web page. That's not responsible, and has nothing to do with any NDA. Even it's not actually lying and even arguably not honest, it sure ain't honorable.
So here we have someone who's acting irresponsibly, and implying he's being paid to find security holes he's not allowed to talk about (and he still hasn't explained that bit), and who's specifically targeting one company... what kind of reaction should he expect?
it seems to make it difficult for the user to get around the limitations of the user-friendly UI
You start up "Terminal.app" and it's done. Seriously. X11 IS NOT UNIX The UNIX user interface is the command line.
If a different window manager would fix said "flaws" then they are not flaws in X, but in the available window managers.
It would fix some of them. It wouldn't fix others, and it would need protocol extensions to become standardized so that applications can expect to be able to use them.
don't really think I should need GTK and/or Qt support.
Unfortunately, Trolltech is increasingly replacing the UNIX API in Qt with a higher level abstraction to divorce Qt apps from the UNIX OS. Even the option of running Qt-based apps headless is going to vanish.
Electric razors don't usually have the same kinds of batteries as MP3 players, and they also have a much higher power requirement.
Some MP3 players need more power than others. But they pretty much all have Li-Ion batteries rather than the NiCad or NiMH batteries that you find on most consumer electrics.
Another option is an AAA- or AA-powered MP3 player (yes, there are some) with one of those in-the-case battery replacements that provide 1.5 or 3v through a dummy battery and connect to the wall with a thin wire you can slip under the edge of the battery compartment (or drill a hole in it... which I figure you'd be up to). You'd be pretty much assured of that working.
If the user isn't willing to develop the level of competence that Unix requires, then the user should probably not be using Unix. I'm not sure if I want Unix to be a success on the desktop if it means we have to dumb the system down.
The first major UNIX installation outside Bell Labs was as a user-friendlier system for secretaries in a legal office. UNIX is not inherently user hostile.
Now, X11 is user hostile, but X11 is not UNIX. The X Window System is a cross platform system, originally developed on VMS and UNIX concurrently, and it has very little in common with any *real* UNIX API... it was designed as a testbed for GUI design, and the "no policy" principles came from that. Those principles are not actually all that useful, even for experts, other than people doing research into user interface design.
And the second biggest desktop right now is UNIX. Mac OS X. That's UNIX, it's not dumbed down, and it's real friendly. Mostly because the user interface on top of it isn't designed for GUI researchers, it's designed for end users.
Well, free UNIX seems to be stuck with X11. But it doesn't have to be stuck with X11's flaws. Given a standard window manager that provides the hooks needed by real applications and non-technical users, it'd have a chance.
WITHOUT being "dumbed down".
Besides, given how sick I am of seeing software that only runs on Linux, and either not natively or not at all on BSD
Personally, I'm sick of software that requires X11, even if you only want to install the command line version, so the irony is thick enough to slice.
Slashdot Mirror
Just like you can not run Fedora 6 in a GUI on a computer with 64mb of ram and 800mhz.
You can't? Even if you run it headless? Why the hell not?
Bandwidth.
Not to mention latency.
"First assume all lions are spherical..."
Or simply a better system. For example, 90% of the objects everywhere I went in SL don't have any visible physics. They're just walls, for example.
More than that 90% (that would be 1500 physical objects in a sim, that's a pretty heavy load). They still have to be included in physical calculations.
I don't know what kinds of internal optimizations Havok (the physics engine) performs, but the point is it's not able to get any useful guidance in diong so from the builders.
It's certainly possible, and a modicum of care to make sure you're getting a client from someone who has standing in the community is wise, but demanding Linden Labs vet the client is overkill.
All it would take is one person noticing extra transfers in their transaction history to totally expose something like that, and with a direct link from the modified client to the distributor it would be relatively easy to track down.
And it's a lot harder to hide changes in patches to a client than you think, especially when most of them are posted to JIRA *and* actively examined and discussed in the developer mailing list. Anyone smart enough to even have a chance could make more money more easily and safely with a couple weeks contracting on the side.
Finally, there's MUCH safer schemes to get money through applications that support money transfers than a crooked client. Like, you could write a program that does something useful for SL users, and have it install a keystroke stealer in the client they are using. Lots more people are likely to use an add-on program like that, and the connection is indirect. In fact the program doesn't even need to be SL related... some bad guy with a botnet could add a bit extra to his bottom line by adding checks for installed copies of SL. Along with the information he's pulling out from his keystroke stealers looking for credit card info in web forms.
None of which require anything to be open source, since people have done the equivalent in closed-source software. Like Internet Explorer.
With the exception of Resident Evil 4, I've yet to play a *proper* Wii game (as opposed to one of those all-pervading tech-demo-cum-party-game atrocities) where the controller actually added to the experience, rather than being a distraction.
Wii Tennis rocks.
Because Second Life is connected directly to your credit card read-write, there are significant hazards associated with a client build from any source other than what Linden labs has vetted.
:p
The recent URL exploit on Windows (it was a command line parsing bug, so wouldn't have impacted Mac or linux since applications don't parse their own command lines the same way) wasn't from any open source build.
I find it hard to believe that SL doesn't allow more than 160 concurrent users to log in simultaneously.
There's no "shards". The world is contiguous: you pause less than a second crossing from one sim to another and it's even possible to fly planes across multiple region boundaries at 25 meters a second (hitting a new region every 7-10 seconds depending on the direction you're flying) without losing control... you *can* still "outfly" the sims and crash but it's gotten a lot better than it has been.
Typically the SL server farm (grid) supports 20-30,000 users concurrently, and seeing over 40,000 isn't unusual.
It's a lot more servers than an Eve cluster but its also doing a lot of physics on in-world objects written and programmed by amateurs.
400, actually. That's 4 regions (called sims) on a 4-core server with up to 100 avatars per region.
That's with each sim doing concurrent physics calculations for 100 avatars interacting concurrently with 15000 unique objects in a 256x256x768 meter simulated volume, with each avatar running up to 1000 concurrent scripts. Anything from 10 to 1000 objects are independent actors that have to be taking into account for object-object collisions with a 1/45th of a second quantum. Maybe 1000 objects are running their own scripts, ALL THE TIME. And all content created by complete amateurs with no understanding of how to make physics run fast and making no attempt to establish collision zones or otherwise optimize the layout.
So each server is handling the physics for 60,000 objects, maybe 3000 being dynamic objects that cause as much load as a player in a regular combat game, and there's no optimization of the "level".
I don't think they're doing so badly.
"Let's first make the system we've got today work the way it's supposed to work," Perlman said.
Start out by getting rid of algorithm patents. The first algorithm patent in the US, the UNIX setuid bit, was donated back to the public domain by Dennis Ritchie. Unfortunately that didn't seem to set a precedent... so let's set the clock back and eliminate all patents on mathematical algorithms, whether described as "formats", "software", or "protocols", just as if it had and all these patents on mathematics had been turned back to the public domain.
That would massively reduce the load on the patent system, and free Microsoft and the rest of us from this unwanted burden.
It's not "X11 versus MacOS", it's "X11 vs Windows and Quartz/Cocoa".
If it was "X11 vs MacOS", my mac would have to fight itself.
X11 lacks functionality that Quartz/Aqua provides, and vice versa.
I would like the option of replacing the native window management on OS X.
I'd also like the window management protocol on X11 to provide some features that are missing, that would *also* allow for applications to provide functionality that their users actually need without having to override the window manager. Why does the idea of adding features that would benefit users produce so much pushback?
X is a UI designed for Unix and VMS, that makes it a Unix UI.
X is a window system designed from the ground up to be independent of any operating system. It happened to be first implemented on VMS and UNIX because DEC donated hardware to MIT, but it's not designed for them.
That is, X11 is not a "UNIX user interface" the way the classic Mac GUI was a "Macintosh user interface" or the Windows GUI is a "Windows user interface" or Intuition is an "Amiga user interface". You *know* what I mean by this, whether you want to call it a "native use interface" or some other phrase that you like better, there's no question in my mind, the way you keep dancing around the point, that you DO understand what I'm talking about.
The fact that the default UI on the Mac isn't based on X11 has nothing to do with whether it's a desktop UNIX system or not. No, applications on OS X don't by default use the user interface you prefer, but that user interface is not any part of what makes something a UNIX system. A UNIX system with MGR or SunWindows or NeWS or any other GUI that has been written for or ported to UNIX is still a UNIX system. A UNIX system without a webserver is still a UNIX system. A VMS system running X11 isn't a VMS system with a UNIX user interface, it's not a combination of VMS and UNIX, it's a VMS system with an X11-based user interface.
A modern Mac is a desktop UNIX system that runs UNIX applications written for either Apple's user interface or the X11 user interface. AND, it's the most successful desktop UNIX. It may repay you to seriously think about why that is (and, no, it's not just marketing).
Instead of vibrating a motor so you can consciously react, it would be cool if it could send electrical impulses down the appropriate nerve pathways to make you involuntarily avoid the object.
This isn't quite as fast as the reflex arc, but it isn't a conscious response... it's a learned skill that becomes as automatic as any other. There's no link to specific nerve pathways that makes me unconsciously mash the brake pedal when I'm sitting in the passenger seat and another car swerves into our path.
I've read about similar things mapping various kinds of sensors into vibrations, and people can learn to include them as part of their normal senses.
This one is particularly cool because it's such an apparently simple device. Very clean implementation.
I doubt that there's a "pleasure nerve" that could be so easily stimulated, but Niven had fun with that idea in Ringworld (1970)...
"You understand that I will use the tasp every time you force me to. I will use it if attempt to use violence too often, or if you startle me too much; you will soon become dependent upon the tasp; if you kill me, you will still be ignobly bound by the tasp itself."
"Very astute," said Speaker. "Brilliantly unorthodox tactics. I will trouble you no more."
"The puppeteer is right," said Speaker. "I would not risk the tasp again. Too many jolts of pleasure would leave me his willing slave. I, a kzin, enslaved to a herbivore"
The test for iron to tell if someone has handled a gun, or a grenade, or ... a wrench, or a wrought-iron railing, no?
The X11 user interface is not a "UNIX" user interface. It's a portable multi-platform user-interface that's popular on UNIX. It is not based on any of the essential UNIX API concepts (system calls, file descriptors, a uniform file namespaces, pipes, etcetera), but rather network protocols and libraries. It also doesn't interact cleanly with the UNIX shell environment as (for example) Layers, MGR, and 8½ do.
You might as well argue that HTTP and HTML are "UNIX" interfaces... they have the same relationship to UNIX as X11 does.
The Mac GUI is a second proprietary user interface, and it's also based on what was originally a platform independent API that happened to be originally implemented on UNIX.
If you want a UNIX+X11 environment, then the Mac's probably not for you, though it does handle X11 just fine in both multi-window and single-window mode. But if you just want a UNIX environment, it's great.
Technically, the Unix CLI is several UI's, given the choice of shells
Don't be silly, even extremely divergent shells don't differ as much as X11 window managers do. The fundamental breakthroughs (and they were breakthroughs) that UNIX introduced at the command line level are shared by all by the most arcane shells.
It sounded to me it was like "since we can't stop them unlocking legally, we'll have to do it technically".
I thought the term Avatar in the context of multiplayer online games was invented in one of the dungeon style games on the Plato network (Oubliette?) in the late '70s.
That's basically what I think. They've got an economic model that mostly works... it could be better, and they've screwed some people over by changing the rules on them in the middle, but SL is where the money is. Of course that doesn't mean it's going to stay that way, but it's not like people are going to be happy starting from scratch as Ruth.
Yeh, but you have to click on it first.
the Mac community spent an enormous amount of time trying to destroy Maynor's credibility
Maynor did everything he could to destroy his own credibility.
He misrepresented the nature of the vulnerability. Not because he was under an NDA, mind you, but because
[OSX was promoted as] being free of the viruses and malware that plague Windows,
It still is. Because it still is free of them. Not because it's "invulnerable" (people who talk about it being invulnerable - pro or con - shouldn't be trusted... and that includes you), but because it's a competently designed UNIX based OS that takes advantage of layered security. There's some aggravating design flaws that are bigger problems than a fixable bug in Wifi (yes, really), but the bottom line is that it's got a fundamentally more secure design than Windows in many areas that really matter, and THAT has a huge effect.
and even GNU/Linux doesn't have a reputation for being invulnerable
Wrong. Linux has been promoted as being a virus free haven for Windows users for at least as long as OS X has, and it's been pushed harder. And, yes, it ALSO has the advantage of a good traditional UNIX design.
But if Maynor REALLY wanted to show off, he'd have attacked OpenBSD.
and suddenly Maynor found there was a massive hole in that
So? People find holes in OSX regularly. And I mean ACTUAL holes unique to OS X, not holes shared by a lot of common devices. ACTUAL cases of the SAME KIND of hole (buffer overrun), even. This is not a "massive hole in OS X" at all, and if he hadn't turned around and (a) attacked Apple specifically, and (b) refused to disclose the bug itself (and I don't believe in an NDA that would have kept him from telling Apple about a buffer overflow in a Wifi driver), nobody would have said boo to him.
But he didn't act responsibly. He wanted to grandstand and he wanted to hurt Apple, specifically. I mean, he said he had a grudge against Apple right there on his web page. That's not responsible, and has nothing to do with any NDA. Even it's not actually lying and even arguably not honest, it sure ain't honorable.
So here we have someone who's acting irresponsibly, and implying he's being paid to find security holes he's not allowed to talk about (and he still hasn't explained that bit), and who's specifically targeting one company... what kind of reaction should he expect?
it seems to make it difficult for the user to get around the limitations of the user-friendly UI
You start up "Terminal.app" and it's done. Seriously. X11 IS NOT UNIX The UNIX user interface is the command line.
If a different window manager would fix said "flaws" then they are not flaws in X, but in the available window managers.
It would fix some of them. It wouldn't fix others, and it would need protocol extensions to become standardized so that applications can expect to be able to use them.
don't really think I should need GTK and/or Qt support.
Unfortunately, Trolltech is increasingly replacing the UNIX API in Qt with a higher level abstraction to divorce Qt apps from the UNIX OS. Even the option of running Qt-based apps headless is going to vanish.
It may well depend on the device.
Electric razors don't usually have the same kinds of batteries as MP3 players, and they also have a much higher power requirement.
Some MP3 players need more power than others. But they pretty much all have Li-Ion batteries rather than the NiCad or NiMH batteries that you find on most consumer electrics.
Another option is an AAA- or AA-powered MP3 player (yes, there are some) with one of those in-the-case battery replacements that provide 1.5 or 3v through a dummy battery and connect to the wall with a thin wire you can slip under the edge of the battery compartment (or drill a hole in it... which I figure you'd be up to). You'd be pretty much assured of that working.
If the user isn't willing to develop the level of competence that Unix requires, then the user should probably not be using Unix. I'm not sure if I want Unix to be a success on the desktop if it means we have to dumb the system down.
The first major UNIX installation outside Bell Labs was as a user-friendlier system for secretaries in a legal office. UNIX is not inherently user hostile.
Now, X11 is user hostile, but X11 is not UNIX. The X Window System is a cross platform system, originally developed on VMS and UNIX concurrently, and it has very little in common with any *real* UNIX API... it was designed as a testbed for GUI design, and the "no policy" principles came from that. Those principles are not actually all that useful, even for experts, other than people doing research into user interface design.
And the second biggest desktop right now is UNIX. Mac OS X. That's UNIX, it's not dumbed down, and it's real friendly. Mostly because the user interface on top of it isn't designed for GUI researchers, it's designed for end users.
Well, free UNIX seems to be stuck with X11. But it doesn't have to be stuck with X11's flaws. Given a standard window manager that provides the hooks needed by real applications and non-technical users, it'd have a chance.
WITHOUT being "dumbed down".
Besides, given how sick I am of seeing software that only runs on Linux, and either not natively or not at all on BSD
Personally, I'm sick of software that requires X11, even if you only want to install the command line version, so the irony is thick enough to slice.