On Monday 15 July 2002 01:46, Mark Vojkovich wrote: > On Mon, 15 Jul 2002, Lukas Molzberger wrote: > > Hello, > > in recent years many people were talking about Linux on the desktop. > > However, before there is any real chance that this could happen a few > > fundamential problems in XFree must be solved. These are: > > > > 1. XFree is far too slow. > > No it isn't. Your apps are stupid or the drivers you are using > are under accelerated. I'm using Mozilla for example and I'm sure that its not that app that is slow here since I've compared it with Mozilla on WinXP. It may well be that the driver is under accelerated. I'm the i810 driver, but my old notebook with an smi chip was even slower. I know that the Nvidia driver is much faster but as far as I know the 2D part is still slower than under Windows even so it actually uses the same driver.
> > > 2. What is presented on the screen should always be consistent (i.e. no > > flickering). > > (3. It should be possible to configure XFree over a dialog that is > > intergrated in Gnome and Kde.) > > Talk to the Gnome and KDE people then. True, but they can only change the XFree config file. Therefore XFree needs to be restarted to get the new configuration. > > > I'm sorry to say that and I really don't want to offend any people. But > > I've hardly seen any progress regarding these problems during the last > > two years and I don't see any way how this could change in the next two > > years. XFree is evolving very slowly despite the fact that some of the > > best developers are working on it. I think the reason for that is that > > XFree is far more complex than necessary for its intended job. > > You say it's too complex and then you say we need more features? I mean it has too much unnecessary complexety. I mean if the message system is only needed for the remote display feature then I'm really not sure if this feature is really worth the hassle. I've worked on two projects that contained an message system and in both cases it was a major problem that ate up a large chunk of the development time and it made the projects slow even if used on the same machine. > > > I know there have been countless discussions on the X messaging system, > > but most of them missed the point. That is that such a messaging system > > introduces an enormous amount of complexity. As far as I know the only > > reason for having the X messaging system is the remote display feature. > > But I guess that less than 5% of the XFree users are actually using this > > feature and there are already other solutions like VNC available. > > Another source of complexity comes from the ancient, more than 10 years > > old X API. Many people argue that one just has to add new extensions to > > keep XFree up to date. But this way X gets more and more complex. And why > > are the > > X is highly extensible by design. It's far less complex than > alternative window systems like MS Windows or OS-X and is probably more > extensible. I actually think that extensibility is a very good idea, but it doesn't prevent that API's age. > > > 2d graphics drivers in users space while the 3d drivers are in kernel > > space? > > You are mistaken. 3D drivers are not in kernel space. OpenGL is in > user space in every OS I can think of. I'm pretty sure there is 3D driver part in kernel space. And I think it would be a good idea to also put the 2D part there. For example to have access to the interrupts. > > > As a result of this complexity the developers working on XFree are less > > efficient and it also keeps new developers from joining this project. > > What I want to suggest is to start from scratch and design a new, clean > > and modern windowing system without any legacy. I know this would be a > > pretty radical cut, but I personally don't see any alternative to > > overcome the current problems of XFree. > > The main problem with a new graphics API would be to keep backward > > compatibility with the current application base. But this problem is easy > > to solve by just porting XFree to the new API, the way it is done for OS > > X and Windows. > > I think you have the wrong mailing list. XFree86 is an implementation > of the X-Window system. The key phrase here is "the X-Window System". > XFree86 is headed in the directions of an "X-Window compatible" system, > meaning we intend to extend XFree86 well beyond the base sample > implementation, and in many regards we have done this already, but we have > no intention of dropping what you call legacy support. > > As far as development being stuck, no, I don't think so. It's just > that the people who know enough about anything to get things done are > very few. True, but there are reasons for that. Cheers Lukas _______________________________________________ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
