On Wed, 15 Oct 2003, Alexander Shopov wrote: >> Quite frankly... random uninformed people making claims that X >> is slow, without any shred of a clue or properly deduced >> scientifically measured and reproduceable instrumented data, will >> always be out there. We can't stop people from spreading >> unfounded rumours nor from making random guesses as to why they >> or someone they know may be experiencing slowdowns in some >> application or another. > >Actually we can. Make a good demonstration, so that people see that the >sentence "X is slow" is obviously and without any doubt flawed.
That doesn't prove anything really. What would it be doing exactly? Blitting rectangles? Drawing lines? Or would it be rendering AA text using the RENDER extension? If something is indeed slow, is it slow because of flaws in the design of X11 itself? Or because of flaws in XFree86's design? Or is it slow because of the XFree86 implementation of X11 has flaws? Or is it only because of certain features missing from the X server and/or video drivers, but not actually an X11 design flaw at all? While people like answers like "it is slow" or "it is fast", as much as people want answers like that, the real answers are much more detailed. The _only_ answer that matters is the technical/scientific one. End users opinions about how things work, and what is fast or slow, and what is at fault if something is slow don't really matter. We, as developers care about _real_ world problems. If something is really slow, before anything can be done about it, someone needs to scientifically analyze the problem and put some numbers behind it. One such problem is the lack of RENDER acceleration in the video drivers. That is not an X11 bug or flaw in any way. It is simply a feature that hasn't been implemented yet for the most part. >> I don't think trying to "prove" anything to people >> who will believe whatever they want to believe helps us any at >> all personally... > >I think it helps us prevent the stupid rumor propagating. A vaccine will >not heal people, but it will prevent a disease from spreading. It doesn't help anything. People will create rumours and spread them _always_ by the rules of human nature and the fact that the overwhelming majority of people don't understand deep technical issues in general. Also, crappy news sites like Slashdot tend to help spread rumours to the point where it is impossible to counteract the crap, and one's time as a developer is best spent ignoring the ignorant uninformed fools out there, and just going ahead and implementing new features/enhancements/optimizations, and getting real work done. >> The best thing any of us can do, is continue to properly and >> scientifically analyze the X server, it's video drivers, and >> other related technologies, profile them, optimize them, etc. > >From a development perspective - yes, you are right. >Popularization needs a more pro-active approach. Popularization is a natural selection thing. People use what works for them, or what seems to work best for them, or in some cases what works "good enough". Advocacy isn't a bad thing of course, but one needs to be careful to not cross the road from advocacy to preaching, and one always must be truely looking at what is best for the particular problem at hand, not just how to further their advocacy, perhaps even at the expense of recommending an inadequate solution to someone for their particular problem. Video gaming is a perfect example. Playing video games is indeed possible in Linux using XFree86. I would NOT "advocate" Linux/XFree86 to video gamers however, nor would I try to extoll the virtues of gaming in Linux with XFree86. It does work, but it is not a push and click painless experience yet for the masses out there. It fits into the "good enough for some people" category at best. Gaming isn't a strong point in favour of Linux/XFree86 basically, so it is a bad point to use in advocation. >> Right now, the biggest hit on the desktop is probably >> unaccelerated RENDER operations. That's what most users likely >> see as "desktop slowdowns" currently. Over time, those things >> will improve as people write support. > >I know that, and people on the list know that. However I find it >difficult to explain it to people that do not know what RENDER >is, people that do not want to know what RENDER is, and people >that just trust the old saying: "seeing is believing" Best >regards: al_shopov Sure, nobody said explaining these things is easy of course. Why bother explaining to people in the first place though? Their rumours/opinions/whatever don't really matter much to the technical/scientific/developmental side of things. It's not like all developers are going to be pressured to rewrite an in-kernel X server just because a Slashdot crowd of end users appears with white masks on and demands it. The technical OSS community in general develops real solutions to solve _real_ problems. Whatever someone out there proposes, if it is an obvious good idea, and developers agree it is worth investigating, we're likely to see sometime in the future perhaps. Random end-all-be-all solutions hypothesized from non-technical analasys wont get taken very seriously until real world measureable data exists. There's also the "show me the code that implements your brainchild idea" phenomenon too, and that sometimes leads to good ideas coming forth, and other times ends up as a substitute for Godwin's law. >From the point of view of the actual end user, if they run something and it is visibly slow, the underlying reason why doesn't really matter. They can think it is because X11 is a bad idea perhaps, but it doesn't matter - they aren't going to kill X11, and they couldn't if they tried. However, if they use X and it doesn't perform for their needs, then they obviously should try another implementation, try other drivers, or use some other OS such as Windows or Mac OS/X until popular X implementations can meet their needs acceptably. That might mean implementing new X extensions, or it might mean accelerating stuff in video drivers, or doing some algorithmic and/or assembler optimizations here and there. IMHO, what is most important isn't chitter chatter rumours. What is important, is asking a particular person/user/admin/whatever what problem they are specifically experiencing which a perceived performance problem is occuring. Then we can analyze that problem and fix it, or propose a solution for the future. Until that problem is fixed, any amount of advocacy for X, at least for that person isn't going to meet their needs, even if you can get 10000FPS in glxgears. That's the way I see it anyway. -- Mike A. 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