The future of Linux in the short term is to take the marketshare which OSX/Apple currently has, in the long term I can see Linux running on PS3, I can see Linux running on a networked media center, in school computer labs, and on laptops.
I think Linux needs to take the Desktop.
In the open source community when something is wrong you fix it, you get off your lazy ass and you do something about it.
Boycotts are what Windows users try to use against Microsoft, thats your world, keep using Windows kid.
We shouldnt boycott Xfree, we should replace it with something better.
Alot of companies, alot of developers, alot of users want to contribute. Xfree86 is more important than Mozilla, more important than Gnome, KDE and ranks up there next to the Linux Kernel itself.
There will be no shortage of support if we have good leadership, hell I'm willing to pay cash, real money to BUY support, you could set it up like transgaming, you could set up a place for us to donate cash to sponser developers like Freenet does, you can find ways to do this but to just do nothing at all gets us absolutely no where.
Its a start yes, but I think we need to do something bigger, we something big, huge, like KDE, or Gnome, something where hundreds or even thousands of developers are involved from every Linux company, lug, etc.
Kinda like the Kernal.
I'm glad you got modded 5, your post should be modded 10!
This is exactly what we need to do, we just need to get the publicity and the leadership to do this.
We need someone to come along and do it, are you going to be the guy to unite them? Keith Packard is a good coder, one of the best i've ever seen, but hes not a very good leader and hes terrible with the press.
What advice can you give us developers on how to handle this? You have alot of experience with things such as this as I have been watching your mailing list for a while. Maybe you'd like to volunteer to help lead the Xfree86 fork?
Maybe you can help in some way, you are as popular and as respected as Linus himself, so an interview on this subject where you can give advice would be useful in mobilizing the developer base.
Lets Ignore Xfree86.org and make them completely irrelivent and focus on Y Windows and XUOVERT, why do we need Xfree86? They must think they are bigger than the community now, its their own elitism thats helping to kill Linux.
XUOVERT is that replacement. Let Xfree86 burn in hell and lets make a fork. I'm sick of reading stories about how the Xfree core people are preventing drivers from being commited and closing themselves off to the world, if they dont want developer support we should fork Xfree86 and compete with them, if they are so good at coding that they make a better Xfree86 than the community does well props to them, but if they don't, well they lose.
Survival of the fittest.
XOUVERT
We've got at least 3 years more like 4, not 2. This is 2003, Windows Longhorn wont be here until at least 2006 and mid to late 2006 at that, then its going to take a while before its tested and actually accepted by the public.
All Linux has to do is improve the GUI, improve the software installation process, improve Xfree86, and have better driver support.
This stuff is happening right now as we speak, and marketshare for Linux is currently rising faster than marketshare for any other OS. Right now Linux is on fire and 3 years from now we might be looking at 20-30 million + linux users. You have all of China, you have most of Europe, and you have more and more Americans who hate DRM, I don't see Longhorn standing a chance in a fair competition, so unless they can extend their contracts with OEMS, Microsoft will lose this one.
I think if Linux marketshare continues to rise OEMs might not choose Microsoft.
Things may change by 2007, do you think that in 3-4 years Linux wont have competitive marketshare? At the current rate Linux will have competitive marketshare to Windows within a few years, Microsoft will not be able to bully companies like they do now once Linux becomes mainstream and trust me, 3 years from now Linux will be mainstream. It might not start here in the US, it might go mainstream in China and Europe first, but it will have enough of a market share that Windows simply wont be needed.
This gives us linux developers time to add whatever improvements are made via longhorn into Linux so that by the time 2006 comes alone, Linux will already have all of the important features and plus its own improvements.
"Software-rendered vector graphics aren't hacks. They have to potential to be slower, but often they aren't. If you're doing a minimal amount drawing (and most themes do), they can be faster because you don't have the setup overhead of making command buffers for the hardware. Read Rasterman's comments about the EVAS OpenGL back-end. Hardware accelerated SVG really comes in useful when you have a ton of stuff to render quickly. Most current apps aren't visually complex enough to require it. Simple widget themes will never be so complex as to require it, because the results would be unusable. Thus, HW SVG makes sense, but not for rendering the entire UI."
You dont build for the current apps, you build for future apps.I think HW rendering makes plenty of sense for rendering the entire UI because future UIs can be made more complex.
KDE themes are not really vector-based, nor are they specified in SVG. But they are scalable because they are C++ plugins that have algorithms that can take, as parameters, the output size of the widget. The underlying drawing API that KDE themes use is QPainter, which is vector-based, but pixel oriented. The graphics primitives are vectors (draw line here, draw rectangle there) but the coordinates are in pixels.
I can still see a big difference between SVG and traditional rendered themes.
QPainter done in Cairo would be slower, since there is no hardware accelerated Cairo support.
Thats what rasterman think's and hes right for now, but this is X we are talking about here, if there will ever be hardware support for these things it MUST be through X, and therefore through cairographics.
Do you understand graphics at all? Vector graphics are orthogonal to alpha blending. KDE doesn't do alpha blending for windows because X11 doesn't support it. KDE couldn't do alpha blending for windows even if it draw its wigets via Cairo. The concepts are *completely* unrelated.
Actually Carl Worth and Keith Packard specifically state that we will be able to do alpha channelling once they finish with cairographics, cairographics will use Xrender and Xrender uses the hardware.
How are software vectors illegitimate? Is your web-browser illegitimate because it runs on your CPU and not your GPU?
There is a big difference between a web browser and an interface. My games which run in software run slow, I have games like this and no they arent fake games, but they are cheap games, you get my point. I say do something right and do it once, instead of do it wrong and do it 50 times.
" Seeing as how the Music Companies own the music, not the artists (songs created under contract are s unfortunately considered "works for hire") and the RIAA is a construct of the Music Companies, compensating the artists does nothing to absolve you from proscecution; you're still violating copyright."
So let the consumers own the music and then give the money to the artists. Problem solved.
I propose we start a non profit org which earns money through ads or whatever combination of profitable methods, and then this money gets donated directly to musicians, not the RIAA but the actual artists.
I'm sick of seeinng stupid plans which take our money and give it to the RIAA, the RIAA does not create a damn thing and they do not deserve a penny and until our money goes to the artists I dont want to support this.
There is a major difference between scaleable vectors done in hardware via cairographics, and software based hacks which I'm assuming you are talking about done via the CPU.
Maybe thats why KDE's so called vector based GUIs always break up when you move a window around too fast, I've never seen vectors do this but hey you say its already SVG.
Either QPainter needs to be done via cairographics so it can be fast and done via hardware, or KDE needs to be ported to vectors, either way the current system is too slow and not powerful enough, KDE cant even do alpha channel so if its doing vectors right now its fake software vectors and not legit hardware vectors, you can do alpha channel via software too but its so slow that its a pointless waste of time.
Show me some proof, I have never seen a vector based widget, also even if what you said were somehow true and thats unlikely, its not done via hardware its done via software and therefore its slow, too slow to do stuff like alpha channel.
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Or else, WTF are they thinking?! They cant cut support that soon.
The future of Linux in the short term is to take the marketshare which OSX/Apple currently has, in the long term I can see Linux running on PS3, I can see Linux running on a networked media center, in school computer labs, and on laptops. I think Linux needs to take the Desktop.
And in the same time hundreds of thousands of new users in China will be using Linux for their first OS, What is your point?
That may be true, but thats not the point, science has nothing to do with faith.
The french, the spanish, the italians, they all arent Aryan because they mixed with Africans when Hannibal took over their country.
Are you?
In the open source community when something is wrong you fix it, you get off your lazy ass and you do something about it. Boycotts are what Windows users try to use against Microsoft, thats your world, keep using Windows kid. We shouldnt boycott Xfree, we should replace it with something better.
Alot of companies, alot of developers, alot of users want to contribute. Xfree86 is more important than Mozilla, more important than Gnome, KDE and ranks up there next to the Linux Kernel itself. There will be no shortage of support if we have good leadership, hell I'm willing to pay cash, real money to BUY support, you could set it up like transgaming, you could set up a place for us to donate cash to sponser developers like Freenet does, you can find ways to do this but to just do nothing at all gets us absolutely no where.
Its a start yes, but I think we need to do something bigger, we something big, huge, like KDE, or Gnome, something where hundreds or even thousands of developers are involved from every Linux company, lug, etc. Kinda like the Kernal.
I'm glad you got modded 5, your post should be modded 10! This is exactly what we need to do, we just need to get the publicity and the leadership to do this. We need someone to come along and do it, are you going to be the guy to unite them? Keith Packard is a good coder, one of the best i've ever seen, but hes not a very good leader and hes terrible with the press.
What advice can you give us developers on how to handle this? You have alot of experience with things such as this as I have been watching your mailing list for a while. Maybe you'd like to volunteer to help lead the Xfree86 fork? Maybe you can help in some way, you are as popular and as respected as Linus himself, so an interview on this subject where you can give advice would be useful in mobilizing the developer base.
Lets Ignore Xfree86.org and make them completely irrelivent and focus on Y Windows and XUOVERT, why do we need Xfree86? They must think they are bigger than the community now, its their own elitism thats helping to kill Linux.
XUOVERT is that replacement. Let Xfree86 burn in hell and lets make a fork. I'm sick of reading stories about how the Xfree core people are preventing drivers from being commited and closing themselves off to the world, if they dont want developer support we should fork Xfree86 and compete with them, if they are so good at coding that they make a better Xfree86 than the community does well props to them, but if they don't, well they lose. Survival of the fittest. XOUVERT
Lets just make a fork and be done with it, its over! Let them work with Rest in Peace Xfree86, Enter Xouvert.
60 million + downloads of Kazaa vs 1 million downloads of Itunes, yeah I see your point.
So far Linux seems to be ahead of them in development, I mean Storage Slicker and then theres xouvert , cairographics and project Y.
We've got at least 3 years more like 4, not 2. This is 2003, Windows Longhorn wont be here until at least 2006 and mid to late 2006 at that, then its going to take a while before its tested and actually accepted by the public. All Linux has to do is improve the GUI, improve the software installation process, improve Xfree86, and have better driver support. This stuff is happening right now as we speak, and marketshare for Linux is currently rising faster than marketshare for any other OS. Right now Linux is on fire and 3 years from now we might be looking at 20-30 million + linux users. You have all of China, you have most of Europe, and you have more and more Americans who hate DRM, I don't see Longhorn standing a chance in a fair competition, so unless they can extend their contracts with OEMS, Microsoft will lose this one. I think if Linux marketshare continues to rise OEMs might not choose Microsoft.
Things may change by 2007, do you think that in 3-4 years Linux wont have competitive marketshare? At the current rate Linux will have competitive marketshare to Windows within a few years, Microsoft will not be able to bully companies like they do now once Linux becomes mainstream and trust me, 3 years from now Linux will be mainstream. It might not start here in the US, it might go mainstream in China and Europe first, but it will have enough of a market share that Windows simply wont be needed.
This gives us linux developers time to add whatever improvements are made via longhorn into Linux so that by the time 2006 comes alone, Linux will already have all of the important features and plus its own improvements.
"Software-rendered vector graphics aren't hacks. They have to potential to be slower, but often they aren't. If you're doing a minimal amount drawing (and most themes do), they can be faster because you don't have the setup overhead of making command buffers for the hardware. Read Rasterman's comments about the EVAS OpenGL back-end. Hardware accelerated SVG really comes in useful when you have a ton of stuff to render quickly. Most current apps aren't visually complex enough to require it. Simple widget themes will never be so complex as to require it, because the results would be unusable. Thus, HW SVG makes sense, but not for rendering the entire UI."
You dont build for the current apps, you build for future apps.I think HW rendering makes plenty of sense for rendering the entire UI because future UIs can be made more complex.
KDE themes are not really vector-based, nor are they specified in SVG. But they are scalable because they are C++ plugins that have algorithms that can take, as parameters, the output size of the widget. The underlying drawing API that KDE themes use is QPainter, which is vector-based, but pixel oriented. The graphics primitives are vectors (draw line here, draw rectangle there) but the coordinates are in pixels.
I can still see a big difference between SVG and traditional rendered themes.
QPainter done in Cairo would be slower, since there is no hardware accelerated Cairo support.
Thats what rasterman think's and hes right for now, but this is X we are talking about here, if there will ever be hardware support for these things it MUST be through X, and therefore through cairographics.
Do you understand graphics at all? Vector graphics are orthogonal to alpha blending. KDE doesn't do alpha blending for windows because X11 doesn't support it. KDE couldn't do alpha blending for windows even if it draw its wigets via Cairo. The concepts are *completely* unrelated.
Actually Carl Worth and Keith Packard specifically state that we will be able to do alpha channelling once they finish with cairographics, cairographics will use Xrender and Xrender uses the hardware.
How are software vectors illegitimate? Is your web-browser illegitimate because it runs on your CPU and not your GPU?
There is a big difference between a web browser and an interface. My games which run in software run slow, I have games like this and no they arent fake games, but they are cheap games, you get my point. I say do something right and do it once, instead of do it wrong and do it 50 times.
" Seeing as how the Music Companies own the music, not the artists (songs created under contract are s unfortunately considered "works for hire") and the RIAA is a construct of the Music Companies, compensating the artists does nothing to absolve you from proscecution; you're still violating copyright." So let the consumers own the music and then give the money to the artists. Problem solved.
I propose we start a non profit org which earns money through ads or whatever combination of profitable methods, and then this money gets donated directly to musicians, not the RIAA but the actual artists. I'm sick of seeinng stupid plans which take our money and give it to the RIAA, the RIAA does not create a damn thing and they do not deserve a penny and until our money goes to the artists I dont want to support this.
There is a major difference between scaleable vectors done in hardware via cairographics, and software based hacks which I'm assuming you are talking about done via the CPU. Maybe thats why KDE's so called vector based GUIs always break up when you move a window around too fast, I've never seen vectors do this but hey you say its already SVG. Either QPainter needs to be done via cairographics so it can be fast and done via hardware, or KDE needs to be ported to vectors, either way the current system is too slow and not powerful enough, KDE cant even do alpha channel so if its doing vectors right now its fake software vectors and not legit hardware vectors, you can do alpha channel via software too but its so slow that its a pointless waste of time.
Show me some proof, I have never seen a vector based widget, also even if what you said were somehow true and thats unlikely, its not done via hardware its done via software and therefore its slow, too slow to do stuff like alpha channel.
Exactly my point, shouldnt KDE be focused on working with cairo? I just see no point in KSVG.