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Josh @ Dreamland
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Reply #1 Posted on: November 05, 2010, 09:36:53 am |
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Prince of all Goldfish
Location: Pittsburgh, PA, USA Joined: Feb 2008
Posts: 2950
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That explains why X.org finally fixed that Java bug. Or someone did. People tend to work better under threat of discontinuation.
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"That is the single most cryptic piece of code I have ever seen." -Master PobbleWobble "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." -Evelyn Beatrice Hall, Friends of Voltaire
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Game_boy
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Reply #2 Posted on: November 05, 2010, 10:50:27 am |
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Joined: Apr 2008
Posts: 228
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The hype in the FOSS world is always about replacing everything with something new and shiny from the ground up. But X11/X.Org has a 20-year history! Even if the new thing is clean and efficient, by the time you add back all the features from X it will be a) as messy as the X Server now and b) take 10 years to code and stabilise.
X's real problem is that it doesn't have enough knowledgeable fulltime developers for the size of the codebase and it needs better release management and clear goals. If it had that it could be as well-run as the Linux kernel and all the shininess could be achieved by incremental change.
Look at Gallium3D, XInput2, XKB2, DRI2, the new ATI, Intel and Nvidia open drivers generally and all of the other work going on. They're all fine, just progressing slowly and when integrated and tested will finally make X a modern display server and windowing system. It just looks a mess because the last few years have been a transition time into those projects coinciding with a move to open drivers for all three major graphics vendors.
If Linux software was made compatible with those drivers and vice versa then 90% of the graphics complaints by users would go away. It's not a problem fundamental to X's design, it's that developers TARGET the proprietary closed AMD and Nvidia drivers for some inane reason then complain they're black boxes. Well of course they are and everything to do with them is a hack (e.g. Wine).
/rant
So I wish the Wayland developers would say "How could we improve X instead?" or at least write code which could be integrated into X in the long run, rather than duplication of effort in an already understaffed development area.
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luiscubal
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Reply #3 Posted on: November 05, 2010, 12:59:33 pm |
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Joined: Jun 2009
Posts: 452
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X11 sucks. It's one of the single worst parts of Linux desktop. 20-year history is 20-year legacy. Wayland won't have all X11 has. Stuff from X11 nobody uses, such as the rendering APIs, won't exist. For rendering, everybody already just uses Cairo, OpenGL, etc. so wayland won't expose any further APIs. Wayland also uses kernel features when available instead of reinventing the wheel.
Also, Wayland doesn't reimplement the drivers. ATI and Intel drivers (supposedly) already work just fine in Wayland.
Google it. There are several articles around explaining the problems X11 has that Wayland is trying to solve.
Personally, I've hated X11 for some years already, so I'm glad it's going down. Too bad it's so late, but better late than never.
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Josh @ Dreamland
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Reply #6 Posted on: November 05, 2010, 09:39:54 pm |
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Prince of all Goldfish
Location: Pittsburgh, PA, USA Joined: Feb 2008
Posts: 2950
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I'm usually in favor of preserving, though my public track record doesn't suggest it. (In all honesty, there's no hope for GM, and there was no hope for even the better aspects of R3's instance system and parser sync.)
X has been, recently, much better about not crashing and dying all the damn time. The sheer motivation they must have attained in seeing that the project would otherwise be replaced probably got them going again on the errors. Look at Pidgin. Empathy replaces Pidgin; next thing you know, pidgin has voice and video support.
I haven't seen X's code, so I can't speak for whether or not it should be scrapped. I trust a group of GNUs to make the right choice.
But if they totally fuck up the API and still don't offer widgets natively, I'm going to flip shit. (Nah, I'm actually pretty much over it at this point.)
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"That is the single most cryptic piece of code I have ever seen." -Master PobbleWobble "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." -Evelyn Beatrice Hall, Friends of Voltaire
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