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X GUI GNU is Not Unix Software Linux

Next Generation X11 516

Posted by CmdrTaco from the we-love-it dept.
Rene Rebe writes "The German News site Golem is running a report (babelfish translation) about the next generation X11 projects, like the OpenGL X-Server Xgl, Luminocity as well as Enlightenment 17. The report is including many screenshots and five videos."
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Next Generation X11 More

Next Generation X11

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  • Why isn't this already out? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) * <<moc.liamg> <ta> <namtabmiaka>> on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @11:08AM (#12293107) Homepage Journal
    1995: We'll have really neat X11 desktops Real Soon Now(TM)! See, here's a demo!
    1998: We'll have really neat X11 desktops Real Soon Now(TM)! See, here's a demo!
    2000: We'll have really neat X11 desktops Real Soon Now(TM)! See, here's a demo!
    2005: We'll have really neat X11 desktops Real Soon Now(TM)! See, here's a demo!

    Nope, never heard these promises before...

    Joking aside, I didn't see anything in the photos or videos that's revolutionary. Enlightenment looks like its usual "prrreeeeetttyyy" self, and X11 is shown with various transparency and warping effects that have been available on other platforms but have been largely unused.

    The question of "Why have they gone unused?" seems to be pretty well answered by some of these videos. i.e. None of the applications seem to do much of anything different than current applications do. The only difference is that they have a "cool" interface. All I can say to that is, Kai's Power Tools had a "cool" interface as well. Didn't get them (or hundreds of other "me too!" programs) very far.

    The truely interesting projects I've seen lately are:

    1. Sun's Looking Glass Project. While it's not revolutionary in of itself, it is an excellent evolutionary step in user interface improvements. Sun really took the right path by keeping with existing Desktop designs, but improving on existing concepts like sticky notes and window shading (the ability to "fold up" a window). They've also left the door wide open for developers to leverage the new desktop for new UI concepts that fully utilize the 3D abilities of the system.

    2. There was an "Ask Slashdot" a few days ago with a guy who was working on the mother of all touchpads. It was literally more of an interactive tactical plot that could have amazing uses in collaberative work.

    • Re:Why isn't this already out? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Skraut ( 545247 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @11:13AM (#12293155) Journal
      Yeah wasn't there a Y windows in the works at one point.

      While at times I've been firmly in the "There needs to be an X with less crap in it" camp, I've learned to really appreciate the network transparency. Though I do still wish it was a choice, something that could easilly be plugged in, or removed depending on the system install. The Linux Kernel is so flexable in how you can customize it for the hardware situation, its a shame you can't do the same thing for X.

      • Re:Why isn't this already out? (Score:5, Informative)

        by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) * <<moc.liamg> <ta> <namtabmiaka>> on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @11:18AM (#12293197) Homepage Journal
        Yeah wasn't there a Y windows in the works at one point.

        You mean this [y-windows.org]?
        Fresco [fresco.org] was the other big contender.

        The Linux Kernel is so flexable in how you can customize it for the hardware situation, its a shame you can't do the same thing for X.

        Modern X actually does let you plug-in, plug-out all kinds of useless^H useful crap. It has actually matured into a fairly decent system, network transparency or no.

        Where this article falls flat is on trying to make us believe that any of what we're seeing is "new". We've seen it all before, just with fewer cheap effects (e.g. the "wobbly windows").
        • Well, y-windows' last release is over a year ago, and Fresco's last frontpage news item was 2003-03. Looks like there has been some work on it, between then and early 2004, with minor changes (based on the nightly snapshot diffs), but not a huge amount. The snapshot tarball has been 4.1mb for the entire time. I have the feeling that both these projects are basically dead :(
        • plug-in, plug-out all kinds of useless^H useful crap.

          Screw you. Lack of proper X support for switching between my laptop's LCD and external DVI output is my biggest problem with Linux right now. WinXP does it with zero user intervention.

          Device hotplugging and autoconfiguration is the number one hardware support priority for Linux on the desktop. (The Linux kernel is not all that hot on some types of hotplugging either, and userland support for what it can do is braindead in almost all distros.)
      • You are probably referring to the perennial "Why Windows?" campaign.

      • Re:Why isn't this already out? (Score:5, Informative)

        by vadim_t ( 324782 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @11:37AM (#12293368) Homepage
        Plugged in how?

        This is something I spent a *long* time explaining to some people on a forum about a related subject. Network transparency doesn't involve significant overhead, dammit!

        There has to be some way for an application to talk to X. So, you remove the network protocol, how do you want to talk it to X then, magic? In order for two different programs to talk to each other there has to be some kind of protocol, no way around it.

        Now, networking indeed can slow things down a little due to things like latency. But that's effectively inexistent if you're talking on the local host. And X already has shared memory communication as well. On Linux there are also the so called Unix Sockets, which is pretty much like TCP/IP, only with even less overhead since it's done locally, so it can be implemented in a simpler way.

        However, as far as an application is concerned, an Unix socket and a TCP/IP one are exactly the same thing, so it makes no sense to get rid of network transparency - you wouldn't win anything with that anyway.

        • Re:Why isn't this already out? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by snorklewacker ( 836663 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @11:46AM (#12293454)
          > Network transparency doesn't involve significant overhead, dammit!

          Well actually, yes it does. You still have to marshal pixmaps (a wretched and primitive yet still bloated format) into a shared memory segment just so the server can pull them out of there and transfer them to the graphics driver. And X's implementation of network transparency doesn't give clients any way to tell the server to aggregate events or even tell it to "shut the hell up already" with all the mouseover events over regions where they're not listening to the events.

          Network transparency is a good thing. X's implementation of it stinks.

          • Re:Why isn't this already out? (Score:4, Informative)

            by vadim_t ( 324782 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @11:53AM (#12293520) Homepage
            Right. But you need to do this marshalling one way or another. Remove network transparency and you'd *still* have to provide data in some particular format and follow some particular protocol.

            My point is that just getting rid of the network socket won't help you any. You'll still end sending exactly the same stuff but using another mechanism, incurring in pretty much the same overhead.

            It's not like getting rid of the socket would suddenly free you from the need of communicating in some standard way with the server. How would it understand you otherwise?
            • My point is that just getting rid of the network socket won't help you any. You'll still end sending exactly the same stuff but using another mechanism, incurring in pretty much the same overhead.

              Well, what the other guy was saying [slashdot.org] makes sense to me.

              If you're communicating by sockets, you have to make two context switches, right? One to call the kernel, and one from the kernel to the X server. Whereas if there was a system API, then it would be just one context switch: you call the kernel, end of story.

              • Re:Why isn't this already out? (Score:4, Informative)

                by Jherek Carnelian ( 831679 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @02:12PM (#12294945)
                If you're communicating by sockets, you have to make two context switches, right? One to call the kernel, and one from the kernel to the X server. Whereas if there was a system API, then it would be just one context switch: you call the kernel, end of story.

                That is an argument for putting the GUI in the kernel, not for getting rid of network transparency,

                If we count entire paths, it would be: you-kernel-x-kernel-you, vs. you-kernel-you.

                No, a "context switch" is from one process to another, a process into the kernel is not a context switch, at least not in the same way.

                For example:

                1) FP - process 2 process requires save & restore of floating point registers, but process to kernel does not because the kernel does not do FP

                2) General registers - process 2 process requires save & restore of all general registers because each process has its own state, when you make a system call, you bring all of your general registers in with you since the "state" of the system is your currently running process. Somem will be saved off in case the kernel clobbers them, to be restored on the way back out to the user process but worst case, that's only one save & restore and if you go back to a different process (which is usually the case, even in your example) then the number of saves & restores is the same either way.

                3) There's more, but I'm too sleepy to type any of the rest.
              • This could be very important in games, I would think.

                The graphics engine needed for a game is very different than the graphics engine needed for most other things. The former almost requires a kernel bypass to write directly to the video hardware. But that's overkill for drawing buttons and edit fields and window frames.
          • Well actually, yes it does. You still have to marshal pixmaps (a wretched and primitive yet still bloated format) into a shared memory segment just so the server can pull them out of there and transfer them to the graphics driver.

            How the hell do you think this works on, say, Macintosh or Windows? Magic elves make the bits appear on your screen? X11 gives you the same choice as any other system: you can either let the server do a copy-conversion, or you can use direct rendering. Most sane people will ch

        • There has to be some way for an application to talk to X. So, you remove the network protocol, how do you want to talk it to X then, magic? In order for two different programs to talk to each other there has to be some kind of protocol, no way around it.

          Sure there's a way around it: an API. X has an API (xlib, the C library). But it also has a protocol, the means by which xlib communicates with the X server. In theory the protocol could be removed now without effecting most client programs, though I

          • Re:Why isn't this already out? (Score:4, Informative)

            by vadim_t ( 324782 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @02:30PM (#12295164) Homepage
            Um, and how exactly would you communicate? So, you remove the protocol. And then?

            An API is an interface that can be provided by instance for a library. Or it can be provided by an application and used by a library (plugins). But your application isn't *linked* to the X server, so it can't just call functions in it!

            The only way to make what you say possible would require each application to be in the same address space as the X server, or for the X server to be in the kernel. Both approaches are quite horrible, IMO.

            If the application is a module in the X server then a failure in the application can bring the whole server down. And there's no possible to have applications running with different permissions. Just wonderful, we can go back to MS-DOS levels of security and stability!

            X in the kernel is a more viable approach, but forget about it. The kernel developers don't want it there for a good reason, and this isn't exactly removing the network protocol anyway - it's an entirely different system that wouldn't even look remotely like X.

            I get the idea that you don't know much about software design. I'll say it again: You can't get rid of network transparency that easily! It has to be there because there has to be some way to talk to the server. I'll try to explain this way. Here are the most common forms of Unix IPC:

            Network sockets
            Unix sockets
            Pipes
            Shared memory
            Message queues

            Guess what? Except shared memory all of those are pretty much the same as network sockets. RPC (remote procedure call), which is probably what you mean by "API" works through network sockets. And shared memory is inconvenient to use for some things.

            So, again: Unless the X server moves into the kernel, or the application moves into the X server there's simply nothing better than networking to make the application and server talk.

      • Re:Why isn't this already out? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by hankaholic ( 32239 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @11:42AM (#12293419)
        This gets dragged out every... damned... time... X gets a mention anywhere.

        The argument goes like this:

        A> X is bloated.
        B> No it isn't.
        A> But what about network transparency? That's useful.
        B> You actually use that crap? Fine, network transparency is neat. But there should still be a way to shut it off.

        Welcome to the next point in that argument -- the realization that any time the windowing system and its processes are running in separate processes, some form of communication will have to result ni order to allow the client to do such nifty things as detect mouse clicks or draw things to the screen.

        Now that you're dealing with communication between processes, there are many ways to handle the problem. They all involve some mechanism by which communication can occur.

        Let's see... two programs with a need to communicate with each other... we wouldn't have a mechanism which has been tested and refined over many years to be pretty darned good at communication, would we? Where would we... hmmm... let me think, I know that at some point there must have been the need for communication at some point in the history of computing...

        Oh! A network stack! It's perfect! It not only allows high-performance, low-overhead local communication via highly optimized mechanisms which are available on damned near every operating system on which anyone in their right mind would ever want a windowing system (see contest rules for details, some exceptions apply, mileage estimates provided by EPA methods), but has a built-in mechanism for communication between machines!

        Hoo, boy.

        The point is, sarcasm mostly aside (maybe), that there is the need for programs to communicate. This isn't a requirement which you can simply opt out of, like, say, FAT support or unneeded sound card drivers. This is a requirement that you can't get rid of, and to use something that doesn't allow network usage is basically to limit yourself to mechanisms which are much less widespread in availability than an IP stack.

        An IP stack is a good tool for the task at hand, and it just so happens to be really damned hard to remove networking from it.

        I'd be interested if you could provide a counterexample -- find a widely available, generally reliable IPC (interprocess communication) mechanism which is for the most part platform-agnostic and doesn't require tons of massaging in order to get the data into the right format. Bonus points abound if it does not include the ability to communicate across a network, which you requested be unavailable.

        • Re:Why isn't this already out? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by FrangoAssado ( 561740 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @12:29PM (#12293982)
          While I agree with most of this, it should be pointed out that local X connections (i.e., the ones in which the server and the client run in the same machine) are usually done via UNIX sockets, not IP (witness the socket in the /tmp/.X11-unix directory while you are running an X session). The reason for it is that UNIX sockets offer less overhead than a TCP/IP stack.

          Also, in modern toolkits (GTK, QT) images are usually sent via shared memory (again, only possible when the client and server are in the same machine), which is much more effecient than sending them through sockets.
      • Yeah wasn't there a Y windows in the works at one point.

        I've been asking myself that for years now :D


    • X11 is not just for Linux, you know!

    • Re:Why isn't this already out? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by StormReaver ( 59959 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @11:35AM (#12293353)
      Perhaps the reason the effects have gone unused on other platforms is because they weren't part of the platform. If every application is individually responsible for managing the effects, then of course few applications are going to use them.

      If the effects are provided by the desktop environment independently and transparently (no pun intended) to the application developer, then everyone is going to use them.

      That is the whole point of these effects. They are going to be part of the underlying desktop to provide more appealing visuals. It's much more appealing when switching from window to window to see the old window quickly tear apart or fold itself away, and the new window to quickly and smoothly slide into place than for the windows to just suddenly change.

      It makes a lot more sense for the underlying window manager to be responsible for those effects than to burden individual applications with the responsibility.
      • Perhaps the reason the effects have gone unused on other platforms is because they weren't part of the platform.

        Nonsense. The Mac has its Genie effect, both Windows and Mac can do window transparencies, and both systems have odd-shaped window support. None of these effects have gone to much use, because they are little more than eye candy. Which is primarily what I'm seeing in these videos. The Enlightenment interface doesn't even add the cool "Dock" animation abilities into it's interface. Instead it re

    • Re:Why isn't this already out? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ciroknight ( 601098 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @11:35AM (#12293357)
      I think the real problem is, everyone knows X Windows is broken, but nobody knows what to do about it. A few reactionary people set apart to create projects like Fresco and Y-Windows, but the fact is, those are just as useless without knowing what was broken in X Windows in the first place.

      As a Mac OS X user, a previous Windows user, and a current Linux Desktop user, I will not be the first to tell you that X is slooow. Windows seems more responsive than most Linux desktop distros I've used, and Mac OS X puts both to shame. Java applications on the Mac (or Windows) even seem more responsive than X Windows.

      I still profess that the problem lies with the widget set/window manager not being integrated into the core, but that's just my opinion, and I'm not an expert. It just seems to me that there has to be some code that's shared between the two systems, and together, both systems generate excessive overhead that can be eliminated if we weren't so obstanant in preference of either KDE or GNOME.

      To be honest, I'm surprised there hasn't been a project yet to integrate GNOME into X, which I'm surprised hasn't sparked a project to integrate KDE into X (two new forks). It'd be a nice graduate project if someone had the time, and I'd love to see what a GUI on linux could actually perform like.

      Lastly, the problem comes with there being absolutely no good drivers available. Honestly, even though NVidia/ATi tries, they're not up to par with what they've got on the Windows platform, and Apple developers have had the luxury of seeing the developer's specs, so their drivers are just as impecible.

      I think one of the best things that could come out of open source as of now, would be out of the ReactOS department. Find a way to use ATi's and Nvidia's drivers, then wrap them in such a way they can be used to draw X. I think that'd be an ideal solution, even if 20 people reply and tell me that this is technically unfeasable, and that licences and shit keep us from doing this legally.
      • Integrating Gnome or KDE in X???

        Just where do you live? Insane planet? X is underlaying layer for desktops not desktop it self.

        Again, integrating Ati and Nvidia drivers in X?

        People do use other cards you know. You can't make X specific for those cards, and say screw others.

        What's next that you hope? Integrating X with kernel and CPU?

        As for not being responsivene, either you screwed with settings, or you use some partialy supported video card.
        • I'll give him the responsiveness comment if he's using a pre 2.6 kernel.

          The rest is just gibberish.
        • Integrating Gnome or KDE in X??? Just where do you live? Insane planet? X is underlaying layer for desktops not desktop it self.

          And that's a reason I think it is broken. Most current desktop operating systems have realized that the underpinning technologies for running the Graphical User Interface are just as important as the overpinnings that make it look good, and make it useful. The "middlepinnings" and the "sub-underpinnings" like OpenGL and transparency/image blurring/antialiasing/supersampling in

      • Re:Why isn't this already out? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) * <<moc.liamg> <ta> <namtabmiaka>> on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @12:12PM (#12293773) Homepage Journal
        MODS: Will you please give this guy back a point of Karma or two? Just because he's got fruitcake ideas doesn't mean that he deserves to be silenced.

        Parent Poster: You're way off base on the "problems" with X, but it does strike me that you're grasping for what the core issue is. The remaining issue with X.org/XFree86 is not with the controls, but rather with the monolithic architecture. X11 demands the full attention of the video card plus all other hardware it controls, and does not like to give up that control. The result is that X11 tends to be inflexible for work outside of "normal" desktop usage.

        What X.org/XFree86 really need to do is separate the graphical and interface device layers from the desktop interface layer. i.e. It should be possible for any system program to be able to ask for exclusive video card access, even when the Desktop is not running. Currently, you have to chose between running X11 or using the external SuperVGA library.

        You'll note that this is how the X server functions on systems like Sun Sparcs. On my UltraSparc, the system is ALWAYS in graphics mode. Running X just makes the X-Server take over the graphical screen. Very modular, very flexible. Not to mention that it places the graphics card support back in the OS drivers where it belongs, and not in a server with a focused purpose. Remember, the Unix philosophy is to keep everything in simple, bite sized chunks. The X.org/XFree86 implementation is the anti-thesis of that (although they are attempting to compensate with their portable driver loader design).
    • 1995: We'll have really neat X11 desktops Real Soon Now(TM)! See, here's a demo!

      1998: We'll have really neat X11 desktops Real Soon Now(TM)! See, here's a demo!
      2000: We'll have really neat X11 desktops Real Soon Now(TM)! See, here's a demo!
      2005: We'll have really neat X11 desktops Real Soon Now(TM)! See, here's a demo!

      We have really neat X11 desktops right now.

    • Your cynicism is predictable and misguided. X11 has been a rich garden growing great UI ideas for 15 years. There are a large number of highly successful UI and desktop projects that make GNU/Linux/X11 the diverse and exciting platform it is. Windowmaker, Gnome, KDE, XFCE, Enlightment and a millions others. Hell I even like TWM! Disatisfied with X? Propose something better. The Xgl server work is most promising.

    • Flawed argument (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AvantLegion ( 595806 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @12:18PM (#12293843) Journal
      The problem with your argument: a desktop that is "really neat" in 1995 is not "really neat" years later.

      1995: We'll have really neat X11 desktops Real Soon Now(TM)! See, here's a demo!
      1998: We'll have really neat X11 desktops Real Soon Now(TM)! See, here's a demo!
      2000: We'll have really neat X11 desktops Real Soon Now(TM)! See, here's a demo!

      All of these have been met. Maybe not as timely as would be nice, but met. What you don't seem to understand is that "really neat" is a moving target.

  • Three ENGLISH articles instead of Babelfish (Score:4, Informative)

    by Flywheels of Fire ( 836557 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @11:10AM (#12293125) Homepage
    I got tired of reading the article [google.com] on Babelfish. A bit of googling found me these three relevant articles:

    1. Seth Nickell has posted [fishsoup.net] a few videos showing the Luminocity window manager doing some super Open GL hardware acceleration tricks.

    2. Interview: [osnews.com] Rasterman Speaks of Enlightenment .17

    3. XGL file format specs [xglspec.org]

    • That E17 article is insanely old (almost 4 years old). Normally, it wouldn't matter, except that I think E17 has gone through redesign[s] since then. Just check out the screenshots; nothing like the last taste of E17 we got late last year. I wouldn't count on any of the information being useful or up-to-date

  • bablefish (Score:5, Funny)

    by jbeaupre ( 752124 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @11:13AM (#12293162)
    I enjoyed reading the machine translation from german. Makes you think about about how language works and it's down right funny. My favorite line (from a comment): "With open SOURCE is too much abgekupfert." Don't know what it means, but I find my self agreeing...
    • 'abgekupfert' means 'plagiarised' - the comment translates as 'with open source, [there] is too much plagiarism'. Take from that what you will...

      (IANANGS - I Am Not a Native German Speaker)

    • Re:bablefish (Score:5, Interesting)

      by toxis ( 323509 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @12:25PM (#12293934)

      abgekupfert is the perfect form of the verb abkupfern (Kupfer = copper) which comes from the old profession of engraving famous paintings in copper and other metals.

      Though it takes a lot of talent those engravers (Kupferstecher) were not creative by themselves and if today a German says something is abgekupfert he/she means it is still just a copy and ignores the hard work behind it.

  • Y Windows (Score:4, Interesting)

    by BlacBaron ( 875559 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @11:14AM (#12293164) Homepage
    I recall seeing this a while ago Y Windows [y-windows.org]

    • Re:Y Windows (Score:5, Informative)

      by WillerZ ( 814133 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @11:47AM (#12293465) Homepage
      Don't go there expecting anything you'll be able to use in the near future. I fully expect HURD 1.0 to be released before we're done.

      Please don't join the mailing list and ask "is anyone still working on this?" or "when will feature x be included?", because I'm tired of telling people to fuck off. We're working on it, we'll work on the features _we_ want in the order we feel like doing them. If you want something done you can do it yourself or pay someone else to do it for you.

      Apologies for the rant: the usual followup to that link being posted on /. is a stream of fools bitching at Mark/Andrew/me for not working hard enough on Y. I work on it in _my_ time, and people telling me what I ought to be doing usually causes me to go do something else entirely.

      Phil

      ( phil -at- y -hyphen- windows -dot- org )

  • How about doing something actually useful ? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @11:22AM (#12293239)
    How about implementing dynamic X server reconfiguration to allow connecting and disconnecting external monitors to laptops on the fly? How about using different resolutions on these monitors?

    Right now Linux/X11 is horribly behind both Windows and Mac OS X, being unable to detect an external monitor being connected and change resolution accordingly.

    • Well sure, but... (Score:5, Funny)

      by FreeLinux ( 555387 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @11:32AM (#12293329)
      surely you can see the immediate need and usefulness of transparent windows and wobbly windows. Not to mention that the present versions of X11 are only using from 50 to 100 megabytes of memory when modern systems have 512 to 1 gig available. I think once we get the bugs worked out of these new features, then we can look into more advanced stuff like "hot-plug monitors" and dynamic resolutions.

  • screenshot mirror (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @11:23AM (#12293247)
    enlightenment [bayou.com]
    luminocity [bayou.com]
    xgl [bayou.com]

  • UI stuff is tough to do open source. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Viltvodlian Deoderan ( 877359 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @11:24AM (#12293253)
    So in another 4-5 or more years X will have the same stuff that OS X has had for a while? This highlights the problem with Opensourcesoftwaredevelopmenten. Things go swimingly until some really un-fun interface code needs to be written. At that point, you really want to pay someone to do the grundge work. Auf Weiderscrheiben, Mike .
    • its because xfree86 was so stagnant for so long, now xorg is the popular x11 we are seeing fast development again. hopefully this will continue and we will get a great x11 again.

    • Un-fun code (Score:3, Interesting)

      by truthsearch ( 249536 )
      I couldn't disagree more (you knew somebody had to, right? ;) Plenty of high quality un-fun code is written in the open source community. Think every line of the Linux kernel or GCC was fun to write? It's not as much the fun as how badly someone wants it. People have been toying around with this sort of thing for a long time. But there doesn't seem to be enough real community demand to get a big enough team to hammer it out.

      I know nothing of graphics programming. But if I was very interested in havin

  • X free of CPU and RAM usage (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @11:27AM (#12293280)
    Many complain that CPU speed does not increase much from the user perspective but what if the new X11 tech brings us GPU based jpeg decompression?

    Surf your photos and they go straight to the GPU instead of storing a CPU decompressed bitmap in RAM, the speedup would be incredible. Low CPU usage in laptops as GPU does the work.

    Remote X11 display without recompression of the network stream? It would become as fast as surfing. Requested jpegs being send straight to the receivers GPU, simply upgrade the GPU in school computers to get very fast thin client Linux boxes.

    Look at Apple's Core Image in Tiger: possibilities will be amazing.

    • Re:X free of CPU and RAM usage (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Nagus ( 146351 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @11:50AM (#12293499)
      Dude, jpeg decompression is so efficient that it's basically free. I mean, loading the actual data from disk (or network) takes a hell of a lot more time than decompressing it.

      Much more interesting is the ability to render SVG images with hardware acceleration. The xsvg renderer will give us that ability (when used with glitz as cairo backend).

      Resolution-independent graphics, rendered at high speed. That is what will make for really amazing possibilities.

    • AGP on your 486? (Score:3, Informative)

      by green pizza ( 159161 )
      Unless you're still using a 486, you shouldn't have to worry about JPEG decompression using up your CPU cycles. It doesn't require that much power.

      That said, I do wish libjpeg was faster and actually made significant use of SSE. Intel's optimized jpeg routines are way WAY faster.
    • Um, JPEG is already very fast. Even if you could accelerate it on the GPU, there's really no reason to. The speedup would not be "incredible", more like "unnoticable". The RAM usage would not go down, you would just use video RAM instead of system RAM, which is *not* a good trade (video RAM is much more precious).

      The bottleneck in remote X11 display is *not* decompressing and recompressing JPEGs, it is the network. Modern remote-display systems (NX, VNC) already use JPEG compression. And they alread

  • bootstrapping problems (Score:4, Interesting)

    by CowbertPrime ( 206514 ) <sirmoo@cowb e r t .2y.net> on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @11:29AM (#12293307) Homepage
    We were discussing the X11 OpenGL server at the LWE X BoF session. IIRC, the current problem with full native implementation of the OGL server is that starting the ogl server requires the dri layer, which requires an X server to be running.

  • HCI (Score:5, Insightful)

    by paithuk ( 766069 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @11:32AM (#12293328) Homepage
    It has actually be shown a number of times that fancy features (such as integrating a physics engine into the desktop as so) actually leads to a more complex and harder to use system. I have to congratulate these guys on what they've achieved, but at the same time I have to wonder if this is the right direction to take, especially since Linux's only major flaw is in fact its lack of usability.

  • Movie representations of computer UI (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Winterblink ( 575267 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @11:35AM (#12293351) Homepage
    I remember watching movies like Hackers, which is a fairly decent movie overall, and totally laughing at their representation of the user interfaces on the computers. From the seriously hacked up and personalized desktops on everyone's PCs to the "flying through the mainframe" hacking at the end of the film, I was convinced it was there as a joke.

    But it seems nowadays desktop environments are getting to be SO customizable and graphically "enhanced", I start to wonder whether those old movies weren't jokes but rather premonitory.
    • there was another film i saw (had the white bloke from pulp fiction, cant remember his name). some dude was writing a virus (or worm or something) and it said on the screen with a very graphical interface "creating virus" or something.

      it made me laugh (isn't gcc good enough for these people that they need a framebuffer and a custom compiler/frontend that says "creating virus" but gives no output)

  • Why not X12 instead (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @11:38AM (#12293382)
    How long will they continue on this "11" series. Isn't it about time to upgrade to X12

  • agree with the article... (Score:5, Funny)

    by uodeltasig ( 759920 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @11:38AM (#12293385) Homepage
    I would have to agree with the article on the following point:
    The problem here is to implement in all drivers sufficient 2D-XRender-Hardwarebeschleunigung - those actually simply only one special case of the existing 3D-Beschleunigung represents.
    I've had a hard enough time trying to figure out how to say "Hardwarebeschleunigung" let along trying to implement all the drivers for it.Despite this it is good to know however that...
    Without the parallel running videoaufzeichnung the animations ran absolutely liquid.
    Karama Reedemer: Below is the babelfish translation to the mirror. Mirror dot translation [altavista.com]

  • What I want (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RealProgrammer ( 723725 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @11:45AM (#12293446) Homepage Journal

    I want an interface that lets me think in 3D.

    • I want to be able to grab an edge of a window and push that edge out of the way, with the window aspect changing according to how far I push it. Grab the left border and move it right, and the contents of the window compresses (e.g., making the text look skinny).
    • I want to be have a large virtual desktop which I can zoom out away from to show groups of screen objects (windows, icons, local backdrops, etc.), and zoom in on to show the objects close up. The objects should not all be in the same plane, so when I zoom in on one set of object I can still see ("far off") other tiny sets of objects. One effect of that would be to allow hiearchical groups of objects.
    • I want to take a group of objects and wrap them in a box, which I can label arbitrarily. The box should have variable opacity, perhaps password security, and should respond to signals (it should be a process).
    • I don't want to have to use a pointing device. If necessary, I'd rather use a subvocal microphone/sensor, keyboard mouse driver, eyeglasses, or a chin strap than a mouse, touch pad, trackball, or nipple.
    • I want a video driver / X server that outputs stereovision to two displays (or two halves of a single display).

    And I want it to be Free.

    To answer the obvious retort: every time I get started learning X programming, my feeble little brain starts to hurt. Kudos to you wizards out there who grok X.

    • Re:What I want (Score:2, Interesting)

      by duerra ( 684053 )
      http://www.hamar.sk/sphere/

    • Re:What I want (Score:5, Insightful)

      by glwtta ( 532858 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @12:53PM (#12294231) Homepage
      Like all of these 3D desktop ideas, this doesn't sound all that compelling.

      Face it, monitors and input devices are two dimensional (well mice at any rate, keyboards are one dimensional), simulating a third dimension adds complexity - both in use and in implementation - and doesn't add anything to useablity or productivity. Sure, you get about 5 minutes of "Oooh, shiny!", but that's about it.

      Navigating 3D space with any of the current input devices is a huge pain in the ass, trying to do useful work with a large amount of data on such a thing will get frustrating very quickly. They make it look cool in movies, but that's becuase it's scripted.

  • Babelfish translation? (Score:5, Funny)

    by c0ldfusi0n ( 736058 ) <admin@nospaM.c0ldfusi0n.org> on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @11:48AM (#12293478) Homepage
    You mean that babelfish translates?!

    Man, all this time i was thinking it was only generating random words in given language. All of it were lies. LIES!

  • It's a Translation! (Score:4, Funny)

    by duerra ( 684053 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @11:49AM (#12293489) Homepage
    Now Slashdotters have an excuse for not reading the articles!

  • did someone say Berlin Project? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by displague ( 4438 ) <slashdot@NOsPAM.displague.com> on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @12:36PM (#12294060) Homepage Journal
    Or was that Fresco?

    Either way, the website [fresco.org] hasn't been touched in two years...

  • Okay, so how do I get some eye-candy (Score:3, Interesting)

    by moonbender ( 547943 ) <moonbender@@@gmail...com> on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @12:53PM (#12294235)
    I'm probably going to wipe off XP from my laptop RSN. I've already got Ubuntu on it, but I'll probably re-install from scratch anyway. Not sure which distro yet, pending any other convincing arguments I might just end up re-installing Ubuntu. But that's beside the point.

    All those demos are nice and all, but are there any usable ways of getting cool eye-candy in a working, moderately stable Linux install today? Without all the hassle of checking out code from a VCS? Is Enlightenment a sensible choice for an install that should primarily just work? For instance, I'm going to install OpenOffice and to stuff for the university on it - is working with OOO better supported in Gnome or KDE than in E, or is there no difference? I like some eye-candy (if it doesn't get in the way, XP-style), but it's no use if the prerequisite is a system too geeky or unstable to do any work on.

  • Useless Vs Useful fx (and other improvements) (Score:3, Interesting)

    by master_p ( 608214 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @03:07PM (#12295695)
    Am I the only one that turns off GUI effects like windows zooming in and out, menus folding and unfolding etc after about 5 minutes of use? From the screenshots in the presented link, we can see zooming windows effects and transparent windows. Where is the usefulness in that? it's still down to working with xterm and the apps like the Gimp (with all the (possible ?) usability problems that it has).

    The useful effects are:

    a) window shadows; it really enchances the depth perception;
    b) zooming from and to icons; it really gives a sense of connection to the source for each window;
    c) transparent notifications (for example when new e-mails arrive)

    I don't think X-Windows need more effects than the above.

    But what the X desktop really needs is the following:

    a) a way to programmatically specify new server-client protocols in order to minimize round trips. For example, an application's GUI could live entirely on the display server, and the application is simply reduced to using the available protocol to build widget trees. This can also be used for rich WAN applications, including the internet.

    b) a widget toolkit endorsed by the X-Window committee (whatever that means), that comes as default with X, is simple and easy to use, using one of the new protocols specified above.

    c) the ability to do macro-commands, either by recording them using mouse and keyboard or by entering them via an X11 script language.

    The above will make a killer combination...if coupled with an information-management application like TreePad as the desktop shell, then X11 will be a true winning desktop environment.

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