On Jan 13, 2014 12:38 AM, "Dan Egli" <ddavide...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Now that the new year is here and things are becoming a little less hectic, > there's a question I wanted to ask about something I saw on the list a few > weeks ago. I recall there was some discussion of one thing or another > replacing X11. That kind of surprised me. After all, isn't X11 a fairly > well entrenched standard? And why are we replacing it? I can't say that > I've had over much in the way of issues with it. > > > > Perhaps I'm misinterpreting what was meant. But I think of old programs > like X-Win32 or Hummingbird Neighborhood, and I wonder if replacing X11 > won't destroy those programs, or is that more along the idea of replacing > XDMCP or something similar? > > > > If it is being replaced in common Linux distros and other places, what's > the most likely candidate to replace it with and where can I read up more > on it? >
The world of graphics hardware is very different from the days in which the X Window System was invented. It has adapted pretty well, considering, but it is still not what one would design given today's uses. And the modern uses spend more effort working around its design features than taking advantage of them. The real new X is the modern web browser. Except it has ended up borrowing more from its old rival, Sun's NeWS. It used a form of PostScript (which is actually a full-fledged programming language despite its typical use as a printer control language) as the graphical front-end language that ran on the display machine while heavy processing was done remotely. You were probably thinking of things like Wayland and Canonical's thing that I don't recall the name of right now. These are essentially modern display engines--they take care of the lowest levels of composing the pixels generated by various processes into buffers for the graphics hardware. By intentionally not being X, they are free to make different design decisions. End users are not likely to notice massive differences, but the more modern designs have the potential to shave off various awkward bits and make the user experience smoother. But I don't think either the browser or the new display servers will truly replace X, they will just shift it around a bit. Mostly you will see Wayland on phones and tablets, where there is less entrenched software. And where it is adopted on the desktop, X will run as a client, which will be pretty transparent to users. Really, it isn't that much to fuss about. Far more of your experience depends on widgets and toolkits, which don't care at all what software is underneath to get the pixels they draw onto the screen. You don't really need to worry about it. /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
