In preparation for the upcoming FOSDEM confrerence, organizers have posted interviews with Jonathan Corbet, author of the reference book “Writing Linux Device Drivers” and Denis Oliver Kropp, one of the main developers for the DirectFB project, two of the planned participants.
Back in 2001 I decided not to install another linux distro on my PII 333 until X was replaced by something far more lightweight. KDE and GNOME look nice in screenshots, but don’t make for a snappy system (on my machine). XFCE is cool, but still in my mind I know too much of the system resources are being chewed up by X. Frankly I was hoping DirectFB would the great X killer, but sadly I am mistaken. Are there any projects underway that could make for a desktop linux disto that has a lightweight, non-remoting (ie. not a client-server model) graphics display?
Well directfb will eventually allow you (and me 🙂 to get rid of xfree86, currently you can’t because unfortunately gnome and kde link directly to xlib and also because directfb is pretty much work in progress. However as soon as this changes there will be nothing stopping you from ditching xfree86.
Lets just end this right now.
“X” or “X11” is a PROTOCOL. The same protocol is shared between XFree86, DirectFB, and others.
What you dislike is “XFree86”, a certain implementation of that protocol, so please refer to it as such, because a protocol can not be slow.
And there seems to be a lot of new XServer development recently. Mostly freedesktop.org’s XServer, which I’ve tried, and seems nice. And then Xouvert, which attempts to add much needed features to XFree86.
Thank you for clearing that up for me.
So, what you’re saying is that X (or X11 if you prefer) is a protocol, much like POP3, SMTP, HTTP, and FTP are protocols, and that instead of saying I don’t like X, I should say that I have been displeased with my past experience with XFree86?
Thank you also for mentioning those other XServer projects.
I’m curious. Are there people who think that X as a protocol is flawed, particularly for desktop system use? Are there alternative display protocols that represent a different model for how graphics are displayed? For example, what does (gulp) Windows use? Is it a client-server model designed for remote graphics (which X seems to be)? What about Mac OS X?
I am now looking to see how Mac OS X specifies it’s display protocol – the implimentation of which appears to be called ‘Quartz’.