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Graphics Software

DeXtop And Free Software 89

Posted by Hemos from the put-on-asebestos dept.
Rikul writes "Great article over at linuxplanet.com about Xi Graphics trying to remarket CDE under a different name, DeXtop. Aside from fact that DeXtop wouldn't work without Xi's X server, it also breaks many libraries that Gnome/KDE/e depend on. " The piece is definitely op-ed, but raises some interesting points.
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DeXtop And Free Software More

DeXtop And Free Software

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  • I have a Sun Ultra 10 happily running Helix Code Gnome 1.2 sitting on my desk right now. If XFree supported the Creator3D video card in the thing I'd nuke Slo-laris entirely and load Linux on it instead.

    CDE is the most horribly non-intuitive interface I've seen used with any amount of regularity. Xi should know better.
  • When I first read this, all I had to say was:

    BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

    This is probably one of the funniest things I have read on here in some time. Anyway, CDE and Motif really aren't *that* bad. The real problem is just the look. They *look* antiquated and outdated. Besides the fundamentals of it breaking apps not specifically written for CDE, it just plain out *looks* worse than KDE/Gnome/Enlightenment/WindowMaker/AfterStep... etc. CDE may be the standard now, but many people are straying away from it for the same reasons. It is ugly. We know that prettiness does not equate to functionality, but come on man! If it looked half-way decent I am sure so many people would not have been so quick to install KDE/Gnome/etc... as CDE (or some look-alike clone) would have been around on linux long before now. Had Xi done this 4 or 5 years ago, it would have been something major. Now, it is just a joke.
  • This attempt on the part of Xi is ultimately self-defeating. Xi are intending to sell DeXtop to a community of open source advocates that already have two free superior products, not only readily available, but also up and running.

    Eskimo's don't pay for ice - let alone ice from polluted water. (Penguins don't either. ;-)

    Why even bother afterall? I remember using CDE on clasic old Solaris boxes, and I always went running back to OpenLook to save my sanity. CDE is just too damn counter-intuitive.

  • Display Ghostscript, perhaps?
  • Uhm... that article isn't comparing X-Server performance... at all.

    It does speak of difficulties when
    - using DeXtop with XFree
    - using it with popular distributions
    - using it with other non-Motif software

    Sorry, I checked the article again, but I just
    don't see where you're coming from.
    Apologies if I missed something obvious...

  • I've heard the same complaints about them, but I haven't tried their product (for obvious reasons).

    I also have a dualhead, but I haven't gotten to try it out yet. I guess I'll suffer through trying to do it with XFree, but I'm pretty sure that it's supported...
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • Their marketing department is bad about spamming Usenet groups, they flooded mags like LJ for a while with obnoxious ads declaring the superiority of Xi's X server, and now, they ship a renamed CDE whose installation breaks KDE/GNOME and won't run on anything other than a Xi X server?

    No, I don't see a problem at all. =)
  • If you are looking for the most arrogant Linux software vendor in the Linux community, XiG is it.

    I am sick of XI Graphics stupid marketing slogans like this:

    "Sick of that 'free' X server crashing? then try ours" or "Or X server is up to 100 times faster than the 'free' X server"

    Uh, what is that? XFree86 never crashed on me and works pretty fast, fast enough, that I wouldn't tell a difference with naked eye anyways.

    The only valid reason to buy their X server is support hardware that is not supported by XFree86,
    but uh, you should have bought the supported hardware in the first place if you are going to run Linux on it. Hardware support issue is changing pretty fast anyways.

    Regarding CDE, this is the worst piece of unix software that I have ever seen. No wonder Sun and HP are bailing out of CDE business. As someone who is using CDE on Solaris every day I can tell you that it is

    1) Slow and bloated
    2) More importantly, even trivial configuration is often accomplished by editing obscure text files which are sometimes even not well documented. Uh What is that? In my opinion a GUI is a GUI or it is shit. point. If you sell a gui, at least make it configurable through a GUI interface as well.

    Unless XiG comes up with a new product that is actually worth paying money for, they'll go out of business pretty soon.
  • Well. This review just rocks, and I thought I would share a couple of choice snippets with the audience.

    Under Windoze95/NT, it screamed (well, for Windoze) but under Linux and X windows, it was a real dog! The problem certainly wasn't the hardware! Also, I knew that it couldn't be the software, as I've seen it run fast under Windoze... Sort of. The problem was that the Imagine 128 card was supported but not accelerated. That is, all of it's hardware acceleration features were completely unused. Without them, the board was a plain old VGA with high resolutions. I knew exactly what I needed, having heard of Accelerated-X before.

    Ah-ha! Good thing this unbiased reviewer had heard so many good things about Xi's products before, or he might not have even done this review!

    Unfortunately, we find out towards the end of the glowing review copy this somewhat interesting fact:

    I want to clear up one misconception right off the bat. Neither Accelerated-X or even Metro-X support hardware 3D acceleration! They do it through software. Curious that Metro-X mentions this on their site, but not Xi Graphics. However, Xi Graphics is developing a 3D hardware accelerated X server. See their Website for more information. Basically it's still under development though.

    Woot, Xi sure is great. Keep checking that website, cause this is next on their list after the massive impact of a (dramatic trumpet flourish) Standard CDE Interface!

    Read: We've taken an interface that sucked even when people used it years ago, and standardized a proprietary version of it, all for you! With all this time you waste asking questions, you could be upgrading to Xi-CDE and zooming along with Xi-Accelerator. And it's all free, and best of all, no one will ever be able to write those tricky little improvements to our codebase.

    Mmmmm.

    JDaemon

    If it seems like I'm bitter, it's because I am.
  • /*
    There are just 97 days till the beginning of the 21st century and the next millennium!
    */

    You, me, and about 100 calendarists from around the world can join in on the big celebration. Yay. 8-)
  • Woot, another pro-Xi post from Mr. Unbiased Observer, with the stench faintly masked by the light batter of faintly critical user-talk.

    Check out an earlier response of mine to his "review", cause I'm not going to put it here again.

    That great Xi buzz continues. [slashdot.org]

    JDaemon

  • When I was at Berkeley, the CS department had several badly overcrowded labs full of HP-UX boxes (712/66, or something, I think), and the policy was that if someone left a workstation unattended for more than 15 minutes, you could log him out and take it. A friend once told me that he had made the mistake of doing this to the wrong guy: the guy came back a bit later, which led to the following conversation:

    Guy: "Hey, what are you doing on my workstation?"
    My friend: "I logged you out; you were gone for half an hour, so the policy says it's mine."
    Guy: I see. [walks away]

    A few minutes later, bad things started happening to my friend's session, as in, it stopped responding and eventually died. The guy must have gone to some other machine and done something evil to this one. Our best guess was that he had fired off about a dozen compiles (it only took three or four to bring those things to their knees at the best of times), or maybe a forkbomb (I tried that once, and it didn't handle it any better than the last Linux box I tried it on). I now suspect that he must have done something like what you describe (cat a binary to his /dev/tty6. By the way, does it have to be a binary file, i.e., illegal input, or is the problem just contention on the device?)

    I guess it was one of those "Meddle not in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are quick to anger and have no need of subtlety" things. The lesson was that those labs can be a dangerous place, since you never know who's capable of what. As long as you figure that the average person in there knows more than you do, you want to step carefully.


    David Gould
  • > Try dragging a Netscape icon from the file manager into one of the sub-panels.

    Try dragging the netscape bookmark widget (the one to the left of the Location bar) to a folder. Crash. Actually I like those drawers in the panel (especially the "install icon" drop target), I just wish they would make the damn thing a little narrower and have it dock to the bottom of the screen. Then again it's kind of moot now since I don't use CDE anymore, and it would seem that very soon, neither will Sun :)
  • (has the qt thing been resolved?

    Hey, I dunno if you followed a link to /. recently, but the war's over! :D

    seriously, they went dual-liscencing (QPL or GPL, take your pick) 'bout a week or two back.

    -Jo Hunter

  • > I know. I AM the author.
    Then perhaps you ought to reread what you wrote.
    The number9 was supported, as noted in your article, just not accelerated- which is why acceleratedX was faster. Why was XFree's driver so slow? Because #9 wouldn't release specs without an NDA. Xi was able to sign NDA's since they didn't have any problems releasing binaries without source, so they had the information needed to provide accelerated support for the #9 Imagine. And where is #9 today?
    • I thought the free KDE and GNOME would have finished off CDE long ago
    They have effectively done it for the Linux community. Not too long ago, I remember that Red Hat was selling its highest priced boxed distribution with a port of CDE and MetroX. However, if you buy any expensive Unix set, even still, it comes with CDE. The shipping version of Solaris comes with CDE and OpenView, although that will change according to Sun.

    What is ultimatly being said to the Linux community is "Here, you want to be like the bug ugly Unix systems you've managed to defeat? Buy this, and pray it works." ... What their marketing department doesn't understand is that we're using Linux for some damn good reasons, and that if we wanted CDE, we would have embraced it long ago. If I wanted CDE, I'd go get Solaris for Intel.

  • Seems to be the biggest problem with CDE is customizing it to your own needs.

    Sure the default icons and whiz-bangs are cute, like the spinning globe clock and what-not...

    But adding a "dt action" is not intuitive and most of the time, half-assed. Try dragging a Netscape icon from the file manager into one of the sub-panels. You would THINK that Netscape is now point-n-click on that panel. It is not. You end up with something that fires up a dialog box asking for parameters, then you get a terminal window that Netscape is started up from, then you finally get Netscape. This should really be a lot easier...

    Stupid shit like this is what made CDE less than desirable, IMO. It's a cool window manager if you learn the keystroke accelerators, but stupid things like the above just kinda ruin it!

  • I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to report you to the analogy police...

    Uhhhhh ... that's going to earn you a booking with the sarcasm police.

    YHBT. HAND.
    (jfb)
  • How do you think things like Red Hat for Sparc work? ;>
  • Back in college we had CDE installed on some PA-RISC HP-UX boxen. I discovered that you could telnet to a box and cat binary files to /dev/tty6, which would promptly log off the user if they were using CDE. I doubt this was a CDE bug, ( why could I cat anything to a terminal someone else was using ) but it made for fun when my friends were browsing the web and doing nothing. All of a sudden blam, and they were staring at a login screen. Needless to say, I switched to twm.

    OOhh... the Internet is on computers now...good for it.
    --Homer Simpson
  • /*
    (Not to mention that they wanted about $200 for a driver to run my card and it appeared like I would have to spend alot more to get everything I use running.)
    */

    If I ever spend $200 on a *graphics card* I'm gonna have to shoot myself. Really, who wants to spend that much for a graphics *driver*? Yeah, it's technically an X *server*, but when I went to order, I stopped myself because, at the time, I had a cheap card and said to myself, is $200 for a driver for a $50 card really worth it? I couldn't justify it.

    OFFTOPIC SLIGHTLY:
    We should be pushing hardware manufacturers more to release X servers for their graphics cards. Even if they're not the ones who wrote the X server. Why? Well, it's a matter of principle. They ship a Windows driver, there's an X server available. Just because they ship it doesn't mean they have to *support* it. What scares me is that some hardware is now shipping with a disclaimer stating that if you use your hardare on an OS other than Windows or MacOS, you could void your warranty. I (think this is right; I'd have to dig out the manual) have a Mustek cheapo scanner that's "licensed" like this. Sheesh. Or maybe it was my sound card. I don't remember.

  • I had no idea any serious company could operate in such ways, and live.

    This is usually the beginnings of the end. The last Unix company I remember that seriously marketed the "But, with Linux, it's all run by a bunch of grubby hackers - you don't want to trust your business to that, do you?" was SCO...and they didn't last very long after that.

    Let's face it - providing for lots of money exactly what others provide for free isn't a very good business model.

  • The author of the article probably didn't try to make it look better. The default KDE and GNOME setup, last I knew, also looks ugly. Motif is easier to theme for because it inherits X widget properties. A crude X theme could simply be made by adding to .Xdefaults the lines:
    **foreground: White
    *background: #9B009B00B900

    Also the author didn't mention any disadvantages of GNOME and KDE. Last I used GNOME, it was extremely slow starting compared with CDE, because of unnecessary programs that it tries to start. These caplets only functioned well when started by gnome and poorly in shell scripts. It was difficult to get GNOME to not start them because it would overwrite my gnome config files. Also, some of what the caplets do could be better handled by preexisting programs. For example, the mouse properties caplet could be handled by xset. This leads me to think that GNOME is not very modular.
  • One thing people should consider is that Xig has been selling CDE and Motif in some form for many years. Long before GNOME, KDE, or Qt have been around. The article makes it seem that Xig suddenly decided to produce a CDE product, after everyone decided to go down the route of GNOME or KDE. If that was so, I'd agree that Xig was being stupid. But this is an EXISTING product. They used to be in competition with Redhat's Triteal CDE. It was already there, they've just been keeping up with the OSF's patches. It used to cost $250+. But with the coming of OpenMotif, they didn't have to buy Motif from the OSF. Motif 2.1 itself was something like $200.

    It's not like Xig is trying to sabotage anyone else's efforts. Back when they ported Motif and CDE, people thought Motif was the future. Linux was still a small force, used mainly by UNIX workstation fans that wanted to reproduce the same setup at home. But now they're "stuck" with it, so obviously they'd like someone to still buy it. Their products have always had tiny userbases. But they're also a tiny company. They're so small that they beg people to let them borrow boards so they can add support. In return you get a free copy of AccelX. I think they know they'll never have anything but a niche market. They'll be lucky if they can maintain any niche.
  • Acutally, isn't KDE supposed to have originally been a replacement for people familiar with CDE? Hence the similar name.

    With regards to the Xi CDE install hosing the Xfree installation, in Xi's defense, if you're going to go to all the trouble of purchasing an X server and CDE for your machine, why would you want to run the previously-installed freeware GUI? I think the reviewer/hobbyist got a copy and expected everything to go smooth as silk the entire way, and the install hosed his box, and he got all pissy and wrote a scathing review.

    I occasionally use CDE under Solaris at work, it's not as utterly horrible as everyone seems to be making it out to be, but it's definitely not as "good" as KDE. Dtterm in particular is not what I'd choose as a day-to-day workhorse, but on the other hand Konsole isn't that great either.

  • I have a Matrox G400 Max; I compiled UTAH-GLX for it, and run XFree86, and it's *fast*, and I'm happy.

    Therefore, I have this to say to people who try to sell commercial X-servers for Linux for my card for $200 and up: Nyah nyah! And I have this to say to people who use it: I've got an X-server to sell you, cheap; it's really great, and widely used!
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • Log into any Solaris box... Most of them have it on it. I personally love the CDE.

  • I personally love the CDE. It does what it does, and it's pretty good at it. Not only that, but I think that it's attractive, and intuitive and all that other bs.

  • They ported CDE before GNOME or KDE came about, and the maintainence cost is small. The OSF wrote all the code, so they just had to do a little porting and then keep up to date with the OSF's source tree. They probably figure they might as well try to sell it until people stop buying it.
  • I have my Matrox driver working now. The new Matrox drivers work very well. (I even have the agpgart code working in the 2.2.x kernels.)

    My frustration with XiG needs to be clarified though.

    They charge too much for a product that I can get elsewhere for free or near free. (All I really needed was dual monitor support anyways. The rest worked fine right out of the box.)

    They are nasty and churlish in reguards to other members of the Open Source community who compete with them.

    Both good reasons to have nothing to do with them.
  • Nobody says you have to use the default console - the RH6.2 I used up until today didn't even include eTerm, which I installed myself. Sure, you may not like it, but that's the whole theory behind Linux - What you do with your system is up to your taste - we'll just give you the tools.

    Tell me what makes you so afraid
    Of all those people you say you hate

  • I'll take it off you if you are serious.....
    how much?
  • Memories...

    Back in my getting-an-education days, we had some sort of Unix box that I'd be buggered if I can remembered what it was. We'd telnet in to do our dreaded cobol assignments. Ugh.

    Out of sheer bordom and somewhat youthfull stupidity, I noticed that when someone was logging on, there TTY would become world readable for about 1 minute. Perhaps to allow some sortof wierd-messed up MOTD daemon run or something.

    I wrote this horrid little script then that watches LOGINS, and at the moment of LOGIN, it'd send a BANNER CHUNGA LIVES > /dev/{userstty?} (Wierd Zappa reference in there.

    It was hours of fun, but got me in big trouble.

    This was on a machine where the root was telnetable into and the password was 'SECRET'. They sure where trusting back in those days.

  • What scares me is that some hardware is now shipping with a disclaimer stating that if you use your hardare on an OS other than Windows or MacOS, you could void your warranty.

    LOL, how are they going to tell what OS you are using? "Hmmm, I smell herring on this sound card... it's that damn penguin! No refund for that Linux user."

    "Free your mind and your ass will follow"

  • You shouldn't take Xi's statements so seriously. They are only targeting business users who already run other systems using CDE, and would like to run a Linux box with the same interface, and want to have a company to gripe at if something goes wrong.

    All ads use exaggeration in lauding the company's products. You have to take it with a grain of salt. When they say "Only one X server for Linux offers quality, performance and stability" it really means "our X server is stable and high-performance, and we take support calls." It is not really commenting on other X-servers.

    It's like when Exxon advertises that they "put a tiger in your tank." So do all the other gasolines. They're just trying to create a positive mental image of their own product, and they can't sound blase about it or you wouldn't buy it.

    The popularity of Linux proves that free GUIs are here to stay, too.
  • My gripe is the same - they don't provide, in my mind, a significantly better product, they charge an outrageous sum for it, and then have the nerve to badmouth the open source community (mind you, I don't consider them PART of the open source community - the only piece of code I've seen come out of XiG that was open source was the agpgart kernel driver).

    I almost wish there werre a law like the one (IIRC) in the UK, that specifically bans advertising that trashes on the competition. I also mentioned my gripes to one of their representatives at LinuxWorld this summer in San Jose - they said they would look into it. Yawn.
    _____
  • last time I looked at the linux.x11 usenet group, the Xinside marketing pukes would blast their blatant ads anytime someone asked a question about how to configure xfree86 ('I'm having trouble getting xyz to work. anyone have any ideas?'. "yeah, buy our Xig server, blah, blah, blah").

    I got so tired of seeing their spam, I swore NEVER to even consider buying their stuff.

    --

  • Are they planning on removing the RPC crap?
    That (aside from the pallette) is the most annoying thing about CDE.
    [phpwebhosting.com]
    nerdfarm.org
  • And if you'd use html properly, then we wouldn't have to get a 404, but could instead go to xyu.dhs.org [dhs.org].
  • CDE... that rings a bell. Wasn't that a failed effort to get UNIX' X-windows interface standardized... but blew up because it was hard to code for, wasn't self consistent, and was incompatible with everything else?

    I smell a marketing department here...

    --

  • At one time, I used an HP 9000-712 just because I could do CDE on a nice big 20-inch screen. I silently put up with slow and buggy code (dtterm has several nasty breakages, for example), because it was at least somewhat usable.


    Now, my main user box is an SGI Indigo 2, and I use KDE on my Linux systems. CDE? Why bother?


    Anyone want a nice HP cheap?
    --

  • I thought the free KDE and GNOME would have finished off CDE long ago, mostly because they're free (as in speech and beer) and for the most part, Open Source (has the qt thing been resolved?) If those haven't wiped CDE off the map, nothing will.

    Tell me what makes you so afraid
    Of all those people you say you hate

  • 'Tis a pity, too.

    At least a while back their stuff used to be pretty good...
  • Oh my God! Does this scare anyone else? It seems like Xi is trying to become the next Microsoft, with "proprietary" extensions!

    And isn't this old news? I seem to remember some posting about X or Gnome in the last month or two. Slashdot has really started to repeat themselves.

    Finally, I'd like to start a boycott of Xi. Even though I have never bought any of their products before, and was not planning to do so anytime soon, I'm sure that by announcing a boycott I will be able to bring this corporation to its knees, screaming for mercy.

    Together we shall triumph!

  • ok - let me clarify my last post a little bit.

    in case it wasn't clear (and I think it may not have been), it was their marketing pukes that spam usenet with their blatant ads couched as 'helpful reply posts'. it was not the engineering guys at Xi. I have respect for Thomas Roell (sp?) who has helped out in areas that weren't 100% Xi related. he seems a nice enough guy. I still choose not to support their company (they've been told time and time again to stop their method of advertising on usenet, to no avail) but I did want to make it clear that not everyone over there is a lousy spammer.

    just some of them.

    and no, I wasn't forced to post this - I just wanted an accurate record to be portrayed.

    --

  • really! This is the sort of bullshit I would expect to hear from Microsoft, and it might work with the computer-iliterate people that use windows. How many computer-illiterate people do you know running Linux?
    The engineers working for this company should slap the marketing department, and quick! They're making the company look ridiculous.

    Just look at the crap they put on their website:
    Graphical Linux Needs a Stable GUI Right out of the distribution box, Linux is just a kernel. If it is going to be used on the desktop or a laptop, it needs a Graphical User Interface. That means a window manager, a desktop manager and an X server as starters. Which window manager, desktop manager and, most important, which X server is chosen will determine the quality and stability of the resulting operating system. Expecially the X server. The X server will be the primary determinant of the Graphical Linux installation stability. Only one X server for Linux offers quality, performance and stability.

    Like, hello, duh!! after intalling any modern Linux distro, you get a very nice GUI and Desktop. And, unlike with this crap, as long as you install libs for both KDE and gnome, apps targeted at one will work with the other too.
  • I prefer syrup.

    NOOOOOOOOOO! DON'T send me to the tossed salad man!!!!!
  • I think "great" might be overrating it a bit. The author bought a piece of barely supported (by XFree86) hardware and then bought AX. If you want to experience a similar effect, try this:
    1) Buy ATI VGAWonder(Circa 1989 or so).
    2) Be amazed at how slow XFree runs
    3) Buy a Matrox G400.
    4) Be amazed at how fast XFree runs
    5) Write an article lauding XFree

    Short version: Buying poorly supported hardware will color your impressions of software. Most tests show XFree to be pretty equivelent to AX on modern graphics cards...
  • "Also, keep in mind that applications written to "target" a freeware GUI such as Gnome, KDT, Enlightenment, or one of the others floating around out there, likely will not work with the industry standard CDE, on which DeXtop is based."

    So basically, they tell you that all the up to date, brand spanking new, award winning (ok...and mozzila too...) free software on available for linux won't work when you use their product?

    Sounds like a shoe in for Best Acid Trip at LWCE 2000, with great potential for a repeat award. I wonder if the marketing guys at their boot knew why everyone was pointing and laughing at them.
  • Posted by polar_bear:

    Xi Graphics is doing what they can to keep their outmoded business model afloat. They based their business model on the fact that years ago Linux didn't have a real "desktop" or X servers for a large number of video cards. Now they're finding that their products don't have the features to justify the price over the freely available tools. It's too bad they are taking this tack instead of changing their business model.

    I can't say I'll cry over CDE going to the dustbin - I had to use it for a while as part of my old company's "standard" desktop and hated it with a passion. Their X server for my ATI card also proved buggier than the freely available XFree server - I've never had an XFree server bug out on me, but the Accellerated X product crapped out on me at least once a week. (Having a crash is quite shock when you're used to working with Linux and not having them - it's really catastrophic!)

    By the way - if you do happen to like the look and feel of CDE (sick bastard) there's always XFce, the GPL'ed CDE clone. Much smaller memory footprint too.
  • I first started Xaccel with BSD/OS 2.0. It came with a free single-user edition of Xaccel 1.2 . Was something like 1993-1994. I later bought a copy of 2.1 for Linux and have been upgrading since then, up to version 5. So something like $99 + 2*$50 in payment to Xig over a period of 4 years.

    I'm not really sure that it was worth it. But I have been very impressed with the performance and display quality of their X server. I started with a Matrox Mystique, followed by an i740, and then an Nvidia TNT2-Ultra. I've tried to buy cards that would be supported by both XFree86 and Xig, in the hopes that XFree would get to the point where I could ditch Xig. So far, I haven't seen matching quality in XFree86. Maybe I'm just picking the wrong video cards. I've tried XFree86 on ATI Rage 128's as well. With XFree86 3.3.6 on an Xpert 2000, there is a screen distortion whenever I move my mouse. Sometimes scrolled text will appear on the root window. I was surprised, because ATI cards are usually well supported in XFree86.

    That said, Xaccel has its own problems as well. In newer releases of Xaccel, I got screen corruption from the Mystique. The i740 also had problems. Xig's response was basically that so few of their customers were using the cards at the time, that they never knew of any such problems. Xaccel on the Xpert 2000 also makes text disappear in a crucial area of our product, so we ended up going back to XFree86. Although XFree86 is slower, it always behaves correctly and it doesn't crash. If a driver worked well at some time, it usually stays working well. Xaccel's support for older hardware gets worse and worse with new releases. Even hardware that's just 2 years old won't work properly.

    Xig also refuses to support XFree86 extensions like DGA. These have become required for xquake and tv card applications. They refused to support DGA because they claim their MIT-SHM implementation is so good that it wasn't necessary. And now there's DGA 2.0, required by VMware, and several other extensions. Xig doesn't officially plan support for any of them. This is probably the last release that I'll buy from them. If only I could find a hardware combination that works well with XFree86.
  • I haven't seen any aggrevious "marketing spiels" on the X newsgroups lately; the clueless PR guy got "stomped on" pretty good the last time, and it looks as if they may have gotten the clue that it's wiser to say nothing at all rather than to pull the You're having problems? Dump XFree86 and buy our product! thing with all the attendant bad publicity.

    My usual reaction to thoughts of buying Accelerated X is to suggest, as a thought, that the gentle reader consider:

    • Spending the $200 on a card that is supported by XFree86 [xfree86.org];
    • Spending $100 on a supported card, and donate $100 to XFree86.

    The one situation where Xi's products really might commend themselves are where you want to use a really high end 3D graphics card in conjunction with a heavily tuned OpenGL implementation.

    The other arguable situation where one might need Xi is when you get yourself into the unfortunate condition of having bought a laptop for which XFree86 does not support the video chipset.

    Although I think I'd rather do business with MetroLink, personally...

  • What I'd like to see is a clean-cut description of how to implement the look-n-feel changes to Motif apps (like Netscape 4.x) that CDE does, i.e.

    "flat"-looking scrollbars

    check-boxes instead of diamonds

    flatter menus and panes

    Look, for example, when you run Netscape under Linux, vs. Netscape on Solaris. All the .Xdefaults examples I've seen including:

    *enablethinthickness
    *thickness 1

    etc, don't seem to do the trick. Anyone know how to do this?

    Ken

  • Get it from Manumit [manumitinc.com]. Their CDE is half the price of XiG's and far more complete (XiG CDE lacks several major components like the Information Manager).

    CDE is actually fairly nice technology, and if you don't like the look you can customise it through X resources.

  • Probably.
    As long as it was a large file, you're ok. I think I refined my form and created a huge (500MB) file and just catted that. For added effect, the file consisted entirely of beeps, so as the terminal died, it went down beeping. Sometimes it was better just to cat a whole directory of files /usr/bin or something. It was quite funny when it happened. I wouldn't do it if someone was doing work though. That's just mean.
  • actually I remember seeing on the xfree homepage that the creator3d card is supported in XF 4.0.1 with DRI no less. See the change log...

    Peter
    --
    www.alphalinux.org
  • That's really sad, considering all it takes is the ability to count! :)
  • Apparently a lot of people are having a hard time with that. :)
    _____
  • The fact that they (MetroLink) contribute to the open source community (I don't consider one small kernel driver on XiG's part to be significant), if I was going to spend money on an X server, they're the first ones I'd look into doing business with.
    _____
  • Umm, unless you want to rewrite at least glib, gtk, and qt, and probably a good portion of most applications, you really can't just port everything away from X.

    Yeah, if we could just get C# working on linux, we can get rid of libc!!

    Sheesh dude. ALL of our kde & gnome software is based on Xlib calls. DEAR GOD MAN. Unless all the underlying abstractions are INSANELY similar, rewriting those libs for displayPDF will be truly painful.

    Besides, I LIKE X. It's pretty good at what it does, honestly. Of course, I liked Motif and CDE, but that's just me. I was one of the few who paid for a GUI back in the day (RedHat 4, slackware, back when fvwm95 was the big thing) and it ran fine for me. I might still run it if my copy wasn't all libc5 :-)

    But, there are things to be learned from CDE. It was designed to be very managable from central administration. It really did use the power of X; at least in design.. the implementation had some real problems. But that's politics of the era which makes sense.

    Oh, and Motif programming isn't really that bad!! Sheesh, I still code GUIs in motif. Sorry, but I haven't found equal documentation for either QT or GTK.

    Please people, let's give the Open Group A LITTLE BIT OF CREDIT. They're not another microsoft. They are just people from all the big UNIX vendors trying to get something made through all the chaos.. they didn't have the unified Linux platform (it's pretty damn unified in contrast folks... distro wars aren't really that bad) that we have now. And they didn't work for the home user first; these were industrial strength professional systems; "prettyness" wasn't too high on the agenda. Motif is damn usable. Complain all you want about dtwm, but it was pretty damn good for its time.

    CDE even included hyperlinked multimedia (this means text+graphics) help before HTML really took off.

    In essence, CDE shouldn't be hated or forgotten, but be made a great case study; it has a few features (like ease of administration) which could be made better in gnome & kde. Anyways, lemme get off my soapbox.

    --

  • I like CDE too as a desktop. Do I like to work in Motif toolkit? thats a different story.

    If you like CDE and dont like Motif. Try Xfce [xfce.org]

  • From the headline page for Dextop (click here [xigraphics.com]):

    Manuals? Well, the manuals are on the CD ROM, and for the CDE, it is the v1.0. The Open Group dropped the use of postscript docs and went to SGML which we have not yet mastered. Since the changes to the CDE manual were very slight, (and who reads the manual, anyway?) we hope this bit of slacking on our part will be forgiven.

    ...So, I pay you money for a version of a crappy(*) old *IX desktop that's been opened up anyway, and in return I'll get documentation that doesn't reflect what "value" you've "added"..

    And not only that but you're admitting that you haven't updated that documentation through either incompetence or laziness or both. Well, thanks for clearing that up. I'm happy that I'm not going to have any support issues here then...

    Really compelling sales-case they're making here, aren't they?

  • I agree. When I got my current account (on Digital UNIX boxes) a few years ago, CDE was the default, but after using it for a week, I went back to fvwm, and I'm still here..... I think I'll try KDE when I graduate and get my own box.
  • Well, insofar as CDE works at all, they're right; AFAIK the GNOME and KDE apps have different (better, more featureful...) ways of doings things. And of course one would need to install their libraries for them to work--they would not work with solely CDE installed.

    But why oh why would one wish to run CDE? It's ugly. It is painful to use. It does not offer intelligent functionality. It has very little point that I can see. It was folly to begin with and has remained true to its roots. Bury it, and let it rot in peace.

  • "GUI Wars" editorial on the Xi site (Score:4)

    by adam ( 1231 ) on Monday September 25, 2000 @10:42AM (#755608)
    This editorial [xigraphics.com], dated last Friday, on the Xi Graphics site seems to argue that their goal is to get as much software running on Linux as possible and that the best way to get MS and Adobe to port their software is to have a standard GUI.

    It does note, quite correctly, that having proprietary software ported to Linux really goes against the goals of the Free Software community. On the other hand, it misses completely the fact that many of the big proprietary UNIX vendors are switching from CDE to GNOME anyway.

    And more importantly, it also misses the fact that it might just be possible to create apps that can work almost seamlessly within at least two GUIs if the authors of those GUIs can come up with effective ways to combine them. Which, IIRC, the KDE and GNOME folks seem to be doing underneath the sniping. :)

    I'm mostly just boggled that Xi is missing the strong momentum away from CDE, whatever it's going towards.

  • Lord, will someone please educate Xi graphics on how to make money? The X server product is riddled with problems ranging from hardware support down to simple tech support & price. Lord - who's going to pay 100 bucks for an X server at home? The world of UNIX has opened up to a lot more than just corporations who have money - it has opened up to the individual. How many individuals do you see using CDE at home? How many could you invision using KDE or GNOME? I really hope that the answer becomes apparent. The UNIX marketplace has evolved and Xi has been left in the dust - much because of themselves.
  • Check it out here. [eunuchs.org] Needs updating, but not bad.

  • Ah X, my dear old friend (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward


    I used to have this dream that NeXT took over the UNIX world. Everyone ran Display Postscript, and all were happy. No one needed to use X ever again.

    The dream was not to be. Was it that X is superior? No, it was that Adobe has far-too-restrictive licensing for Postscript.

    But fear not, for NeXTpple has tweaked out DPS, and now offers DisplayPDF as its replacement. No licensing fees. An open standard. Glory be.

    Now if only someone could hack together a 'free' version of DisplayPDF, and get GNOME and KDE to run atop of it. Then we could put X in it's grave once and for all.
  • not that i like CDE or whatever - in fact, I hate it - but Xi makes decent software, and they're a good bunch of people. sure, whatever, the marketing blurb is fulla shit, but so is the article:

    CDE's consignment to the dustbin of UNIX history, though, didn't stop Xi Graphics from making a game effort to remarket it to a new generation of Linux users as "the" industry standard, and their arguments for why we should adopt it (noted above) play to the fears of some that Linux is headed for the sort of disastrous fragmentation that allowed Microsoft to walk over the back of UNIX in the 90s.

    CDE _IS_ the desktop upon which all of the major unix vendors standardized in the mid-90's. Sure, it's been superceded, at least on paper, by GNOME by Sun, but for right now, it is still the Common Desktop Environment.

    The article's not all wrong, it just seems a little harsh. So they're selling CDE. Who gives a flying poop?

    --
    blue
  • I know. I AM the author.

    XFree at the time did not support the #9 card I had. XiG beat XFree to the punch. It worked out of the box, worked very well - and the speed was much faster than XFree.

    Re-read the review.

  • For example, when I installed the CDE product with their AX server, it installed "mwm" as the default window manager! Yikes. The installer also has a habit of overwriting your current configs - you MUST read the directions, and make backups of important files like .xinitrc, etc.

    The install program needs to be a little more direct in what it's doing. Other than that, their products are very good, speedwise and stability-wise. I've never had an issue with their software - just the installer.

    There's a review from a while back here. [eunuchs.org]

  • Xi has some interesting things to say about KDE and GNOME:
    • "(...)it is of concern to us at Xi Graphics that the proliferation of GUIs for Linux is leading the operating system down the same path we took UNUX down back in the '70s and early '80s."
    • "Let's go with ONE GUI for Linux."
    • "Anarchy and chaos may be fun, but not here."
    • "(...)applications written to 'target' a freeware GUI such as Gnome, KDT, Enlightenment, or one of the others floating around out there, likely will not work with the industry standard CDE(...)" (huh, KDT?)
    How do they seriously think they'll be accepted as the one true Linux GUI when they pay hundreds on hundreds of idealistic free software developers such major disrespect? I had no idea any serious company could operate in such ways, and live.
    --
  • To me, the grandeur of all this X11 stuff wasn't so much having the same desktop on every *nix box in existence, but having a toolkit that was. A couple years ago, it was so DAMN nice to be able to download an X app someone wrote for his linux box, and being able to get it to compile cleanly on the crusty Sparc 5 I used for a workstation.

    By implementing this new server, these guys are totally ruining that. According to the article, anyways. It sounds like you have to jump through hoops to get any of that bad old "non standard" stuff to run. Dragging CDE into the mess seems even stupider to me. The X server didn't define "standards" on unix desktops; nor did the windows manager. It was Motif.. which is already widely spread among all breeds of unix. Us linux people call it Lesstif.

    I guess the problem of a familiar UI across unices is a valid concern, but there's already an open-source port of CDE out there. If one wants to be "standard," the tools already exist. And they work ON TOP of existing, tried and true OSS.

    In summary, these people are creating a problem so they can create a solution to solve that problem, and make a buck at it in the process.

    By using the "we're industry standard" moniker, they're trying to fool people into buying their junk. And if one trusts the article, they're anything BUT standard. Sounds like a plot we've seen come out of Redmond several times before, actually..
  • I looked into their products when I was looking for a driver for my Matrox G400 Max card a number of months ago. They had one, but their marketing spiel was so NEGATIVE that I refused to buy anything from them. (Not to mention that they wanted about $200 for a driver to run my card and it appeared like I would have to spend alot more to get everything I use running.)

    Their web site touts their implementation of OpenGL, not by giving you reasons as to why to buy it, but by slamming the Mesa people over and over. (As well as blaming the Mesa people for XiG's bad choices in naming of their libraries for OpenGL.) Seriously nasty and distateful stuff.

    Judging by the other things I have heard out of their marketing department, I don't want anything to do with them. (Especially if they break Gnome and KDE libraries to make CDE code work. How much of a default Redhat install with work after you do that? Not much I would guess.)
  • it is still the Common Desktop Environment

    Considering that as today there is a lot of people referring to it as the Colossal Disk Eater (`disk' intended as `swap space'), I don't believe it will last long. Perhaps it was "good enough" in the early '90, but for today's standards it is absolutely ugly, cumbersome.

    And yes, after ten years it still has nasty bugs (dtterm segfaults, expecially during nigthly builds, dtwm dies with no apparent reason, and the help system just doesn't show up from time to time). Making users switch to KDE or Xfce or Gnome (even on non-Linux systems) is definitively easier.

  • , it installed "mwm" as the default window manager! Yikes.

    Yikes indeed. Use twm or just stay home.

  • I wonder if this move from Xi will bring the KDE and GNOME developers closer together. After all, if my enemy is your enemy, aren't we friends?

    I'm not going to lose any sleep over the possibility of CDE taking over the Linux desktop. That simply won't happen. But there might be some good that comes out of this, and it's not CDE.
  • http://www.xigraphics.com/Pages/DeXtopGUI.html

    Not Found

    The requested URL /Pages/DeXtopGUI.html was not found on this server.

    Apache/1.3.3 Server at 208.243.114.254 Port 80
  • Why do you care?...lighten up dude...and stop cursing...its not polite.
  • So basically what you're saying is that everybody should buy proprietary products, since they (sometimes) are interoperable. What to do when they're not, or just simply stink.. Upgrade to the new versions?

    Doing comparisons between free products (both as in free speech and beer) and commercial proprietary products is a bit silly in such respect. If hardware manufacturer (X) doesn't release the specs to product (Y), how do you expect an open source release of said drivers (Z) without heavy reverse-engineering and tweaking?

    Who's fault is it really, Xfree's?

    I have no doubts of your tests, but I have doubts on such conclusions (which is what citizens should base their actions on).

    - Steeltoe

    I was given the choice between the red pill and the blue pill. One advice: DO NOT CONSUME BOTH!!!! (Uuuuurrkkk)
  • If you turn in your machine to service, they scan your HD for programs that might void warranties. Dunno if they check for OSes though, but they might spot LILO on the boot.

    Not everyone does this mind you.

    - Steeltoe
  • I think you're not reading in threaded mode or something...I was responding to a post pointing to a review of Accelerated X, also made by Xi Graphics...
  • It worked THEN, when I NEEDED it to!
  • Sorry - now I understand your post. :^)


  • The Microsoft? WTF? Xi has, like, negligable market share. The default install on all those millions instances of Linux is XFree86.

    This is about a loser company that, instead of trying to make thier product better than XF86, they badmouth thier opposition, and start ranting and raving about how they aren't standard.

    I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to report you to the analogy police...

    --
  • What the?

    I don't think people remember, but about a month ago, sun said that they aren't even going to use CDE anymore. methinks Xi has gone stupid on themselves.

    by the way, why would you want to use CDE anyhow?
    it's just a rootbar for fvwm..
  • From their DeXtop information page [xig.com] it seems that it's JUST the CDE components and not the X server...

    "DeXtop v2.1 contains everything that maXimum cde contained EXCEPT X server. Now that we have AX, LX, MX, 3DAX, and LGDs for laptops, single-head and multi-head cards, we separated the X server from the GUI for customer flexibility (and so we didn't have to have so many combinations as products). If you are upgrading from one of the maXimum cde products, the DeXtop Upgrade Table might be helpful."

    So it would seem to me that their CDE does work with AX - look at MaXimum CDE. Are you saying it doesn't?

  • I tried the DeXtop/Accel-X combination and if you need an exact CDE implimentation it isn't bad at all. I loaded it up at a shop that had a bunch of Sun Solaris systems and no one really noticed it was a Linux box. The DeXtop/Accel-X combination works as well as any other Xserver/Desktop combination, really.

    However it is true that if you install it on a running Linux system it will frag all of your other X/GUI options. I had to do a reinstall on the box I tested it on. It doesn't give you anything more than other Open Source options do, either. If you really need the CDE look-n-feel you should try XFce [xfce.org].

    There are just 97 days till the beginning of the 21st century and the next millennium!

    ---

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