Arch Linux

MONODA

Member

Registered: 2008-02-09

Posts: 256

What do you think of X11?

in my experience, X11 has been pretty bad at drawing windows. To understand what I mean, go to ubuntuguide.org (srry for th ubuntu reference ) and resize the window.I have also realized that it when an application crashes, it can bring down the whole X server which can get REALLY annoying. There are also a few other things that bother me about it. What do you guys think and would there be any chance of developing an alternative?

Ramses de Norre

Member

From: Leuven - Belgium

Registered: 2007-03-27

Posts: 1,289

Re: What do you think of X11?

A crashing application taking down the  the X server is less worse than one taking down the kernel (as can happen in some operating systems). But I agree that xorg can be rather slow and cpu expensive, it being in userspace certainly has disadvantages over other architectures. Besides that it's a good working and solid piece of software though.

MONODA

Member

Registered: 2008-02-09

Posts: 256

Re: What do you think of X11?

of course it is better to only bring down the X server, but that is still pretty bad since that is where most work is done.

MONODA

Member

Registered: 2008-02-09

Posts: 256

Re: What do you think of X11?

another thing I have realized is that sometimes the settings set for some hardware in xorg.conf will get reset for the current session and X must be restarted for the proper settings to be activated. For example, if i use a bluetooth mouse instead of my touchpad on my laptop for a while and then go back to use my touchpad, I will realize that I cannot use vertical scrolling, circualar scrolling or tap to click features which I have enabled in xorg.conf. This isnt that big a a problem, but it is still pretty annoying.

Hohoho

Member

Registered: 2007-06-23

Posts: 222

Re: What do you think of X11?

Thats where work is concentrated now mostly, making hotplug work flawlessly, eliminating the need to restart X for settings to take effect.
Crashing applications arent so devastating now as they were before, drivers are a lot more stable now(the horror called proprietary ati-"drivers" from a few years ago springs to mind).
I agree, X is still not flexible enough, I hope introduction of dri2, gallium, etc. will make the desktop faster and transitions more seamless.

MONODA

Member

Registered: 2008-02-09

Posts: 256

Re: What do you think of X11?

that sounds good, I hope things will continue to change for the better.

Misfit138

Misfit Emeritus

From: USA

Registered: 2006-11-27

Posts: 4,189

Re: What do you think of X11?

X11 is improving, but still lacks on-the-fly settings (as was pointed out). Other OS's have had such features for as long as I can remember.

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MONODA

Member

Registered: 2008-02-09

Posts: 256

Re: What do you think of X11?

could you name one please?

B-Con

Member

From: USA

Registered: 2007-12-17

Posts: 554

Website

Re: What do you think of X11?

To understand what I mean, go to ubuntuguide.org (srry for th ubuntu reference ) and resize the window.

I never knew if X11 or Firefox on Linux was to blame for that sort of thing. Considering that many sites (like Digg, I have a thread on this somewhere around here) scroll poorly, I concluded it was Firefox. Perhaps not.

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finferflu

Forum Fellow

From: Manchester, UK

Registered: 2007-06-21

Posts: 1,899

Website

Re: What do you think of X11?

So you suggest to create a new "X server"?
Do you realize how much effort that would take? The X server has been around for ages now, so I guess it's quite complete (albeit you might say, not enough).
I am not against innovation, actually I embrace it, however there's a price to pay. Does it really need to be that high?
That said, I would be quite excited to see an alternative to X11

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freakcode

Member

From: São Paulo - Brazil

Registered: 2007-11-03

Posts: 410

Website

Re: What do you think of X11?

No. There are various layers involved in window redrawing. There's of course X, but atop of that you have Gtk/Qt, and then individual apps that can draw asyncronous or not. So, when you resize Firefox window and can see the repainting, thats because the window is getting redrawed for each step without checking if the actual window content is ready to draw, so it gets 'choppy'.

Try doing the same thing with Compiz enabled. As Compiz caches window pixmaps, you won't get that 'choppy' thing, because the window gets redrawed when the content is actually ready to be draw.

skymt

Member

Registered: 2006-11-27

Posts: 443

Re: What do you think of X11?

If the talented coders out there would like to put some work into Y Windows or the like, I won't complain. X is Good Enough, so it will be hard to supplant.

MONODA

Member

Registered: 2008-02-09

Posts: 256

Re: What do you think of X11?

So you suggest to create a new "X server"?
Do you realize how much effort that would take? The X server has been around for ages now, so I guess it's quite complete (albeit you might say, not enough).
I am not against innovation, actually I embrace it, however there's a price to pay. Does it really need to be that high?
That said, I would be quite excited to see an alternative to X11 tongue

of course I realize how much effort that would take, but then again when I started the thread I was unaware that the areas in which I think it lacks are being worked on.
btw, is Y windows a joke, if it isnt I would be quite interested in following its development.

skymt

Member

Registered: 2006-11-27

Posts: 443

Re: What do you think of X11?

btw, is Y windows a joke, if it isnt I would be quite interested in following its development.

There's a lot of code up for a joke.

$ find . -name '*.c' -or -name '*.h' | xargs wc -l
...
 26039 total

That said, it hasn't been touched since 2004. Joke or not, it's dead as a very dead thing.

MONODA

Member

Registered: 2008-02-09

Posts: 256

Re: What do you think of X11?

it probably isnt worth working on anyway, no reason to re-invent the wheel I guess. But yes I have realized that xorg has improved but it still needs some work which is currently being done.

carlocci

Member

From: Padova - Italy

Registered: 2008-02-12

Posts: 368

Re: What do you think of X11?

there is a whole chapter about the X windows disaster in the unix haters handbook, which is quite old (but many points still stand)

If the designers of X Windows built cars, there would be no fewer
than five steering wheels hidden about the cockpit, none of which fol-
lowed the same principles—but you'd be able to shift gears with your
car stereo. Useful feature, that.
                                                 —Marcus J. Ranum
                                     Digital Equipment Corporation

Last edited by carlocci (2008-05-16 19:28:26)

Stoffi

Member

Registered: 2007-03-15

Posts: 107

Re: What do you think of X11?

I believe that sometimes, it may be better to start again from scratch.
Because, if you do that, you can probably do things better as you have
more experience, and knowledge.

That said, I don't know much about programming, so I clearly can't start
programming further on Y

Hohoho

Member

Registered: 2007-06-23

Posts: 222

Re: What do you think of X11?

AFAIK Y windows was a students project for a diploma, after he got it the project was abandoned.

mrunion

Member

From: Jonesborough, TN

Registered: 2007-01-26

Posts: 1,938

Website

Re: What do you think of X11?

there is a whole chapter about the X windows disaster in the unix haters handbook, which is quite old (but many points still stand)

If the designers of X Windows built cars, there would be no fewer
than five steering wheels hidden about the cockpit, none of which fol-
lowed the same principles—but you'd be able to shift gears with your
car stereo. Useful feature, that.
                                                 —Marcus J. Ranum
                                     Digital Equipment Corporation

...and yet X is still here....

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"It is very difficult to educate the educated."

ProzacR

Member

Registered: 2007-04-29

Posts: 272

Re: What do you think of X11?

Have we any alternatives to X11?

Last edited by ProzacR (2008-05-17 14:56:06)

skymt

Member

Registered: 2006-11-27

Posts: 443

Re: What do you think of X11?

Have we any alternatives to X11?

Not in the sense you mean. Some people make do with framebuffer-based programs (links, fbi, mplayer) for graphical tasks and do most of their work on the command line, but that's not an equal alternative.

There used to be some real alternatives on Unix (see NeWS for an example), but they lost out to X's freeness.

praka123

Member

From: Kerala,India

Registered: 2008-03-04

Posts: 188

Website

Re: What do you think of X11?

there used to be xfree86 what happened?I hope both Xorg and XF86 are the same?

kezar

Member

Registered: 2007-08-14

Posts: 61

Re: What do you think of X11?

We had exactly the same discussion on the arch jabber channel last day, I don't know what the others thought but I think it my be the time to start something new from scratch, using the experience acquired with X11 servers. It's a very big project though, which has critical implications. I'd be glad to see something new (free software of course) cause Xorg seems more and more slow and buggy.

Hohoho

Member

Registered: 2007-06-23

Posts: 222

Re: What do you think of X11?

Xfree86 had changed its license, so a fork appeared, Xorg, and almost everybody switched.
Basically, they were the same, now theyre a bit different.

LTSmash

Member

From: Aguascalientes - Mexico

Registered: 2008-01-02

Posts: 348

Website

Re: What do you think of X11?

Maybe if we used code from X.org/XFree86 and then fork Y Windows we could make a nice implementation

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Currently on Kubuntu 9.10