Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
On א', 2003-09-21 at 19:43, Arnt Karlsen wrote: > On Sun, 21 Sep 2003 13:43:49 +0300, > Micha Feigin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > > > However under 2.4 its already working quite nicely. > > some people do get some trouble at times, but its quite stable. I > > suspend and resume several dozen times without problems, by that time > > I usually switch kernel again so ... I just got dri+mach64 to work > > with so > > ..huh? Which mach64, which DRI, which X, which 2.4 kernel and which > Debian? the mach64 is ati rage mobility M1 8MB on a sony vaio pcg-fxa53 (amd 1.3G + via chipset). The simplest way to use dri is adding deb http://people.debian.org/~daenzer/dri-mach64-sid/ ./ to sources.list and get the dri related packages (don't remember the exact names, three of them, one of which for kernel modules), you will need to remove the dri packages that came with the regular X. X is 4.3 from experimental, the kernel is a custom 2.4.23-pre4 (also tried with 2.4.21 and 2.4.22, 2.4.22-ac[12]). You will need to compile the kernel module for dri for X 4.3 (one if the packages provides the source). These drivers already include the xv support iirc. Debian is unstable. To get it working with swsusp required porting the suspend patch made for radeon which reset the dri on vt switch. I still need to clean the code up and understand it a bit more before its ready for redistribution, I hope I will have some time for this, and then I could put it up somewhere or get it inserted into the cvs tree. Will take some time, so if anyone wants to help, I have the modified source and the modified packages, no warranty though. I am currently using dri from the cvs tree from sometime in august with debian patches made against the tree on 4 may and taken from the source package, and the modifications to allow dri to work after wakeup from suspend without restarting X. > > > I am happy. > > ..does glxgears get the same framerate back when resizing the app? > (Maximizing, as in clicking the maximizer botton twice?) > I am afraid that the frame rate drops considerably when resizing glxgears, but the frame rate for the initial window size is about 300 which is more them the 195 I got without dri. Full size I get 44. Also quake 3 arena, quake 2 and tuxracer will run now, which they didn't before, and armgetrom gives me 45 fps instead of 3. Its not like this card actually has descent acceleration in the first place. > > The problem is still with suspend to ram which I don't expect to work > > any time soon, and is not related to swsusp but to acpi. -- Micha Feigin [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
On Sun, 21 Sep 2003 13:43:49 +0300, Micha Feigin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > However under 2.4 its already working quite nicely. > some people do get some trouble at times, but its quite stable. I > suspend and resume several dozen times without problems, by that time > I usually switch kernel again so ... I just got dri+mach64 to work > with so ..huh? Which mach64, which DRI, which X, which 2.4 kernel and which Debian? > I am happy. ..does glxgears get the same framerate back when resizing the app? (Maximizing, as in clicking the maximizer botton twice?) > The problem is still with suspend to ram which I don't expect to work > any time soon, and is not related to swsusp but to acpi. -- ..med vennlig hilsen = with Kind Regards from Arnt... ;-) ...with a number of polar bear hunters in his ancestry... Scenarios always come in sets of three: best case, worst case, and just in case. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
On ה', 2003-09-11 at 13:39, Tim Connors wrote: > Micha Feigin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said on Thu, 04 Sep 2003 01:33:32 +0300: > > Actually those are all the things that converted me to linux. Windows > > kept failing on me in all those respect every monday and thursday. > > I don't know what I am doing wrong, but the only thing that I had a > > problem setting up was dri, which I later found was quite east using the > > debian packages, and swsusp, which I am still having some problems with. > > Ha ha. Yeah, I don't think you'll gry swsusp working anytime soon. If > you have an older laptop, stick with the BIOS's method of suspending > to disk. If newer, ACPI doesn't work properly yet for this. > > swsusp has so many problems, it is not funny. And the last few days, > watching the kernel mailing list, there seems there are going to be > more probs in 2.6. > I don't know whats going on now with swsusp under 2.6, last time I looked in the kernel mailing list there was a lot of shouting about the changes and where /proc/acpi/sleep went. However under 2.4 its already working quite nicely. some people do get some trouble at times, but its quite stable. I suspend and resume several dozen times without problems, by that time I usually switch kernel again so ... I just got dri+mach64 to work with so I am happy. The problem is still with suspend to ram which I don't expect to work any time soon, and is not related to swsusp but to acpi. > > -- > TimC -- http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/staff/tconnors/ > Animals who are not penguins can only wish they were. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
Micha Feigin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said on Thu, 04 Sep 2003 01:33:32 +0300: > Actually those are all the things that converted me to linux. Windows > kept failing on me in all those respect every monday and thursday. > I don't know what I am doing wrong, but the only thing that I had a > problem setting up was dri, which I later found was quite east using the > debian packages, and swsusp, which I am still having some problems with. Ha ha. Yeah, I don't think you'll gry swsusp working anytime soon. If you have an older laptop, stick with the BIOS's method of suspending to disk. If newer, ACPI doesn't work properly yet for this. swsusp has so many problems, it is not funny. And the last few days, watching the kernel mailing list, there seems there are going to be more probs in 2.6. -- TimC -- http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/staff/tconnors/ Animals who are not penguins can only wish they were. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
On Thu, 2003-09-04 at 04:00, Colin Watson wrote: > On Thu, Sep 04, 2003 at 01:01:19AM +0300, Micha Feigin wrote: > > Second is the fact that most people just use the OS they get with their > > computer and are afraid to try and replace it. Plus, they already paid > > for the M$ license (even if forcefully/unknowingly) so why switch to a > > free one after you already paid for something. Same thing with macs/osX, > > where its even harder to get linux to work. > > Linux need to change its public image and start coming pre-installed. > > You're aware that this has already started to happen, right? Lindows > are/were doing exactly this with cheap PCs sold by Wal-Mart in the US. > > > There is also the problem of too much options. Unlike M$ where people > > exactly what program does a given job, on linux there are 10, and when > > there are so many its actually sometimes harder finding the right one > > for you or even finding what programs there are to do a given job. > > Too much choice can sometime be as much a liability as not enough (as > > much as I like the options). > > My impression of Lindows has been that they're presenting single > applications for each niche, fixing this problem for their target > audience. I'm quite sure others will follow. > > As far as Debian is concerned, we have our niche of providing maximal > choice and power and I think it's right that we stay there. Many of the > early contributors to and leaders of Debian wanted to make it something > that could work well as a base for more customized distributions, and > that seems to be succeeding quite nicely. To those who say that Debian > has too much flexibility and choice for Mr. Average, I say: that's OK. > Not everything has to cater for Mr. Average, and that still doesn't stop > us doing useful things one level back and catering for the people who > cater for Mr. Average. > > > Don't take from this that I don't like linux. I think its much better > > then M$ and there are no alternatives for me for some of the things that > > it offer, but its exactly those things that make, at list for the > > moment, to be a non-option for the Joe-Public m$ user. > > I think there's a lot of work to do before we're ready to replace the > major proprietary operating systems completely, but the situation is > improving year by year so I don't see any grounds for despair. The > balance is still swinging Microsoft's way, but is beginning to tip with > news of organizations like the city government of Munich and major banks > switching over, which erode the document format lock-in that Microsoft > Office has had for many years. Once organizations are no longer locked > in to what the organizations they deal with use, the balance can only > tip further. > > In my opinion, it's only after that happens when we need to be ready for > home users. Office use leads this kind of thing, and is easier because > businesses can afford to hire sysadmins and provide basic training to > smooth over the wrinkles. Only after that happens on a large scale do > you start getting lots of office workers thinking "hey, I wonder if I > could use this to handle things at home?", and so on. > > So I don't think it's necessary to prophesy doom because there are still > problems that would confuse those who aren't so technically literate. > We've got time to work on these, and it makes sense to be realistic > about our audience in the meantime so that we don't do a disservice to > those who are already interested and capable. > I completely agree to you comments, I was just trying to point where are the problems with hitting the home niche. I never said that linux has arrived at a point that it ready to solve those problems. Even when it finally is it will probably be distributions like lindows providing customized distributions. I quite like the options debian give me and I try to start up m$ on my computer as little as possible, usually just to keep a backup of my girlfriends files in case she may want to work on them away from home. On that note, the debian package tree could be organized a little better it order to help finding the alternative programs for performing given tasks. This could be done with a field in the deb file linking it into some virtual tree. The problem with the current state is that its not always clear where to look for a given program. For example you may look for a sound editing program in any of kde/gnome/x11/sound. Also, the current implementation allows for only one value, where sometimes several are applicable. I am aware that this can be mostly done using search terms, but this method has its advantages, since searches to produce too many/little results, depending on the terms and description included. Also, sometimes you just have an idea of what to look for but you don't know exactly the term defining it. > Cheers, > > -- > Colin Watson [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Micha Feigin [EMAIL PROTECTED] --
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
(sorry, can't quote this one since it was an attachment on my side) > This is more analagous to VNC than it is to X11. Hm, compared to controlling the entire desktop or a single window, you are right. But I was more referring to the way windows are transmitted over a network. With VNC (have this to my LAN/DSL server, Win2k) I know it captures the screen/windows on the remote side, optionally JPEG-compresses them and transfers them as a bitmap. (And this sometimes works a whole lot faster then an X session, both over mid/high speed networks.) WTS seems to transfer not bitmap captures but rather the display 'commands' (don't know how that works internally) so that it looks like a slightly delayed drawing of the desktop as it could be locally. (This is only from what I believe I have seen...) > - Because the window manager, not the application, is aware of its > location, position, and display status, if an application locks up, > you can manipulate its windows yourself, rather than being stuck > with a bunch of unresponsive rectangles on screen. This has changed a little bit since Win2k. At least the close button IS responsive. If a window doesn't respond to Windows' 'questions', you may kill the app by clicking the X icon of the window. > You have details on this last? The program we use is called "Citrix Program Neighbourhood". It displays any windows on the WTS server as they were on your computer, only with colours, metrics and mouse pointers from the WTS. But I can't tell you more on that, it was already installed on the image I got last time. I'm sure Google knows more... -- Yves Goergen [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please don't CC me (causes double mails) - Original Message - From: "Karsten M. Self" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Debian-User" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, September 04, 2003 11:02 AM Subject: Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power? on Tue, Sep 02, 2003 at 08:51:22PM +0200, Yves Goergen ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > On Tuesday, September 02, 2003 8:00 PM CET, Erik Steffl wrote: > >btw the overhead of client/server isn't anything that one needs to > > be concerned about even on 386 (X with reasonable WM performs > > same/better > > as windows) > > Could be, yes (I don't know). Just as a note, Windows has the same feature. > OK, a similar one. You can connect to a remote desktop and see all > applications/windows on your client. It's called 'Terminal Services' and > works a bit like X connections. This is more analagous to VNC than it is to X11. In the case of WTS or VNC, the display and all clients live on the remote side of the connection (I'll refrain from saying "server" given X11's backwards client/server terminology). While you can export an entire desktop, you cannot export a single application window (though I hear rumors this is changing. Some remote admin clients for legacy MS Windows (e.g.: radmin, and others like it) allow remote control of a single desktop. Unlike these, WTS allows you to run several simulataneous WTS sessions. However you cannot run multiple local displays. Contrast this to some of the capabilities of X11: - Run a local window manager, but remote apps from one or more remote systems. - Tunnel these remote apps through a secure, authenticating, encrypting tunnel via ssh. - Run your entire X session off an XDMCP server (not secure, but acceptable on a trusted network). - Run two or more local X sessions. These can be toggled between with (ctrl, alt, and a function key), or you can navigate directly with 'chvt'. Note that this is *not* fast user switching. You're actually toggling between displays. - Nested displays. Want to run a particular session in its own window? Run Xnest and launch its own window manager and X clients. Useful for demoing specific WM features. - Move windows between different displays using xmove / xmovectrl. - Switch window managers or desktop environments on the fly, without killing your session (OK, so Microsoft now lets you kill and restart EXPLORER.EXE on the fly). Every few weeks I may have to send WindowMaker a SIGUSR1 to reset itself. - Because the window manager, not the application, is aware of its location, position, and display status, if an application locks up, you can manipulate its windows yourself, rather than being stuck with a bunch of unresponsive rectangles on screen. The legacy MS Windows display model can only handle a very small subset of these capabilities. > Servers are available with Win2k Terminal Server or WinXP. Clients > (also from third-party) work on any recent Windows. Some of them even > display single windows on the 'server' as independant windows on the > client desktop... nice feature. You have details on this last? Peace. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
on Tue, Sep 02, 2003 at 08:51:22PM +0200, Yves Goergen ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > On Tuesday, September 02, 2003 8:00 PM CET, Erik Steffl wrote: > >btw the overhead of client/server isn't anything that one needs to > > be concerned about even on 386 (X with reasonable WM performs > > same/better > > as windows) > > Could be, yes (I don't know). Just as a note, Windows has the same feature. > OK, a similar one. You can connect to a remote desktop and see all > applications/windows on your client. It's called 'Terminal Services' and > works a bit like X connections. This is more analagous to VNC than it is to X11. In the case of WTS or VNC, the display and all clients live on the remote side of the connection (I'll refrain from saying "server" given X11's backwards client/server terminology). While you can export an entire desktop, you cannot export a single application window (though I hear rumors this is changing. Some remote admin clients for legacy MS Windows (e.g.: radmin, and others like it) allow remote control of a single desktop. Unlike these, WTS allows you to run several simulataneous WTS sessions. However you cannot run multiple local displays. Contrast this to some of the capabilities of X11: - Run a local window manager, but remote apps from one or more remote systems. - Tunnel these remote apps through a secure, authenticating, encrypting tunnel via ssh. - Run your entire X session off an XDMCP server (not secure, but acceptable on a trusted network). - Run two or more local X sessions. These can be toggled between with (ctrl, alt, and a function key), or you can navigate directly with 'chvt'. Note that this is *not* fast user switching. You're actually toggling between displays. - Nested displays. Want to run a particular session in its own window? Run Xnest and launch its own window manager and X clients. Useful for demoing specific WM features. - Move windows between different displays using xmove / xmovectrl. - Switch window managers or desktop environments on the fly, without killing your session (OK, so Microsoft now lets you kill and restart EXPLORER.EXE on the fly). Every few weeks I may have to send WindowMaker a SIGUSR1 to reset itself. - Because the window manager, not the application, is aware of its location, position, and display status, if an application locks up, you can manipulate its windows yourself, rather than being stuck with a bunch of unresponsive rectangles on screen. The legacy MS Windows display model can only handle a very small subset of these capabilities. > Servers are available with Win2k Terminal Server or WinXP. Clients > (also from third-party) work on any recent Windows. Some of them even > display single windows on the 'server' as independant windows on the > client desktop... nice feature. You have details on this last? Peace. -- Karsten M. Self <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What Part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? A guide to GNU/Linux partitioning: http://kmself.home.netcom.com/Linux/FAQs/partition.html pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
So what the hell is wrong with X? (was Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?)
on Tue, Sep 02, 2003 at 12:20:24AM +0200, Nicos Gollan ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > IMO the whole X(free) system needs a healthy kick in the butt. It's > one of the main factors in keeping Linux away from the desktop, not > just lacking in performance and features, but also a royal PITA to > configure with new problems cropping up every five minutes. Bollux. There are specific faults to X11. The technology as a whole is not broken, and any wholesale replacement would have to answer to a great many requirements. I hammered on this back in March at Kuro5hin, commente titled "So what the hell is wrong with X?", reproduced here: http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2003/3/21/141438/512/137#137 The Future Of XFree86 | 184 comments (150 topical, 34 editorial, 0 hidden) So what the hell is wrong with X? by kmself on Sun Mar 23rd, 2003 at 06:54:20 PM EST http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ I've just been engaged in a discussion of what's wrong with X and XFree86 [31]at zIWETHEY. Lightly adapted. I've seen a lot of instances of people grousing about X. I've seen few suggestions for improving the situation which seem to be both better and workable. In particular, cutting network transparancy from the graphics subsystem, or positing projects like Fresco as replacements, seem very poor alternatives. The suggestions in this discussion that problems with XFree86 with XFree86 be addressed by opening up the development effort (or possibly forking it), and by modularizing the system further, do seem like useful ideas. While (some of) the XFree86 folks seem to think that network transparency is irrelevant to "the majority" of desktop GNU/Linux users (that would be accomplished by 50%+1 users), I'd say that this isn's something I'd toss lightly. Network transparency is very useful, and lends itself to numerous neat hacks. Among them: * Dickless (diskless) workstations. Suck your apps over a remote link, display locally. * Local users sharing displays. * Multiple users sharing displays. * XNest. Running X-in-X sounds pointless...until you need to run at a different color depth, want to try another WM, or otherwise need to put a graphic environment in its own sandbox. * Display of remote apps on a local display. * Above. Tunneled through SSH. * Moving applications between displays (xmove). The main complaints I've seen articulated regarding X appear to be: 1. The development process has some lumps. This isn't an indictment of X, but of the XFree86 team. I won't say that this is fully independent of other aspects of development (e.g.: architecture, licensing, code quality), but it's a loose corrolary. 2. New hardware is supported slowly. I don't know enough of what's going on here to comment meaningfully. The problem appears to be, however, a mix of vendor fuckwittedness, XF86's own internal methods and conflicts, and fnord knows what. When support does emerge, it generally appears to be pretty good -- high resolutions, many colors, good refresh rates. Not sure if there are driver goodies that GNU/Linux doesn't see, but all I want is my 1200x1600 @32bpp, 85Hz. 3. Performance bogs. I don't run high-end enough video to note this. Peter's the gamer, and doesn't complain about this (and Peter is of course loath to complain about anything that doesn't suit him perfectly...) And Peter responds: Aside - On the same hardware, Windows XP's OpenGL performance is slower than that achieved under X. Test application is Quake III Arena. I get 100FPS at 1024x768x32 (full detail + trilinear + 2xAA) while I only hit 90-95 under Windows with the same settings. This is a dual boot box, so hardware parity is absolute :-) 4. Configuration. In particularly, on-the-fly reconfiguration of X resolution and refresh [Note: I've just learned of XRAND in this topic today, need to look into it]. Somewhat obviated by the ability to use XNest and multiple displays. I don't use the latest'n'greatest GNOME/KDE stuff, just Debian's dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86, which walks through some pretty clear menu-driven options. I'll grant though that this remains a disadvantage, largely minimal though. [32]Knoppix addresses this by managing everything automagically -- even lets you specify your resolution and/or refresh at boot, and configures to spec. Well, sometimes. I've found resolution specs tend to be followed, but my refresh preference (85Hz) usually isn't. 5. Inconsistent interfaces. This speaks more to X's history, longevity, and success than anything else. X has Been Around the Block. A
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
On Thu, Sep 04, 2003 at 01:01:19AM +0300, Micha Feigin wrote: > Second is the fact that most people just use the OS they get with their > computer and are afraid to try and replace it. Plus, they already paid > for the M$ license (even if forcefully/unknowingly) so why switch to a > free one after you already paid for something. Same thing with macs/osX, > where its even harder to get linux to work. > Linux need to change its public image and start coming pre-installed. You're aware that this has already started to happen, right? Lindows are/were doing exactly this with cheap PCs sold by Wal-Mart in the US. > There is also the problem of too much options. Unlike M$ where people > exactly what program does a given job, on linux there are 10, and when > there are so many its actually sometimes harder finding the right one > for you or even finding what programs there are to do a given job. > Too much choice can sometime be as much a liability as not enough (as > much as I like the options). My impression of Lindows has been that they're presenting single applications for each niche, fixing this problem for their target audience. I'm quite sure others will follow. As far as Debian is concerned, we have our niche of providing maximal choice and power and I think it's right that we stay there. Many of the early contributors to and leaders of Debian wanted to make it something that could work well as a base for more customized distributions, and that seems to be succeeding quite nicely. To those who say that Debian has too much flexibility and choice for Mr. Average, I say: that's OK. Not everything has to cater for Mr. Average, and that still doesn't stop us doing useful things one level back and catering for the people who cater for Mr. Average. > Don't take from this that I don't like linux. I think its much better > then M$ and there are no alternatives for me for some of the things that > it offer, but its exactly those things that make, at list for the > moment, to be a non-option for the Joe-Public m$ user. I think there's a lot of work to do before we're ready to replace the major proprietary operating systems completely, but the situation is improving year by year so I don't see any grounds for despair. The balance is still swinging Microsoft's way, but is beginning to tip with news of organizations like the city government of Munich and major banks switching over, which erode the document format lock-in that Microsoft Office has had for many years. Once organizations are no longer locked in to what the organizations they deal with use, the balance can only tip further. In my opinion, it's only after that happens when we need to be ready for home users. Office use leads this kind of thing, and is easier because businesses can afford to hire sysadmins and provide basic training to smooth over the wrinkles. Only after that happens on a large scale do you start getting lots of office workers thinking "hey, I wonder if I could use this to handle things at home?", and so on. So I don't think it's necessary to prophesy doom because there are still problems that would confuse those who aren't so technically literate. We've got time to work on these, and it makes sense to be realistic about our audience in the meantime so that we don't do a disservice to those who are already interested and capable. Cheers, -- Colin Watson [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
On Wed, 2003-09-03 at 18:01, Micha Feigin wrote: > The main problem I see with linux is the lack of commercial programs. > Unfortunately for some stuff there is no way around it. For commercial > quality image/video processing for example there is no alternative at > the moment, or places where you need to be able to show reliability > certificates, which cost quite a lot with free software. Sometimes you > also need some to be legally liable if something goes wrong when running > critical systems, and that costs money. > I think that whats holding linux back from the home market is mostly > that people tend to stay with the preinstalled os they get with the > computer, since replacing it is usually to daunting for most users. Also > linux currently has a name as a hard to install/configure/maintain for > geeks only os. To get it into the home market, it needs to change its > market image and arrive preinstalled to change the market share. > I think this is well said. The fact is that, in my opinion, most people would be able to work quite satisfactorily with a good installation of KDE or Gnome, at least as well as with Win98. Where Windows has Linux beat is a) the OS comes pre-installed which just plain makes it easier, and b) there really is good consistently (not perfect, but good) between the way the start menu is configured from install to install. This is in contrast to both KDE and Gnome, where the K or G menu comes up with a mess of programs, not well organized into logical categories and submenus, and often with menu items created without the programs installed (for instance, a "Games" submenu even though I never install the games programs). The lack of good commercial apps really is a problem that we open source zealots don't want to acknowledge, and the reason it's a problem is very straightforward. While I think we would all agree that the quality of the Linux kernel, X, KDE, Gnome, etc is at least as good and often better (like the kernel) than the equivalent components in Windows-land, the fact is that many of the apps that we use regularly are not as slick, polished, or feature-rich as similar programs in windows land. I think that this is largely because while some of he large projects (kernel for instance) have many developers and a a fair number of those developers are working full time on Linux under the auspices of whatever Linux or non-Linux company sponsors them, a large number of the other programs that would be mighty useful for the Joe-Desktop-Windows-95 user are written by one guy in his spare time trying to hold down a day job - and it's just plain hard to get a lot of quality programming down in the odd hours between when the kids are in bed and when I need to go to bed myself to be up the next AM for my real (non-computer) job. Here's an example: digital photography. Kudos to the gphoto team aside, so far I've only been able to find ONE application that handles the highly useful task of importing digital photos either from a digicam or from jpg files on disk and displaying them in a photoalbum kind of interface, and that program is unfinished and sparse compared to similar programs for Mac or Windows systems. [Aside: This is not intended to be a poke at the guy writing this program, far from it - I wish he could work on it full time so that I could get it to use!] For the Mac you get iPhoto, the "definitive app" in this category; for windows there are many options including the highly rated Adobe Photoshop Album. But nothing at that level for Linux. The difference: the programs for Windows and Mac are developed by companies devoting teams to this full-time, so no wonder they make faster programs. Heck, if we could get as many people working on "lPhoto" for Linux as there are on the kernel... Another problem Linux faces is that frankly too much choice is as bad as too little. Having competing desktops, while often put forward as a advantage (choice is good), is fine if you are an enthusiast who likes experimenting with KDE, Gnome, Windowmaker, Blackbox, etc until you get just what you want, customized the way you want it. But for Joe-Desktop buying a computer, even having to choose between K and G during his standard Dedhat install is just a decision he cannot make - so he goes to Windows, where no choice really is a better choice. Having development efforts all focussed on ONE really good, fast, well-written desktop (with an advanced config mode for those who really really really want to customize the appearance and function of every last pixel) would, I think, really help Linux move onto the desktop. nl -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
On Tue, 2003-09-02 at 15:04, Yves Goergen wrote: > On Tuesday, September 02, 2003 12:42 PM CET, Nicos Gollan wrote: > > Windows OTOH was designed (and please don't start arguing whether > > "designed" is the right term... we all know what we think about that > > ;-) ) to provide a nice UI on a relatively powerful workstation > > without the whole overhead of a client/server concept which allowed > > to do a lot of nice things easily (transparency with an updated > > background, native 3D acceleration, font management that actually > > works, etc.). To be honest, were it not for the way Microsoft handles > > things, I'd be using it right now. I'd probably keep the servers in > > the basement running Linux, but for the desktop use Win would win. > > You see? All those things, a nice, responsive UI, that "font management that > actually works", all those little things keep me with Windows (XP for that Actually those are all the things that converted me to linux. Windows kept failing on me in all those respect every monday and thursday. I don't know what I am doing wrong, but the only thing that I had a problem setting up was dri, which I later found was quite east using the debian packages, and swsusp, which I am still having some problems with. > part) for my desktop. I have absolutely no doubt that a Unix/Linux system is > great for server systems that need stability, security and network features > more than X (in general they even have no monitor attached to it...). And > this is why I'm on this list. I want to learn how to successfully and > efficiently manage a Linux server for the public internet. > But, Nicos, if I understand you right, you see all the advantage the Windows > UI gives you, and you'd be using it, if it wasn't by Microsoft or Microsoft > wouldn't behave like they do? That's an interesting point of view, too. For > my part, (I've followed this thread up to here) it's just no decision to > switch to Linux for a desktop computer. I don't want to work customizing my > system that much (Joe Public...) to have it done what I want. Of course, I > will take my IDE and build some helpful little tools, as I did in the past > (and as I have the time for that), but installing Windows - it works. Some > minor optimizations here and there, and I'm happy with it. (Plus do many of > the previously mentioned points like 'hardware compatibility' or 'I want to > share that work with others' apply to me.) > > Now please don't hit me for that, maybe I'm not that geek as others here... > ;) > > -- > Yves Goergen > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Please don't CC me (causes double mails) -- Micha Feigin [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
At Thu, 04 Sep 2003 01:01:19 +0300, Micha Feigin wrote: > > On Tue, 2003-09-02 at 07:00, csj wrote: > > Indesign, a program for Joe Public?! Come on, how many Joe and > > Jane Public's are there who would be interested in doing > > high-quality layouts for outputs to color-separting film setters? > > We don't need In-Design. We need (gasp) M$ Publisher! > > Thats quite true, most people have no use for 99% of what even > the gimp can do, and those that need more don't have the rest > of the options. A mac is probably a better solution for those, > because if you do need photoshop you probably also need > freehand/after effects/etc which don't exist at all under linux > (and iirc not all of them also under M$ ) What Joe public needs > is a striped down version of gimp thats easier to use with some > nice scripts that create fancy web buttons, gif animations and > such. I don't know if a stripped down version of The Gimp exists. But I do know that there are already gimp scriptfu's for doing "fancy web buttons" and the like. > Linux need to change its public image and start coming > pre-installed. There is also the problem of too much > options. Unlike M$ where people exactly what program does a > given job, on linux there are 10, and when there are so many > its actually sometimes harder finding the right one for you or > even finding what programs there are to do a given job. Too > much choice can sometime be as much a liability as not enough > (as much as I like the options). I think you've stumbled on the fallacy that Linux is a system. You probably need to qualify the first word of that paragraph to "Linux distros". Linux is just a kernel. The rest of the OS are parts cannibalized from projects that Linus has no control over, indeed, might not even care for. The problem for the non-geek user is that most distros don't make a judgement call as to the best of the best. It's okay for me that I can use emacs to send mail. But maybe for the so-called "average user" ramming Evolution down their throats isn't such a bad thing. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
On Tue, 2003-09-02 at 08:48, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Neal Lippman declaimed: > > I'm just wondering if anyone has any info on why X seems to need so much > > CPU power? > > > > Way back when, probably around 1996 or 1997, I first tried to install > > Linux. Back then, I tried distro's from Corel and Redhat. My system was > > a Pentium 133 with 48 (and then 96) MB Ram. This system ran both Win 95 > > and Win NT 4.0 reasonably well, but when I made the switch and installed > > Linux, any sort of desktop - eg Gnome or KDE, not a vanilla WM) was just > > so slow as to be unusable. Eventually I gave up for a while and went > > back to WinNT for some time. > > > > For the past 3 years or so, my workstation has been exclusively Linux, > > first Mandrake on a PIII-800, and for the last year, I've been hooked on > > Debian on an Athlon XP 1700+, and on both of those systems performance > > has been just fine, so I didn't really think about the troubles I > > originally had, and when I did, I figured I must have done something > > wrong on my first install attempts on the Pentium system. > > > > A few months ago, I decided to put debian on my old Laptop, an IBM > > Thinkpad 770ED (PII-266, 64MB Ram). Once again, with KDE running, the > > desktop was so slow and unresponsive as to be really unusable (except in > > an xterm window). This is a system that has run Win95, Win98, and WinNT > > just fine over the years. > > > > So, my question is: Why does X seem to need so much more CPU power than > > windows - such that systems I have tried to use that worked fine with > > various windows flavors just were unusable with KDE loaded? I assume the > > problem isn't in Linux itself, since my old Pentium 133 was just fine > > with X not running, and enough people have attested to the ability of > > systems with Pentium processors running Linux without X being able to > > handle massive firewall, router, web server duties, etc. Maybe the > > problem is KDE and not X - but I had similar trouble with Gnome, so it > > isn't just a KDE issue. > > > > I'm just curious and wonder if anyone has any thoughts. > > > > Clearly we all think that it's the Window Manager, not X. My history > with various window managers: > > Tried Gnome, too big, too broken. > Tried KDE, too slow. > Tried Window Maker, nice but config editor was broken. > Tried Blackbox and haven't ever wanted to look further. If you don't care much for the eye and can handle menus instead of fancy toolbar, then flwm is great. Gnome was to big and bloated for me and I couldn't properly configure what I wanted. KDE no better. Its non configurable from a config file at the moment, but it is configurable in the source, and considering it took me less time to download the source, configure it, recompile it and reinstall, then it took me to try and go through the gnome configuration menus, thats good enough for me. > > YMMV, Paul > -- > Paul Mackinney > [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Micha Feigin [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
On Tue, 2003-09-02 at 07:00, csj wrote: > At Mon, 1 Sep 2003 19:32:19 -0700, > Marc Wilson wrote: > > > > Feel free to hit 'd' now, if you like, what follows is an > > opinion piece that apparently no one at all agrees with, given > > the state of the community > > I'm sorry. I pressed the wrong key. > > > On Tue, Sep 02, 2003 at 12:20:24AM +0200, Nicos Gollan wrote: > > > IMO the whole X(free) system needs a healthy kick in the > > > butt. It's one of the main factors in keeping Linux away from > > > the desktop, not just lacking in performance and features, > > > but also a royal PITA to configure with new problems cropping > > > up every five minutes. > > Some ex-X coders have already forked XFree86. There's already an > established dri project at sourceforge which is responsible for > creating the more bleeding edge 3D support for X (note the use of the > relative "more"). > > > Uh, no, what's keeping Linux away from the desktop is the lack > > of APPLICATIONS. Joe Public couldn't care less about X, or > > anything else, as long as it works. The idiot gamers aside, X > > is plenty for what Joe Public needs in a graphical environment > > as long as he can move windows around and open and close them > > when he needs to. > > True. All those people doing meaty 3D work with Linux are using > proprietary applications that are so expensive they can afford to > be cross-platform. > > > The gamers, of course, will never be satisfied until things > > have come full-circle and they're writing directly to the > > hardware again, without any abstraction layers at all in the > > way. > > > > But as long as there aren't equivalents to Photoshop (and I'm > > sorry, but Gimp ain't it, not while it doesn't do something > > basic like CYMK), InDesign or the equivalent (and TeX ain't it > > either), Office (yes, OOo may be there someday, but it isn't > > NOW), and an easy to use database (and the SQL server of your > > choice CERTAINLY isn't it), along with many other > > applications... Linux will be incredibly useful to the geeks > > and not at all to Joe Public. > > Indesign, a program for Joe Public?! Come on, how many Joe and > Jane Public's are there who would be interested in doing > high-quality layouts for outputs to color-separting film setters? > We don't need In-Design. We need (gasp) M$ Publisher! > Thats quite true, most people have no use for 99% of what even the gimp can do, and those that need more don't have the rest of the options. A mac is probably a better solution for those, because if you do need photoshop you probably also need freehand/after effects/etc which don't exist at all under linux (and iirc not all of them also under M$ ) What Joe public needs is a striped down version of gimp thats easier to use with some nice scripts that create fancy web buttons, gif animations and such. > BTW there's already WYSIWYG DTP under *n*x. Scribus. I say it's > already achieved parity with PageMaker version 5.0 (or at least > 4.0). That would be something like 8 years behind bleeding > edge. But for most users willing to learn the language of > professional DTP that would be enough. > > > Never mind the programming tools, the umpteen scripting > > languages, and all the rest. Joe Public doesn't need or want > > any of that. For crying out loud, we actually push the fact > > that Linux ships with gcc and Windows doesn't as a *benefit*! > > But it is. > > > And I count myself among the geeks. I use Linux in my home > > because I want to, and I'm willing to jump through quite a > > number of hoops to create an environment that exactly fits ME. > > To change things to fit ME. To adapt things that weren't > > necessarily intended for what I want to use them for to, well, > > do what I want them to do. > > > > Joe Public isn't. No, worse... he WON'T. And you can't make > > him. And all the rants about how Linux is about to take over > > the desktop, should take over the desktop, would take over the > > desktop if only MS wasn't out there sticking a knife in > > people's back... won't change that. > > No, I think the message is that over-priced, one-vendor fits-all > software is, as far as Joe Public is concerned, on the way out. > You miss the mark with OpenOffice.org. There are actually more > M$ users of OO.o than users in a *n*x environment (you can > include the proprietary Unices in the mix) > > Why should it be Linux? It could be Openoffice.org plus one or > the other free OS's around. And Debian is attempting to support > at least three kinds of them. > > > I'm sure that now I'm going to be gifted with umpteen > > slashcrap-esque rants about how wonderful Linux is, and how > > everyone's lives are immesurably enriched by it, and how > > they've been "MS-free" (like that's something worth worrying > > about) for just, well, forever, and how many people they've > > personally saved and led to Linux. Well, forget it. It's > > irrelevant. > > I don't think Linux is
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
On Tue, 2003-09-02 at 05:40, Scott C. Linnenbringer wrote: > On 01 Sep 2003 18:02:27 -0400, Neal Lippman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > <...> > > A few months ago, I decided to put debian on my old Laptop, an IBM > > Thinkpad 770ED (PII-266, 64MB Ram). Once again, with KDE running, the > > desktop was so slow and unresponsive as to be really unusable (except > > in an xterm window). This is a system that has run Win95, Win98, and > > WinNT just fine over the years. > > > > So, my question is: Why does X seem to need so much more CPU power > > than windows - such that systems I have tried to use that worked fine > > with various windows flavors just were unusable with KDE loaded? I > > assume the problem isn't in Linux itself, since my old Pentium 133 was > > just fine with X not running, and enough people have attested to the > > ability of systems with Pentium processors running Linux without X > > being able to handle massive firewall, router, web server duties, etc. > > Maybe the problem is KDE and not X - but I had similar trouble with > > Gnome, so it isn't just a KDE issue. > > Many have probably told you the issues about large desktop environments > like GNOME and KDE. Yes, this is true, but your issues could also be > attributed to bottlenecks which you don't get in Windows. > > If you are running hardware that isn't supported very well with either > open-source drivers or decent, up-to-date proprietary drivers, you will > suffer from your system being bottlenecked. Hardware manufacturers tend > to support only operating systems like Windows, and in proprietary form > only. Thus, the hardware works well on Windows because the drivers are > decent and supported, while drivers for alternative platforms like Linux > are nonexistent. And since Linux is a constantly changing kernel, along > with every other part of the operating system, it's difficult for > hardware manufacturers to keep up with proprietary drivers, and > open-source drivers aren't always an option for them. While Windows > changes at a snail's pace and is much more restrictive and centralized, > you get a wider range of hardware that runs well (I don't really know > of any hardware manufacturer for PCs that doesn't support their > hardware with Windows drivers.) > Actually ati and nvidia have rather descent support. I have had more problems with their card under windows then under linux actually. The only problem I had with ati is running dri on mach64 laptop which took some work. On windows I have to reinstall directx every two weeks since 3d starts locking up. And considering gnome and kde are bloated desktops, I still get ~70M of memory usage under gnome with a bunch of applets, icons, background image, servers in the background, multi-gnome-terminal + evolution + mozilla-firebird, and not much more when adding matlab (before I start making it sweat of course ;-) ). Windows 2k comes up with ~85M memory footprint before I load anything, xp even more, and thats before anti virus + ~20M and if you want to connect to the Internet another ~15M for a firwall. Laptops tend to be more of a problem, but they are usually not less of a hustle with windows, in my case even more. The main problem I see with linux is the lack of commercial programs. Unfortunately for some stuff there is no way around it. For commercial quality image/video processing for example there is no alternative at the moment, or places where you need to be able to show reliability certificates, which cost quite a lot with free software. Sometimes you also need some to be legally liable if something goes wrong when running critical systems, and that costs money. I think that whats holding linux back from the home market is mostly that people tend to stay with the preinstalled os they get with the computer, since replacing it is usually to daunting for most users. Also linux currently has a name as a hard to install/configure/maintain for geeks only os. To get it into the home market, it needs to change its market image and arrive preinstalled to change the market share. > This is so true for video acceleration, too. The two leading video card > manufacturers, NVIDIA and ATi both only release proprietary drivers > (some better than others) for their latest cards. Support for older > cards probably doesn't even exist, though ATi has released the full > specifications on some older cards that are still rather nice, and thus > we have open-source drivers. Matrox also only has proprietary drivers > for their Parhelia line of cards. And there's no guarantee how well > these drivers are, since the manufacturers don't focus too much energy > in that direction, and there will be a new kernel series approaching > rapidly. And plus, some of these drivers are built and packaged for Red > Hat only, so that adds to a variety of problems that could occur if you > wanted to have it work right on Debian. > > Also, many people are bottlenecked by chipsets and miscellaneous devices
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
On Mon, 2003-09-01 at 18:02, Neal Lippman wrote:
> I'm just wondering if anyone has any info on why X seems to need so much
> CPU power?
Nope, runs fine here and in production environments.
> Way back when, probably around 1996 or 1997, I first tried to install
> Linux. Back then, I tried distro's from Corel and Redhat. My system was
> a Pentium 133 with 48 (and then 96) MB Ram. This system ran both Win 95
> and Win NT 4.0 reasonably well, but when I made the switch and installed
> Linux, any sort of desktop - eg Gnome or KDE, not a vanilla WM) was just
> so slow as to be unusable. Eventually I gave up for a while and went
> back to WinNT for some time.
I started with RH5.2, Gnome and a P75 w/ 16M of ram. I didn't notice any
"real" ('Reality is relative...') performance difference between win95
and RH5.2 so I stuck with it. (Well at least until I was shown the light
of Debian's Potato :)
> For the past 3 years or so, my workstation has been exclusively Linux,
> first Mandrake on a PIII-800, and for the last year, I've been hooked on
> Debian on an Athlon XP 1700+, and on both of those systems performance
> has been just fine, so I didn't really think about the troubles I
> originally had, and when I did, I figured I must have done something
> wrong on my first install attempts on the Pentium system.
I ran a P3-800 and now run an Athalon XP 1700+ and things have only
gotten better.
> A few months ago, I decided to put debian on my old Laptop, an IBM
> Thinkpad 770ED (PII-266, 64MB Ram). Once again, with KDE running, the
> desktop was so slow and unresponsive as to be really unusable (except in
> an xterm window). This is a system that has run Win95, Win98, and WinNT
> just fine over the years.
I have personally never gotten KDE to run "nice" at any point in my
computing history. Gnome 2.2 on the other hand runs very nicely on my
Celeron 266 Toshiba w/ 64Mb ram (now upgraded to 196M and man it runs
snappy-fast).
> So, my question is: Why does X seem to need so much more CPU power than
> windows - such that systems I have tried to use that worked fine with
> various windows flavors just were unusable with KDE loaded? I assume the
> problem isn't in Linux itself, since my old Pentium 133 was just fine
> with X not running, and enough people have attested to the ability of
> systems with Pentium processors running Linux without X being able to
> handle massive firewall, router, web server duties, etc. Maybe the
> problem is KDE and not X - but I had similar trouble with Gnome, so it
> isn't just a KDE issue.
> I'm just curious and wonder if anyone has any thoughts.
>
> Thanks.
> nl
Here's a thought: Why does it seem that an orange takes more effort to
eat than a microwave dinner? The microwave dinner is so fast 'cause all
I do is throw it into the nuker, hit a preset and in no time my food's
ready, but that damnable orange just takes so much effort! And I know
it's not a problem with the orange peel 'cause I've tried different
types of oranges and it's still just as tiresome!
(Technically, the microwave dinner took more effort because someone had
to prefab the item first, then market it and sell it to the consumer.
The orange on the other hand didn't need manufacturing and instead only
needed harvesting etc.)
Now to complete the circle of dots...
Windows has it's GUI functions INSIDE the kernel itself, does not
partake in any extended functionality [that can rival XFree86]. Is very
much built for the primary purpose of looking good, and (possibly more
importantly), always looking (and feeling) as fast as possible. When you
want skin-deep responsiveness, _any_ version of windows is good enough.
Windows has baggage ("security" and "privacy" seem to me to be the top
issues amongst other things) that renders the benefits of speed useless
if not counter-productive ("...Look Ma! Outlook can send 6-Billion
emails per second with my new hardware and virii!...").
They have to look good, it's all they've got.
When you want a real solution; use the right tool for the right job. Use
GNU/Linux and all of it's feature-full baggage and do what I do; _Enjoy_
the [debatable] lag because it's FREE!
P.E.A.C.E.
--
Kevin C. Krinke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Open Door Software Inc.
--
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Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
At Wed, 3 Sep 2003 13:41:05 +1000 , Joyce, Matthew wrote: > > > > Uh, no, what's keeping Linux away from the desktop is the > > lack of APPLICATIONS. Joe Public couldn't care less about X, > > or anything else, as long as it works. The idiot gamers > > aside, X is plenty for what Joe Public needs in a graphical > > environment as long as he can move windows around and open > > and close them when he needs to. > > Computer games have consistantly pushed harware and programming > to the limit. There have been computer games for as long as > there have been computers. > > Idiot gamers ? How rude. Idiocy has been known to test the limits of a system ;-). -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
I'm not a gamer myself. Occasionally I might play a game of chess on the net, and on an install the first things I get rid of are games. They just take up too much space, because they simply aren't condusive to the direction I'm heading in. BUT:- The lad has a point. If it wasn't for gaming, graphics cards, processor development, and a number of other computor applications would be stuck at a stage not all that far advanced from the point of electricity invention Gaming has been , if not the foremost innovating force, at least in the top two. Regards, David. On Wednesday 03 September 2003 13:49, Jesse Meyer wrote: > On Wed, 03 Sep 2003, Joyce, Matthew wrote: > > There have been computer games for as long as there have been computers. > > [quibble] > > The first computers were not driven by electricity. > > Why don't you take a history lesson first before commenting on computers > and computer games? > > [/quibble] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
there are some really petty people on this list. which is a shame. -- > -Original Message- > From: Jesse Meyer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Wednesday, 3 September 2003 3:52 PM > To: Debian-User > Subject: Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power? > > > On Wed, 03 Sep 2003, Joyce, Matthew wrote: > > There have been computer games for as long as there have been > > computers. > > [quibble] > > The first computers were not driven by electricity. > > Why don't you take a history lesson first before commenting > on computers and computer games? > > [/quibble] > > -- > Nifty linux app: > bitlbee : use your favorite IRC client to interface with > aim, icq, msn > messenger and yim (www.lintux.cx/bitlbee.html) > icq: 34583382msn: [EMAIL PROTECTED]yim: tsunad > -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
On Tue, Sep 02, 2003 at 04:28:02PM -0500, Alan Shutko wrote: > fonts. So, if you have a new font, you may need to tell > OpenOffice.org about it, X about it, GS about it > > This is gradually getting better now that we have fontconfig, which > hopefully gives all the info all apps needs, but to suggest that xfs > is sufficient merely shows you haven't done much with fonts. FYI, I'm just playing with the fontconfig patch from Ximian for the next openoffice.org package. If all goes well, it'll end up in unstable soon. Chris (OOo packager) pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
On Wed, 03 Sep 2003, Joyce, Matthew wrote:
> There have been computer games for as long as there have been computers.
[quibble]
The first computers were not driven by electricity.
Why don't you take a history lesson first before commenting on computers
and computer games?
[/quibble]
--
Nifty linux app:
bitlbee : use your favorite IRC client to interface with aim, icq, msn
messenger and yim (www.lintux.cx/bitlbee.html)
icq: 34583382msn: [EMAIL PROTECTED]yim: tsunad
pgp0.pgp
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RE: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
> Uh, no, what's keeping Linux away from the desktop is the > lack of APPLICATIONS. Joe Public couldn't care less about X, > or anything else, as long as it works. The idiot gamers > aside, X is plenty for what Joe Public needs in a graphical > environment as long as he can move windows around and open > and close them when he needs to. Computer games have consistantly pushed harware and programming to the limit. There have been computer games for as long as there have been computers. Idiot gamers ? How rude. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
Derrick 'dman' Hudson wrote: On Mon, Sep 01, 2003 at 08:09:53PM -0400, Neal Lippman wrote: | what would be the obstacle [...] for a new graphics paradigm to sit | atop Linux? You already listed the obstacles. Anyways, FWIW here are some projects attempting to redesign how graphics are handled : http://www.directfb.org/ http://www.ggi-project.org/ < uhh, some other project working on an entire graphics architcture but I don't remember the name and a quick google search didn't reveal it > are you thinking of berlin? erik -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
On Tue, 2003-09-02 at 14:32, Marc Wilson wrote: > But as long as there aren't equivalents to Photoshop (and I'm sorry, but > Gimp ain't it, not while it doesn't do something basic like CYMK), InDesign > or the equivalent (and TeX ain't it either), Office (yes, OOo may be there > someday, but it isn't NOW), and an easy to use database (and the SQL server > of your choice CERTAINLY isn't it), along with many other applications... > Linux will be incredibly useful to the geeks and not at all to Joe Public. GIMP now has CMYK. :) I don't know when it appeared, since my use of GIMP very basic, but it's there. The version on my desktop is 1.3.19, although it may have been there a bit longer. Open Office - I agree, v1.1, when it's released, should be everything 99.95% of people need (Access type applications not withstanding) btw. I've already converted a couple of people, most notably my parents (!). I can't really speak on business desktop apps (I haven't done enough research to comment one way or the other), but most home users (gamers not withstanding), seem to limit themselves to 'net browsing, email, instant messaging, IRC, word processing, perhaps some spread sheets, those simple little games like crack-attack. The biggest use seems to be movies and music - which Linux is completely capable of. Anyway, my orginal point was that GIMP has CMYK, that is all. :) Regards, Edward P.S. I agree that Linux completely ready to kick Windows of the desktop in all areas, but it is surprising the number of areas where it is, especially compared to say, a year ago. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
On Mon, 01 Sep 2003, Michael Heironimus wrote:
> X usually doesn't need much CPU power, as long as you have a reasonably
> well-supported video card. Your problem is that you're running GNOME and
> KDE, which are huge, bloated, and slow (and I'm being kind in saying
> that). They have been for a long time, since before their first 1.0
> releases, and new versions seem to have been bloating even faster than
> new releases of Windows have been.
I'm probably repeating yet-another-X-fallacy (such as the infamous
`X is slow because it uses client/server architecture):
Under the pre-2.6 vanilla Linux kernels, multitasking was orientated
more towards servers - perhaps one process would be a little slow, but
things would keep chugging along.
With the low latency patches to 2.4 and the new code in 2.6, desktop
machines are supposed to be more responsive, making X seem quicker.
Again, please take the above with a grain of salt - I've heard it
repeated several times, but I have never seen benchmarks to prove that
latency is an issue.
~ Jesse Meyer
[ Happily using fluxbox and liking X windows - working fine for me with
1 server and client programs on 2 machines. ]
--
Nifty linux app:
bitlbee : use your favorite IRC client to interface with aim, icq, msn
messenger and yim (www.lintux.cx/bitlbee.html)
icq: 34583382msn: [EMAIL PROTECTED]yim: tsunad
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Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
Wayne Gemmell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
[...]
>Thats almost all my memory gone. I'm thinking of downloading koffice
>just to do day to day things because if I tr load any other programs
>the system becomes unbearable!
Just a warning: don't mind trying to export a kspread sheet to some
other format, it's severely b0rken. I've just got a segfault when trying
to save in {Gnumeric,uncompressed xml,...} format in sid's version, and
a no-can-do error message in Mandrake 9.1's one.
Better go with Gnumeric if you're not planning to do some severe bug
reporting/fixing (although it's my duty to encourage you to do so ;-)
>Just my thoughts --> lemme know if I'm way off base.
I've just tried... :o)
--
Cristian Gutierrez Linux user #298162
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.dcc.uchile.cl/~crgutier
"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but not
in practice." -- Anonymous
--
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Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
On Mon, Sep 01, 2003 at 08:09:53PM -0400, Neal Lippman wrote: | what would be the obstacle [...] for a new graphics paradigm to sit | atop Linux? You already listed the obstacles. Anyways, FWIW here are some projects attempting to redesign how graphics are handled : http://www.directfb.org/ http://www.ggi-project.org/ < uhh, some other project working on an entire graphics architcture but I don't remember the name and a quick google search didn't reveal it > I found this interesting read while searching for that other graphics system design project : http://www.xig.com/Pages/Atop/SummitBenchmarks-CARDS.html -D -- Micros~1 : For when quality, reliability and security just aren't that important! http://dman13.dyndns.org/~dman/ pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
At Tue, 2 Sep 2003 12:31:21 +0200, Nicos Gollan wrote: > > On Tuesday 02 September 2003 06:00, csj wrote: > > Some ex-X coders have already forked XFree86. There's already an > > established dri project at sourceforge which is responsible for > > creating the more bleeding edge 3D support for X (note the use of the > > relative "more"). > > Judging from all the other attempts at establishing a new > graphic frontend, the only thing that will keep Xouvert from > just vanishing is - sadly - its X heritage. DRI is all nice but > it lacks vendor support (Radeon 9[5-9]00? no chance unless the > Weather Channel gets nice once more) and if a vendor is so nice > to publish drivers there's a guarantee somewhere in the GPL > (which doesn't even apply to Xfree) that some f* zealots > will curse them to hell and back for not being open source. I'd consider myself a near-zealot. However I don't mind using closed-source software from the very vendor of a product who has a monopoly anyway on the manufacture of the product. If the maker of VideoChip-X regularly provides free-beer binaries for GNU/Linux, and they're the only ones making it, then good. Such binaries are no different from firmware that's hardcoded or flashed into ROM. And we don't see that many people complaining about the closed source BIOS of their motherboard. > There's a problem of legacy (X itself) and mentality (hardcore > GNU dunces) which has been successfully keeping back *nix from > the masses since inception. It's middle management all over > again. I take it to mean that there are non-hardcore GNU dunces? But isn't GNU supposed to be not Unix? It's part of their master plan! They want the masses to convert to Hurd/GNU! Note that there's also the *BSDs. And I don't think their developers will confess to any substantial debt to the GNU project, except perhaps for the compiler. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
Erik Steffl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >> There is no central font management. For some time now, X seems to >> support > >what do you mean? you have font server (standalone or just use X >server). how much more central can you get? BTW AFAIK there's no >way to have standalone fontserver for windows. Since the font server can only deliver bitmaps to clients (even though it can read outline fonts, it rasterizes them before sending them over the wire) it isn't helpful to many programs. Any program which wants to antialias, use outlines, or send decent stuff to a printer needs its own access to fonts. Any program which wants more metrics than the X font protocol provides needs its own access to fonts. So, if you have a new font, you may need to tell OpenOffice.org about it, X about it, GS about it This is gradually getting better now that we have fontconfig, which hopefully gives all the info all apps needs, but to suggest that xfs is sufficient merely shows you haven't done much with fonts. -- Alan Shutko <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - I am the rocks. Bank on God for a higher rate of interest. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
Neal Lippman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > Aside from the present market penetration of X (which could also be > used to argue to stick with Windows instead of ever having adopted > Linux), what would be the obstacle (other than, of course, the > time/effort for development) for a new graphics paradigm to sit atop > Linux? [Yes, I know there'd be a lot of apps to redo and so forth as > well, although if there were a Gtk+ compatibility layer...) I see three ways in which you've answered your own question. Obstacles include (i) existing "market" penetration of X, (ii) time and effort required to develop a replacement, and (iii) a large installed base of existing X-compatible applications. -- Kevin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
> This doesn't look as if soffice.bin (StarOffice?) was the culprit, it's > rather a problem with CUPS (close to 60% memory used by this process > alone). Are you trying to print some color pictures on an inkjet printer? > That's a pretty memory consuming task since the picture would be rasterized > by the CPU and then sent to the printer in small chunks. With those > high-res color printers, there's a whole lot of small pixels to be stored. Hi, yes soffice.bin is open office. Cups in this instance is doning nothing but waiting for jobs... -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sorry for this (Was: Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?)
I'm really sorry for having started this one. I'll try to keep out of this discussion after this one and maybe we can let it die in peace ;-) On Tuesday 02 September 2003 22:15, Erik Steffl wrote: > > - QT seems to have some serious issues (google for "kde konsole fonts"). > >that's possible but is it X problem? I checked few email that google > found, seems like kde bug. not a reason to throw X out. What I found was that QT has problems with anything but a screen resolution of 100DPI (the DPI setting is one thing I really like about the whole thing). > > - Mozilla looks like something unspeakable unless you get it running > > with FreeType. And then there's a lot of guesswork to do with the min, > > max and gain settings until it's looking good. At least it looks better > > than anything else I've seen so far. > >on solaris the netscape looked ugly. on debian mozilla looks great. > >BTW it's IE (or is it windows?) that has very strange font settings > and then lot of stuff is too small in mozilla (netscape). don't remember > the issue. but yes, you can set the minimum size of fonts to get rid of > this fonts-too-small problem. but again, this is not an X issue but > application issue and it's being sorted out. The minimum font size was not what I'm talking about. You can fine-tune antialiasing in Mozilla with several parameters per font class to produce better results for your personal taste and system. With the default settings, some parts of characters were antialiased to almost white pixels so that it was all very hard to read. > > There is no central font management. For some time now, X seems to > > support > >what do you mean? you have font server (standalone or just use X > server). how much more central can you get? BTW AFAIK there's no way to > have standalone fontserver for windows. > > > truetype fonts and antialiasing, but for some strange reason nobody > > either knows how or wants to use it. > > I've been using true type fonts since forever, it got much simpler over > time (it used to be that you had to install special font server, now > it's more or less out of the box) If every application would use the font server, there would be no problem for me to get enraged about. It's just the fact that you have a configuration for the fontserver which does pretty much anything that needs to be done. Then along comes QT and wants to be told (1) whether to use the font server or not (2) antialias or not (3) what font sizes to exclude from antialiasing (4) what to do about hinting. 2-4 can be configured at font server level, so why bother at all (apart from per-user settings which may or may not be implemented in the FS)?!? I don't know about GTK, but I don't think there's much difference. The big killer application is Mozilla which then wants to use its own stuff via FreeType2 and - at least at the time I set it up - *needs a separate font index to do so*. Now you could argue that this is done to increase portability, but then it would just show the authors' combined reluctance to stick their heads together and write an adapter layer. -- Got Backup? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
Yves Goergen wrote: On Tuesday, September 02, 2003 8:51 PM CET, Yves Goergen wrote: So what libraries do I have to install (I guess I already have them all) and what's the correct value for $DISPLAY ? Ha! *big-grin* I got it... Just looking around in Webmin to find the Samba config and - zak - I found the SSH config ;) There was a switch that said it would disable X connection forwards Just changed that, and it works!! Cool... But I guess I'd never found it otherwise... another *big-grin* you would, because I have just sent you an email saying that ssh server has to allow X forwarding:-) sometime you can't avoid your fate... erik -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
Yves Goergen wrote: On Tuesday, September 02, 2003 8:00 PM CET, Erik Steffl wrote: btw the overhead of client/server isn't anything that one needs to be concerned about even on 386 (X with reasonable WM performs same/better as windows) Could be, yes (I don't know). Just as a note, Windows has the same feature. OK, a similar one. You can connect to a remote desktop and see all yep, similar. ... But by the way: 2 questions on that: I have set up a debian Linux box and would like to run X applications on it. I haven't installed nor run the X server on the Linux machine itself, but I'd like to tunnel the X connection through SSH. That works fine for my account at university. I can run my cygwin X server locally (with a window manager running from local, too. think it's blackbox or so) and run xclock on the SSH shell. But when I do this on my own computer, it says it "cannot connect to the display ". I actually don't know what this variable is for nor what would be the right value for it. I've tried the value from university, the one I entered in PuTTY (for X forwarding) and some others, but it just didn't work. So what libraries do I have to install (I guess I already have them all) and what's the correct value for $DISPLAY ? $DISPLAY is what is the default display used by apps, if you don't specify display on command line (lot of the X apps use -display command line options). it should be set to hostname:n.m (n is display number, m is screen number) if you are using ssh X forwarding (in case you say it does not work) - you have to make sure that ssh server allows it, that you specify it on command line (or config dialog with putty) and that you have rights to use X on local host (and that, after doing ssh you don't do su). If ssh sets up X forwarding it should sets the $DISPLAY, if it doesn't work it's probably problem with local X. You need to provide more specific info if you need more specific help (what you run and how and what are the error messages) And a question just of interest: Is there something like a global clipboard in Linux as we know it from Windows? I mean not only per application, but shared by the entire system (or maybe user, in this case). yes there is. it is somewhat more complicated then windows clipboard. generally you mark by left mouse button, adjust existing selection by right mouse button, paste using middle button. Some applications support keyboard shortcuts (shift-insert for paste, ctrl-x/c/v for cut/copy/paste etc.). If you have problems to copy&paste between apps try xcutsel (select, click on one of the buttons on xcutsel, try to paste, if it didn't work try the other button). also take a look at xclipboard. erik -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
Sorry for the separate post, but I found it too late... On Tuesday 02 September 2003 20:51, Yves Goergen wrote: > And a question just of interest: Is there something like a global clipboard > in Linux as we know it from Windows? I mean not only per application, but > shared by the entire system (or maybe user, in this case). There actually are three of them... http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/clipboards-spec/clipboards.txt The biggest problem: From the document: > A remaining somewhat odd thing about X selections is that exiting the > app you did a cut/copy from removes the cut/copied data from the > clipboard, since the selection protocol is asynchronous and requires > the source app to provide the data at paste time. Data isn't actually copied into the clipboard but merely a reference is kept. The document talks about "cut buffers" which only support ASCII data but which don't seem to have that problem. -- Got Backup? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
On Tuesday 02 September 2003 20:59, Wayne Gemmell wrote: > PID USER PRI NI SIZE RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM TIME COMMAND > 311 root 18 0 149M 148M 696 S 0.9 59.4 5:08 cupsd > 1870 wayne 10 0 40260 38M 30272 S 0.0 15.5 0:04 soffice.bin > 1916 wayne 9 0 40260 38M 30272 S 0.0 15.5 0:00 soffice.bin > 1917 wayne 9 0 40260 38M 30272 S 0.0 15.5 0:00 soffice.bin > 1918 wayne 9 0 40260 38M 30272 S 0.0 15.5 0:00 soffice.bin > 1919 wayne 9 0 40260 38M 30272 S 0.0 15.5 0:00 soffice.bin > 1924 wayne 9 0 40260 38M 30272 S 0.0 15.5 0:00 soffice.bin > 1926 wayne 9 0 40260 38M 30272 S 0.0 15.5 0:00 soffice.bin > 1927 wayne 9 0 40260 38M 30272 S 0.0 15.5 0:00 soffice.bin > [...] > > Thats almost all my memory gone. I'm thinking of downloading koffice just > to do day to day things because if I tr load any other programs the system > becomes unbearable! This doesn't look as if soffice.bin (StarOffice?) was the culprit, it's rather a problem with CUPS (close to 60% memory used by this process alone). Are you trying to print some color pictures on an inkjet printer? That's a pretty memory consuming task since the picture would be rasterized by the CPU and then sent to the printer in small chunks. With those high-res color printers, there's a whole lot of small pixels to be stored. -- Got Backup? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
On Tuesday 02 September 2003 20:51, Yves Goergen wrote: > I have set up a debian Linux box and would like to run X applications on > it. I haven't installed nor run the X server on the Linux machine itself, > but I'd like to tunnel the X connection through SSH. That works fine for my > account at university. I can run my cygwin X server locally (with a window > manager running from local, too. think it's blackbox or so) and run xclock > on the SSH shell. But when I do this on my own computer, it says it "cannot > connect to the display ". I actually don't know what > this variable is for nor what would be the right value for it. I've tried > the value from university, the one I entered in PuTTY (for X forwarding) > and some others, but it just didn't work. > So what libraries do I have to install (I guess I already have them all) > and what's the correct value for $DISPLAY ? $DISPLAY tells an X application the name/address of the X server's display so that its output shows up in the correct place. The SSH server should normally set that value so it takes the drawing commands and forwards them to the real server (your machine). For X forwarding to work you'll have to enable it both on the SSH client and the SSH server. On a debian system, look in /etc/ssh/sshd_config and set the variable X11Forwarding to 'yes'. The default line 'X11DisplayOffset 10' is used to avoid collisions with other X servers running on the same machine (you can actually set up several X servers on a single machine that take input from different mice and keyboards and send their output to different screens... kinda like extreme multiheading). The $DISPLAY variable should look something like ':0.0' for a local server and 'localhost:10.0' for the machine you're logging into via SSH. -- Got Backup? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
Nicos Gollan wrote: On Tuesday 02 September 2003 20:00, Erik Steffl wrote: why? it's true that in _some_ cases X isn't the _best_ performer but in general I find it much better than windows, mostly because of flexibility. You've made better experiences than I did, then... On each and every system I had the pleasure to work on so far (no, not all configured by myself...), Windows beat X in terms of subjective responsiveness. It just *feels* quicker to me. It's nothing to get really excited about. if you're using KDE and/or Gnome than yes, they are slow. Too slow. But we can expect them to get at least somewhat better as they mature, both of these systems are fairly complex and fairly early into development. compare the speed of mature WMs - pretty much all of them (except of enlightenment:-) are about the same or even faster than windows. provided you have 2d acceleration working, but that shouldn't be an issue on most cards. what do you mean native 3D acceleration? you need directX or openGL for 3d in windows, openGL (with DRI) in X. how is one more or less native? OK, "native" was a bad choice of words. Let's just put this in the "bad hardware vendor support" corner... I agree on that, you have to choose your HW if you want 3D (openGL + DRI) support. I used to have voodoo III (fairly good), now I've got nvidia (I use nvidia drivers, so far no problems, but binary only) font management: not sure what you mean. I have some fonts, I can pick which one I want to use (based on app). that describes both win and X. - One word: -adobe-courier-medium-r-*-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-*-15 most apps provide somewhat better interface to this, I mean you don't have to remember what that 12 stands for... - QT seems to have some serious issues (google for "kde konsole fonts"). that's possible but is it X problem? I checked few email that google found, seems like kde bug. not a reason to throw X out. - Mozilla looks like something unspeakable unless you get it running with FreeType. And then there's a lot of guesswork to do with the min, max and gain settings until it's looking good. At least it looks better than anything else I've seen so far. on solaris the netscape looked ugly. on debian mozilla looks great. BTW it's IE (or is it windows?) that has very strange font settings and then lot of stuff is too small in mozilla (netscape). don't remember the issue. but yes, you can set the minimum size of fonts to get rid of this fonts-too-small problem. but again, this is not an X issue but application issue and it's being sorted out. There is no central font management. For some time now, X seems to support what do you mean? you have font server (standalone or just use X server). how much more central can you get? BTW AFAIK there's no way to have standalone fontserver for windows. truetype fonts and antialiasing, but for some strange reason nobody either knows how or wants to use it. I've been using true type fonts since forever, it got much simpler over time (it used to be that you had to install special font server, now it's more or less out of the box) yeah, the real transparency is what we need. But for efficiency reasons, the clipped content of windows isn't transmitted so that's not so easy. (Disclaimer: I'd never have thought I would write such stuff some day. I've been using Linux/X for several years now and it has replaced my Windows installation for productivity purposes, but as it is now, I would *not* recommend it to a "standard user".) neither would I:-) as long as by "standard user" you mean somebody who doesn't know and doesn't care to know much about computers (not a bad thing by itself). But the reason is not X - the reason is installation/setup/maintenance/configuration - and it's being worked on. All major distros are getting easier to install - Lindows is supposedly pretty much as easy to use as windows (=similar to windows), knoppix can be booted straight from CD, both redhat and madrake have very nice setup/install... reminder: I was arguing that X is good, not that linux is for everybody or that all guis on top of X are good... erik -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
On Tuesday, September 02, 2003 8:51 PM CET, Yves Goergen wrote: > So what libraries do I have to install (I guess I already have them > all) and what's the correct value for $DISPLAY ? Ha! *big-grin* I got it... Just looking around in Webmin to find the Samba config and - zak - I found the SSH config ;) There was a switch that said it would disable X connection forwards Just changed that, and it works!! Cool... But I guess I'd never found it otherwise... -- Yves Goergen [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please don't CC me (causes double mails) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
On Tuesday 02 September 2003 20:00, Erik Steffl wrote: >why? it's true that in _some_ cases X isn't the _best_ performer but > in general I find it much better than windows, mostly because of > flexibility. You've made better experiences than I did, then... On each and every system I had the pleasure to work on so far (no, not all configured by myself...), Windows beat X in terms of subjective responsiveness. It just *feels* quicker to me. It's nothing to get really excited about. >what do you mean native 3D acceleration? you need directX or openGL > for 3d in windows, openGL (with DRI) in X. how is one more or less native? OK, "native" was a bad choice of words. Let's just put this in the "bad hardware vendor support" corner... >font management: not sure what you mean. I have some fonts, I can > pick which one I want to use (based on app). that describes both win and X. - One word: -adobe-courier-medium-r-*-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-*-15 - QT seems to have some serious issues (google for "kde konsole fonts"). - Mozilla looks like something unspeakable unless you get it running with FreeType. And then there's a lot of guesswork to do with the min, max and gain settings until it's looking good. At least it looks better than anything else I've seen so far. There is no central font management. For some time now, X seems to support truetype fonts and antialiasing, but for some strange reason nobody either knows how or wants to use it. > yeah, the real transparency is what we need. But for efficiency reasons, the clipped content of windows isn't transmitted so that's not so easy. (Disclaimer: I'd never have thought I would write such stuff some day. I've been using Linux/X for several years now and it has replaced my Windows installation for productivity purposes, but as it is now, I would *not* recommend it to a "standard user".) -- Got Backup? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
Excuse my ignorance but couldn't the problem (at least in some part) lie in the fact that everything is coded/compiled for a 386? Surely code could at least run more efficiently with code that is compiled to use things like MMX, MMX2 and 3Dnow technology? I find it insane that I'm gonna have to upgrade my memory just to run Konquerer, a print server and Open Office. Just look at these statistics from top. 20:54:12 up 1:38, 1 user, load average: 0.94, 0.29, 0.09 100 processes: 98 sleeping, 2 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped CPU states: 2.8% user, 1.6% system, 0.0% nice, 95.6% idle Mem:256156K total, 251956K used, 4200K free, 2304K buffers Swap: 136512K total,84580K used,51932K free,44340K cached PID USER PRI NI SIZE RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM TIME COMMAND 311 root 18 0 149M 148M 696 S 0.9 59.4 5:08 cupsd 1870 wayne 10 0 40260 38M 30272 S 0.0 15.5 0:04 soffice.bin 1916 wayne 9 0 40260 38M 30272 S 0.0 15.5 0:00 soffice.bin 1917 wayne 9 0 40260 38M 30272 S 0.0 15.5 0:00 soffice.bin 1918 wayne 9 0 40260 38M 30272 S 0.0 15.5 0:00 soffice.bin 1919 wayne 9 0 40260 38M 30272 S 0.0 15.5 0:00 soffice.bin 1924 wayne 9 0 40260 38M 30272 S 0.0 15.5 0:00 soffice.bin 1926 wayne 9 0 40260 38M 30272 S 0.0 15.5 0:00 soffice.bin 1927 wayne 9 0 40260 38M 30272 S 0.0 15.5 0:00 soffice.bin 1009 wayne 9 0 18316 11M 5708 S 0.0 4.5 0:28 kmail 1725 wayne 9 0 16904 7288 4680 S 0.0 2.8 0:09 kdeinit 575 root 13 -10 273M 7272 1660 S < 1.1 2.8 0:30 XFree86 982 wayne 9 0 11608 6536 6068 S 0.0 2.5 0:02 kdeinit 954 wayne 9 0 11384 6432 6028 S 0.0 2.5 0:27 kdeinit 1928 wayne 8 0 9796 5540 5320 S 0.0 2.1 0:00 kdeinit 992 wayne 9 0 10008 4976 4308 S 0.0 1.9 0:01 kget Thats almost all my memory gone. I'm thinking of downloading koffice just to do day to day things because if I tr load any other programs the system becomes unbearable! Just my thoughts --> lemme know if I'm way off base. Wayne -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
On Tuesday, September 02, 2003 8:00 PM CET, Erik Steffl wrote: >btw the overhead of client/server isn't anything that one needs to > be concerned about even on 386 (X with reasonable WM performs > same/better > as windows) Could be, yes (I don't know). Just as a note, Windows has the same feature. OK, a similar one. You can connect to a remote desktop and see all applications/windows on your client. It's called 'Terminal Services' and works a bit like X connections. Servers are available with Win2k Terminal Server or WinXP. Clients (also from third-party) work on any recent Windows. Some of them even display single windows on the 'server' as independant windows on the client desktop... nice feature. But by the way: 2 questions on that: I have set up a debian Linux box and would like to run X applications on it. I haven't installed nor run the X server on the Linux machine itself, but I'd like to tunnel the X connection through SSH. That works fine for my account at university. I can run my cygwin X server locally (with a window manager running from local, too. think it's blackbox or so) and run xclock on the SSH shell. But when I do this on my own computer, it says it "cannot connect to the display ". I actually don't know what this variable is for nor what would be the right value for it. I've tried the value from university, the one I entered in PuTTY (for X forwarding) and some others, but it just didn't work. So what libraries do I have to install (I guess I already have them all) and what's the correct value for $DISPLAY ? And a question just of interest: Is there something like a global clipboard in Linux as we know it from Windows? I mean not only per application, but shared by the entire system (or maybe user, in this case). -- Yves Goergen [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please don't CC me (causes double mails) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
Nicos Gollan wrote: On Tuesday 02 September 2003 02:56, Erik Steffl wrote: X is GREAT. just because a particular combination of software/hardware doesn't work well (too slow) doesn't mean there's a need to throw out the baby with the... X is really good at what it was built to be. It provides an interface to create contexts applications can use to draw to and to manage those contexts. Because it was designed for environments with semi-dumb terminals this will even work over a network. It does NOT provide a generalized toolkit for building UIs. All libraries like Xaw, QT, GTK and whatever just grab a window context and draw to them via a networked interface. Windows OTOH was designed (and please don't start arguing whether "designed" is the right term... we all know what we think about that ;-) ) to provide a nice UI on a relatively powerful workstation without the whole overhead of a client/server concept which allowed to do a lot of nice things easily (transparency with an updated background, native 3D acceleration, font management that actually works, etc.). To be honest, were it not for the way Microsoft handles things, I'd be using it right now. I'd probably keep the servers in the basement running Linux, but for the desktop use Win would win. why? it's true that in _some_ cases X isn't the _best_ performer but in general I find it much better than windows, mostly because of flexibility. btw the overhead of client/server isn't anything that one needs to be concerned about even on 386 (X with reasonable WM performs same/better as windows) I admit that it's somewhat inconsistent (huge number of different widget libs), not trivial to setup (that's mostly a thing of the past though) etc. what do you mean native 3D acceleration? you need directX or openGL for 3d in windows, openGL (with DRI) in X. how is one more or less native? font management: not sure what you mean. I have some fonts, I can pick which one I want to use (based on app). that describes both win and X. yeah, the real transparency is what we need. erik -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
Marc Wilson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > InDesign or the equivalent (and TeX ain't it either), Well, there's Pagestream, but it's commercial. I haven't used it on Linux, but I have on other platforms and it's a nice piece of work. -- Alan Shutko <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - I am the rocks. Lost Carrier? That's OK, I didn't want to land anyway! -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
At 2003-09-02T12:04:40Z, "Yves Goergen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > You see? All those things, a nice, responsive UI, that "font management > that actually works", all those little things keep me with Windows (XP for > that part) for my desktop. You can get all that from a Unix terminal, too - I use a snappy GUI every single day. The key is understanding that KDE and Gnome are *far* more than just GUIs; both are huge, object-oriented systems with all sorts of stuff running in the background. Try running WindowMaker, which offers a somewhat comparable level of functionality to explorer.exe. I can guarantee that it'll be quick and responsive. -- Kirk Strauser pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
On Tuesday 02 September 2003 02:32, Marc Wilson wrote: [snip] p.s. you're paying way too much for that cheap shit you're smoking. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
Neal Lippman declaimed: > I'm just wondering if anyone has any info on why X seems to need so much > CPU power? > > Way back when, probably around 1996 or 1997, I first tried to install > Linux. Back then, I tried distro's from Corel and Redhat. My system was > a Pentium 133 with 48 (and then 96) MB Ram. This system ran both Win 95 > and Win NT 4.0 reasonably well, but when I made the switch and installed > Linux, any sort of desktop - eg Gnome or KDE, not a vanilla WM) was just > so slow as to be unusable. Eventually I gave up for a while and went > back to WinNT for some time. > > For the past 3 years or so, my workstation has been exclusively Linux, > first Mandrake on a PIII-800, and for the last year, I've been hooked on > Debian on an Athlon XP 1700+, and on both of those systems performance > has been just fine, so I didn't really think about the troubles I > originally had, and when I did, I figured I must have done something > wrong on my first install attempts on the Pentium system. > > A few months ago, I decided to put debian on my old Laptop, an IBM > Thinkpad 770ED (PII-266, 64MB Ram). Once again, with KDE running, the > desktop was so slow and unresponsive as to be really unusable (except in > an xterm window). This is a system that has run Win95, Win98, and WinNT > just fine over the years. > > So, my question is: Why does X seem to need so much more CPU power than > windows - such that systems I have tried to use that worked fine with > various windows flavors just were unusable with KDE loaded? I assume the > problem isn't in Linux itself, since my old Pentium 133 was just fine > with X not running, and enough people have attested to the ability of > systems with Pentium processors running Linux without X being able to > handle massive firewall, router, web server duties, etc. Maybe the > problem is KDE and not X - but I had similar trouble with Gnome, so it > isn't just a KDE issue. > > I'm just curious and wonder if anyone has any thoughts. > Clearly we all think that it's the Window Manager, not X. My history with various window managers: Tried Gnome, too big, too broken. Tried KDE, too slow. Tried Window Maker, nice but config editor was broken. Tried Blackbox and haven't ever wanted to look further. YMMV, Paul -- Paul Mackinney [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
On Tuesday, September 02, 2003 12:42 PM CET, Nicos Gollan wrote: > Windows OTOH was designed (and please don't start arguing whether > "designed" is the right term... we all know what we think about that > ;-) ) to provide a nice UI on a relatively powerful workstation > without the whole overhead of a client/server concept which allowed > to do a lot of nice things easily (transparency with an updated > background, native 3D acceleration, font management that actually > works, etc.). To be honest, were it not for the way Microsoft handles > things, I'd be using it right now. I'd probably keep the servers in > the basement running Linux, but for the desktop use Win would win. You see? All those things, a nice, responsive UI, that "font management that actually works", all those little things keep me with Windows (XP for that part) for my desktop. I have absolutely no doubt that a Unix/Linux system is great for server systems that need stability, security and network features more than X (in general they even have no monitor attached to it...). And this is why I'm on this list. I want to learn how to successfully and efficiently manage a Linux server for the public internet. But, Nicos, if I understand you right, you see all the advantage the Windows UI gives you, and you'd be using it, if it wasn't by Microsoft or Microsoft wouldn't behave like they do? That's an interesting point of view, too. For my part, (I've followed this thread up to here) it's just no decision to switch to Linux for a desktop computer. I don't want to work customizing my system that much (Joe Public...) to have it done what I want. Of course, I will take my IDE and build some helpful little tools, as I did in the past (and as I have the time for that), but installing Windows - it works. Some minor optimizations here and there, and I'm happy with it. (Plus do many of the previously mentioned points like 'hardware compatibility' or 'I want to share that work with others' apply to me.) Now please don't hit me for that, maybe I'm not that geek as others here... ;) -- Yves Goergen [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please don't CC me (causes double mails) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
On Tuesday 02 September 2003 20:17, benfoley wrote: > as desktops, kde and gnome are complete hogs, both of which seem > obsessively determined to win a race that no-one beyond their developers > needs to give a rat's ass about. xfce is good. icewm is even less of a > resource drain, and fluxbox is also excellent, but pwm is really the > leanest window manager ever. personally, i'm hooked on kmail, which > involves a whole lot more of kde than i'd rather have to use, but with pwm > on a p2/166 laptop with 64megs of ram, it all works out just fine. > > ben Yep, I like kmail (and kppp), I always found it a bit off-putting that I had to download a huge chunk of KDE in order to get it. i.e. why isn't it packaged separately? Doesn't matter so much if I'm installing off CD, but when I was running KDE1 and Kmail1 (?) hit the 'billennium bug', I didn't _really_ want to upgrade my entire desktop (or distro) just for a mailer.So I tried Sylpheed for a while (not my style, though) until I eventually upgraded anyway. cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
On Tuesday 02 September 2003 02:56, Erik Steffl wrote: >X is GREAT. just because a particular combination of > software/hardware doesn't work well (too slow) doesn't mean there's a > need to throw out the baby with the... X is really good at what it was built to be. It provides an interface to create contexts applications can use to draw to and to manage those contexts. Because it was designed for environments with semi-dumb terminals this will even work over a network. It does NOT provide a generalized toolkit for building UIs. All libraries like Xaw, QT, GTK and whatever just grab a window context and draw to them via a networked interface. Windows OTOH was designed (and please don't start arguing whether "designed" is the right term... we all know what we think about that ;-) ) to provide a nice UI on a relatively powerful workstation without the whole overhead of a client/server concept which allowed to do a lot of nice things easily (transparency with an updated background, native 3D acceleration, font management that actually works, etc.). To be honest, were it not for the way Microsoft handles things, I'd be using it right now. I'd probably keep the servers in the basement running Linux, but for the desktop use Win would win. -- Got Backup? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
On Tuesday 02 September 2003 06:00, csj wrote: > Some ex-X coders have already forked XFree86. There's already an > established dri project at sourceforge which is responsible for > creating the more bleeding edge 3D support for X (note the use of the > relative "more"). Judging from all the pother attempts at establishing a new graphic frontend, the only thing that will keep Xouvert from just vanishing is - sadly - its X heritage. DRI is all nice but it lacks vendor support (Radeon 9[5-9]00? no chance unless the Weather Channel gets nice once more) and if a vendor is so nice to publish drivers there's a guarantee somewhere in the GPL (which doesn't even apply to Xfree) that some f* zealots will curse them to hell and back for not being open source. There's a problem of legacy (X itself) and mentality (hardcore GNU dunces) which has been successfully keeping back *nix from the masses since inception. It's middle management all over again. And thanks for picking up my point. -- Got Backup? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
On Mon, 1 Sep 2003 19:32:19 -0700, Marc Wilson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Uh, no, what's keeping Linux away from the desktop is the lack of > APPLICATIONS. Joe Public couldn't care less about X, or anything > else, as long as it works. The idiot gamers aside, X is plenty for > what Joe Public needs in a graphical environment as long as he can > move windows around and open and close them when he needs to. Yeah, but if the hardware isn't well supported, it doesn't matter what applications exist, because you can't use any. It's impossible at this stage for a typical user to go out, buy a copy of Red Hat, and install it on his system with the guarantee that his hardware will work out of the box. At least with Windows, that guarantee is there. And because hardware often times is only supported with proprietary drivers, there's no guarantee that your component will work with all distributions of XFree86, all kernels and all libraries. All of those individual traits make up the distribution and operating system, and with Windows, there's only one that hardware manufacturers have to abide by. And personally, I think the application support is there. With desktops like Ximian and Red Hat *already* being accepted into corporate environments where hardware purchases are made in mind of what software is going to be used, with adequate research by a professional department or consulting team, this has already been proven. It'll just take hardware support, for when this transfers to the home. -- Scott Christopher Linnenbringer [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.eskimo.com/~sl/info.txt [EMAIL PROTECTED] [NOTE: THIS MESSAGE IS DIGITALLY SIGNED WITH GNUPG/PGP] pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
On 01 Sep 2003 18:02:27 -0400, Neal Lippman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: <...> > A few months ago, I decided to put debian on my old Laptop, an IBM > Thinkpad 770ED (PII-266, 64MB Ram). Once again, with KDE running, the > desktop was so slow and unresponsive as to be really unusable (except > in an xterm window). This is a system that has run Win95, Win98, and > WinNT just fine over the years. > > So, my question is: Why does X seem to need so much more CPU power > than windows - such that systems I have tried to use that worked fine > with various windows flavors just were unusable with KDE loaded? I > assume the problem isn't in Linux itself, since my old Pentium 133 was > just fine with X not running, and enough people have attested to the > ability of systems with Pentium processors running Linux without X > being able to handle massive firewall, router, web server duties, etc. > Maybe the problem is KDE and not X - but I had similar trouble with > Gnome, so it isn't just a KDE issue. Many have probably told you the issues about large desktop environments like GNOME and KDE. Yes, this is true, but your issues could also be attributed to bottlenecks which you don't get in Windows. If you are running hardware that isn't supported very well with either open-source drivers or decent, up-to-date proprietary drivers, you will suffer from your system being bottlenecked. Hardware manufacturers tend to support only operating systems like Windows, and in proprietary form only. Thus, the hardware works well on Windows because the drivers are decent and supported, while drivers for alternative platforms like Linux are nonexistent. And since Linux is a constantly changing kernel, along with every other part of the operating system, it's difficult for hardware manufacturers to keep up with proprietary drivers, and open-source drivers aren't always an option for them. While Windows changes at a snail's pace and is much more restrictive and centralized, you get a wider range of hardware that runs well (I don't really know of any hardware manufacturer for PCs that doesn't support their hardware with Windows drivers.) This is so true for video acceleration, too. The two leading video card manufacturers, NVIDIA and ATi both only release proprietary drivers (some better than others) for their latest cards. Support for older cards probably doesn't even exist, though ATi has released the full specifications on some older cards that are still rather nice, and thus we have open-source drivers. Matrox also only has proprietary drivers for their Parhelia line of cards. And there's no guarantee how well these drivers are, since the manufacturers don't focus too much energy in that direction, and there will be a new kernel series approaching rapidly. And plus, some of these drivers are built and packaged for Red Hat only, so that adds to a variety of problems that could occur if you wanted to have it work right on Debian. Also, many people are bottlenecked by chipsets and miscellaneous devices not well documented/supported. This is a major reason why people aren't always getting the hard disk speeds/reads as they do in Windows. Luckily for that area, there are many good options. You just have to select carefully. I personally make sure all my hardware is well supported, documented and high quality. And I have a very nice setup that runs excellently with any type of operating system and software, with a souped up GNOME desktop. Plus, I've been able to do it on a budget of only being in high school without a job, so it can be done. ;) You just have to research/analyze your hardware decisions, and preferably select your hardware yourself. -- Scott Christopher Linnenbringer [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.eskimo.com/~sl/info.txt [EMAIL PROTECTED] [NOTE: THIS MESSAGE IS DIGITALLY SIGNED WITH GNUPG/PGP] pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
Feel free to hit 'd' now, if you like, what follows is an opinion piece that apparently no one at all agrees with, given the state of the community On Tue, Sep 02, 2003 at 12:20:24AM +0200, Nicos Gollan wrote: > IMO the whole X(free) system needs a healthy kick in the butt. It's one of the > main factors in keeping Linux away from the desktop, not just lacking in > performance and features, but also a royal PITA to configure with new > problems cropping up every five minutes. Uh, no, what's keeping Linux away from the desktop is the lack of APPLICATIONS. Joe Public couldn't care less about X, or anything else, as long as it works. The idiot gamers aside, X is plenty for what Joe Public needs in a graphical environment as long as he can move windows around and open and close them when he needs to. The gamers, of course, will never be satisfied until things have come full-circle and they're writing directly to the hardware again, without any abstraction layers at all in the way. But as long as there aren't equivalents to Photoshop (and I'm sorry, but Gimp ain't it, not while it doesn't do something basic like CYMK), InDesign or the equivalent (and TeX ain't it either), Office (yes, OOo may be there someday, but it isn't NOW), and an easy to use database (and the SQL server of your choice CERTAINLY isn't it), along with many other applications... Linux will be incredibly useful to the geeks and not at all to Joe Public. Never mind the programming tools, the umpteen scripting languages, and all the rest. Joe Public doesn't need or want any of that. For crying out loud, we actually push the fact that Linux ships with gcc and Windows doesn't as a *benefit*! And I count myself among the geeks. I use Linux in my home because I want to, and I'm willing to jump through quite a number of hoops to create an environment that exactly fits ME. To change things to fit ME. To adapt things that weren't necessarily intended for what I want to use them for to, well, do what I want them to do. Joe Public isn't. No, worse... he WON'T. And you can't make him. And all the rants about how Linux is about to take over the desktop, should take over the desktop, would take over the desktop if only MS wasn't out there sticking a knife in people's back... won't change that. I'm sure that now I'm going to be gifted with umpteen slashcrap-esque rants about how wonderful Linux is, and how everyone's lives are immesurably enriched by it, and how they've been "MS-free" (like that's something worth worrying about) for just, well, forever, and how many people they've personally saved and led to Linux. Well, forget it. It's irrelevant. Oooh, oooh, Windows, so evil, never ever ever use it, after all Joe Public might get some work done without having to worry about how the box is put together. Much better for Joe Public to spin uselessly in a corner trying to glue tools together and understand arcana. Yes, I'm sure. I must absolutely hate open-source, and all it stands for. I must be an evil tool that can't think for himself. How DARE I suggest that using our baby is anything less than religious nirvana? Save it... you're wrong and I'm not interested anyway. Do you advocates ever LISTEN to yourselves? Forget it. Our opinions don't matter. We're already part of the hive. Man on the street, HIS opinion matters. He doesn't want our next whiz-bang window manager, he doesn't want to know how technically advanced Gnome is, he doesn't want to know how much eye candy he can pump onto the screen with KDE. He wants to get the work done. And he wants to be able to share that work with OTHER PEOPLE. And as an example, the fact that he can take TeX, and produce absolutely beautiful output (and I'm learning TeX now, and it certainly can) is of no relevance to him as long as he has to learn to speak gibberish in order to use it. I *actually* got told the other day that Linux didn't need anything like Word, because it had TeX. Amazing. -- Marc Wilson | "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." - Bert Lantz [EMAIL PROTECTED] | -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
Neal Lippman wrote: ... Well, most replies to my posting have pinned the "blame" on KDE and Gnome rather than X per se. I'll have to reinstall on the laptop and see how it looks with a more minimal WM. I hope you're not reinstalling just to change the WM... This does still beg the question of how Win95/98/Me/NT, etc, managed to provide a reasonable "desktop" when KDE/Gnome could not, however. It both KDE and Gnome are under development, more effort is spent on having things actually working, adding/changing features etc. than on performance improvements. as others said if you don't have resources to waste just use something else, there's number of other WMs. You can definitely have more eye candy per buck in X than you can have in windows (because you have different types of eye candy available). hey, sco unix had pretty good X back on 40MHz 386 (certainly a lot better than win 3.0 or 3.1 or whatever version was out in '90 - '91). ... From what little I know of X, I'd tend to agree that X is being overtaxed supporting a desktop environment that it was never designed to do. Aside from the present market penetration of X (which could also be used to argue to stick with Windows instead of ever having adopted Linux), what would be the obstacle (other than, of course, the time/effort for development) for a new graphics paradigm to sit atop Linux? [Yes, I know there'd be a lot of apps to redo and so forth as well, although if there were a Gtk+ compatibility layer...) X is GREAT. just because a particular combination of software/hardware doesn't work well (too slow) doesn't mean there's a need to throw out the baby with the... that's not to say that X is perfect, far from it, but it's being worked on, it's very flexible and extensible and there is nothing better, at least now. btw there's a relevant slashdot.org article about Xr/Cairo (Xr was renamed Cairo), you can read something about how they plan to make better support for eye candy (vectors instead of bitmaps, because vectors are cheaper to transfer, easier to scale) erik -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
Neal Lippman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > This does still beg the question of how Win95/98/Me/NT, etc, managed to > provide a reasonable "desktop" when KDE/Gnome could not, however. I don't think either KDE or Gnome tries too hard at optimizing for older machines. -- Alan Shutko <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - I am the rocks. I need some duct tape. My duck has a quack in it. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
At Mon, 1 Sep 2003 19:32:19 -0700, Marc Wilson wrote: > > Feel free to hit 'd' now, if you like, what follows is an > opinion piece that apparently no one at all agrees with, given > the state of the community I'm sorry. I pressed the wrong key. > On Tue, Sep 02, 2003 at 12:20:24AM +0200, Nicos Gollan wrote: > > IMO the whole X(free) system needs a healthy kick in the > > butt. It's one of the main factors in keeping Linux away from > > the desktop, not just lacking in performance and features, > > but also a royal PITA to configure with new problems cropping > > up every five minutes. Some ex-X coders have already forked XFree86. There's already an established dri project at sourceforge which is responsible for creating the more bleeding edge 3D support for X (note the use of the relative "more"). > Uh, no, what's keeping Linux away from the desktop is the lack > of APPLICATIONS. Joe Public couldn't care less about X, or > anything else, as long as it works. The idiot gamers aside, X > is plenty for what Joe Public needs in a graphical environment > as long as he can move windows around and open and close them > when he needs to. True. All those people doing meaty 3D work with Linux are using proprietary applications that are so expensive they can afford to be cross-platform. > The gamers, of course, will never be satisfied until things > have come full-circle and they're writing directly to the > hardware again, without any abstraction layers at all in the > way. > > But as long as there aren't equivalents to Photoshop (and I'm > sorry, but Gimp ain't it, not while it doesn't do something > basic like CYMK), InDesign or the equivalent (and TeX ain't it > either), Office (yes, OOo may be there someday, but it isn't > NOW), and an easy to use database (and the SQL server of your > choice CERTAINLY isn't it), along with many other > applications... Linux will be incredibly useful to the geeks > and not at all to Joe Public. Indesign, a program for Joe Public?! Come on, how many Joe and Jane Public's are there who would be interested in doing high-quality layouts for outputs to color-separting film setters? We don't need In-Design. We need (gasp) M$ Publisher! BTW there's already WYSIWYG DTP under *n*x. Scribus. I say it's already achieved parity with PageMaker version 5.0 (or at least 4.0). That would be something like 8 years behind bleeding edge. But for most users willing to learn the language of professional DTP that would be enough. > Never mind the programming tools, the umpteen scripting > languages, and all the rest. Joe Public doesn't need or want > any of that. For crying out loud, we actually push the fact > that Linux ships with gcc and Windows doesn't as a *benefit*! But it is. > And I count myself among the geeks. I use Linux in my home > because I want to, and I'm willing to jump through quite a > number of hoops to create an environment that exactly fits ME. > To change things to fit ME. To adapt things that weren't > necessarily intended for what I want to use them for to, well, > do what I want them to do. > > Joe Public isn't. No, worse... he WON'T. And you can't make > him. And all the rants about how Linux is about to take over > the desktop, should take over the desktop, would take over the > desktop if only MS wasn't out there sticking a knife in > people's back... won't change that. No, I think the message is that over-priced, one-vendor fits-all software is, as far as Joe Public is concerned, on the way out. You miss the mark with OpenOffice.org. There are actually more M$ users of OO.o than users in a *n*x environment (you can include the proprietary Unices in the mix) Why should it be Linux? It could be Openoffice.org plus one or the other free OS's around. And Debian is attempting to support at least three kinds of them. > I'm sure that now I'm going to be gifted with umpteen > slashcrap-esque rants about how wonderful Linux is, and how > everyone's lives are immesurably enriched by it, and how > they've been "MS-free" (like that's something worth worrying > about) for just, well, forever, and how many people they've > personally saved and led to Linux. Well, forget it. It's > irrelevant. I don't think Linux is all that wonderful. After all, it's just the kernel. Gnome and KDE can both run under BSD. There's a Solaris port of Gnome. > Oooh, oooh, Windows, so evil, never ever ever use it, after all > Joe Public might get some work done without having to worry > about how the box is put together. Much better for Joe Public > to spin uselessly in a corner trying to glue tools together and > understand arcana. There are actually several studies which show that a properly configured Gnome or KDE environment is as easy to use as, at the very least Win9X. And most users are still stuck on that technologically inferior Windows version. So what's preventing the switch. I suspect it's the plain inertia. You use what you're used to. Th
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
On Mon, 2003-09-01 at 18:20, Nicos Gollan wrote: > On Tuesday 02 September 2003 00:02, Neal Lippman wrote: > > I'm just wondering if anyone has any info on why X seems to need so much > > CPU power? > > It's not X eating resources like mad, it's the way desktop environments > forcing it to do things that it was never meant to do.It was never meant to > display eye candy like KDE and Gnome feature. You'll find that it's doing > just fine with a "lighter" window manager that doesn't use transparencies and > tons of bitmaps for window decorations (FVWM2, OLWM, WindowMaker, etc.). > WindowMaker should run OK on a Pentium 266 measured on its performance on my > 150MHz laptop w/32MB RAM. After some time you won't miss too many things. > > IMO the whole X(free) system needs a healthy kick in the butt. It's one of the > main factors in keeping Linux away from the desktop, not just lacking in > performance and features, but also a royal PITA to configure with new > problems cropping up every five minutes. > > I'm going to bed now. But perhaps this one will keep people away from the > "Quoting" and C popularity threads which are scrolling off to the right; > reading them is like coding python with a tabwidth of 8. (xinerama is another > thing in X that's FUBAR while we're at it, I literally *lost my mouse > pointer* while trying to set it up.) > Well, most replies to my posting have pinned the "blame" on KDE and Gnome rather than X per se. I'll have to reinstall on the laptop and see how it looks with a more minimal WM. This does still beg the question of how Win95/98/Me/NT, etc, managed to provide a reasonable "desktop" when KDE/Gnome could not, however. It really doesn't seem to me that either KDE or Gnome provide a more complex desktop environment than Windows, at least not from the end-user perspective, even if the underlying OS (eg Linux vs Windows) is more robust and possible more feature-full. From what little I know of X, I'd tend to agree that X is being overtaxed supporting a desktop environment that it was never designed to do. Aside from the present market penetration of X (which could also be used to argue to stick with Windows instead of ever having adopted Linux), what would be the obstacle (other than, of course, the time/effort for development) for a new graphics paradigm to sit atop Linux? [Yes, I know there'd be a lot of apps to redo and so forth as well, although if there were a Gtk+ compatibility layer...) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
On Monday 01 September 2003 22:46, Michael Heironimus wrote: [snip] > If you want to run X on an older machine you should pick out a basic > window manager you like and use that. If you're really stuck on the idea > of a desktop environment you could also try XFce. Decide what it is that > you think you really need from KDE and see what else will give you that. > You can still use GNOME and KDE apps if the base systems are installed. > There isn't much that you can't do (and usually do better) without GNOME > or KDE. as desktops, kde and gnome are complete hogs, both of which seem obsessively determined to win a race that no-one beyond their developers needs to give a rat's ass about. xfce is good. icewm is even less of a resource drain, and fluxbox is also excellent, but pwm is really the leanest window manager ever. personally, i'm hooked on kmail, which involves a whole lot more of kde than i'd rather have to use, but with pwm on a p2/166 laptop with 64megs of ram, it all works out just fine. ben -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
On Tue, Sep 02, 2003 at 07:55:53AM +, benfoley wrote: > p.s. you're paying way too much for that cheap shit you're smoking. Like I said, do the "advocates" ever listen to themselves? -- Marc Wilson | Let he who takes the plunge remember to return it [EMAIL PROTECTED] | by Tuesday. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
On Mon, Sep 01, 2003 at 06:02:27PM -0400, Neal Lippman wrote: > Linux, any sort of desktop - eg Gnome or KDE, not a vanilla WM) was just > so slow as to be unusable. Eventually I gave up for a while and went > Thinkpad 770ED (PII-266, 64MB Ram). Once again, with KDE running, the > desktop was so slow and unresponsive as to be really unusable (except in > an xterm window). This is a system that has run Win95, Win98, and WinNT > So, my question is: Why does X seem to need so much more CPU power than > windows - such that systems I have tried to use that worked fine with > various windows flavors just were unusable with KDE loaded? I assume the > problem isn't in Linux itself, since my old Pentium 133 was just fine > with X not running, and enough people have attested to the ability of > systems with Pentium processors running Linux without X being able to > handle massive firewall, router, web server duties, etc. Maybe the > problem is KDE and not X - but I had similar trouble with Gnome, so it > isn't just a KDE issue. X usually doesn't need much CPU power, as long as you have a reasonably well-supported video card. Your problem is that you're running GNOME and KDE, which are huge, bloated, and slow (and I'm being kind in saying that). They have been for a long time, since before their first 1.0 releases, and new versions seem to have been bloating even faster than new releases of Windows have been. If you want to run X on an older machine you should pick out a basic window manager you like and use that. If you're really stuck on the idea of a desktop environment you could also try XFce. Decide what it is that you think you really need from KDE and see what else will give you that. You can still use GNOME and KDE apps if the base systems are installed. There isn't much that you can't do (and usually do better) without GNOME or KDE. -- Michael Heironimus -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
On Tuesday 02 September 2003 00:02, Neal Lippman wrote: > I'm just wondering if anyone has any info on why X seems to need so much > CPU power? It's not X eating resources like mad, it's the way desktop environments forcing it to do things that it was never meant to do.It was never meant to display eye candy like KDE and Gnome feature. You'll find that it's doing just fine with a "lighter" window manager that doesn't use transparencies and tons of bitmaps for window decorations (FVWM2, OLWM, WindowMaker, etc.). WindowMaker should run OK on a Pentium 266 measured on its performance on my 150MHz laptop w/32MB RAM. After some time you won't miss too many things. IMO the whole X(free) system needs a healthy kick in the butt. It's one of the main factors in keeping Linux away from the desktop, not just lacking in performance and features, but also a royal PITA to configure with new problems cropping up every five minutes. I'm going to bed now. But perhaps this one will keep people away from the "Quoting" and C popularity threads which are scrolling off to the right; reading them is like coding python with a tabwidth of 8. (xinerama is another thing in X that's FUBAR while we're at it, I literally *lost my mouse pointer* while trying to set it up.) -- Got Backup? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
On Tuesday, September 02, 2003 12:02 AM CET, Neal Lippman wrote: > So, my question is: Why does X seem to need so much more CPU power > than windows - such that systems I have tried to use that worked fine > with various windows flavors just were unusable with KDE loaded? I > assume the problem isn't in Linux itself, since my old Pentium 133 > was just fine with X not running, and enough people have attested to > the ability of systems with Pentium processors running Linux without > X being able to handle massive firewall, router, web server duties, > etc. Maybe the problem is KDE and not X - but I had similar trouble > with Gnome, so it isn't just a KDE issue. I'm not an expert on that but you might consider the 2 following points: - X (graphic UIs in general) will take more CPU power (and so time) because it's just more data to be processed. A window or a pixel image needs a lot more processing than simple console outputs. - It doesn't necessarily have to be plain X responsible for that. KDE and Gnome are both quite advanced desktop environments. They really do a lot of work in background, all those so-called shell extensions and so on. I'm sure your slower PCs are faster with a WM like BlackBox or something similar 'simple'. But why is Windows faster than KDE/Gnome? (Is it? I have no comparison on that.) Hmm, maybe it's because Microsoft has a little more experience (not only that XP one) in such things. I mean, they had a (simple) GUI for rather inexperienced users before anyone would have thought to use Linux for that task (right?). Who knows what's inside of the Windows source, maybe it's full of assembler in its core? But did you try a more recent Windows version of that computers? Maybe KDE/Gnome had the latest state-of-the-art features some time before you could find them in Windows (especially Win 95 and NT4 were rather - let's say spartanic). I'm sure you'll get the same slowdowns with Win2000 or XP as with KDE or Gnome. -- Yves Goergen [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please don't CC me (causes double mails) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
> Maybe the > problem is KDE and not X - but I had similar trouble with Gnome, so it > isn't just a KDE issue. hmm.. both Gnome and KDE are... BIG I mean they consume alot of resources I don't know exactly why.. but on my Duron 800mhz with 512 Mb Ram KDE was kinda bulky too... so I installed and am still runnig Window Maker - it's a great and very light for the CPU usage, alike there are many such window managers, flux for instance... just search the web, I'm sure you'll find more and if well configured, they can be even easier to use than KDE > I'm just curious and wonder if anyone has any thoughts. these are my thoughts :] -- with regards Lukasz Hejnak [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
I'm just wondering if anyone has any info on why X seems to need so much CPU power? Way back when, probably around 1996 or 1997, I first tried to install Linux. Back then, I tried distro's from Corel and Redhat. My system was a Pentium 133 with 48 (and then 96) MB Ram. This system ran both Win 95 and Win NT 4.0 reasonably well, but when I made the switch and installed Linux, any sort of desktop - eg Gnome or KDE, not a vanilla WM) was just so slow as to be unusable. Eventually I gave up for a while and went back to WinNT for some time. For the past 3 years or so, my workstation has been exclusively Linux, first Mandrake on a PIII-800, and for the last year, I've been hooked on Debian on an Athlon XP 1700+, and on both of those systems performance has been just fine, so I didn't really think about the troubles I originally had, and when I did, I figured I must have done something wrong on my first install attempts on the Pentium system. A few months ago, I decided to put debian on my old Laptop, an IBM Thinkpad 770ED (PII-266, 64MB Ram). Once again, with KDE running, the desktop was so slow and unresponsive as to be really unusable (except in an xterm window). This is a system that has run Win95, Win98, and WinNT just fine over the years. So, my question is: Why does X seem to need so much more CPU power than windows - such that systems I have tried to use that worked fine with various windows flavors just were unusable with KDE loaded? I assume the problem isn't in Linux itself, since my old Pentium 133 was just fine with X not running, and enough people have attested to the ability of systems with Pentium processors running Linux without X being able to handle massive firewall, router, web server duties, etc. Maybe the problem is KDE and not X - but I had similar trouble with Gnome, so it isn't just a KDE issue. I'm just curious and wonder if anyone has any thoughts. Thanks. nl -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
