Re: X Window system on Handheld devices
On 07/16/11 06:43 PM, David Jackson wrote: Has the X.org organisation ever thought of promoting X.org for use by companies on thier handheld devices such as phones? You mean like back in the days when Jim Gettys was one of the leaders of handhelds.org and doing research at the Compaq/HP labs on the iPaq? Yes, I think there might have been a bit of thinking, especially when they hosted the X.org Developers Conference there - as hard as it is for some people to believe we ever do any thinking here. Or perhaps you mean the last couple of years, when Nokia's (now Intel's) Meego developers have been one of the major contributors to X.Org. Years ago, in their infinite wisdom, X.org developers removed monochrome support and low colour support, Nope, sadly, both are still there, though I think the mobile developers like those on the Meego project wish we'd dump more code like that which just bloats their embedded systems, since no one wants to browse the web or play Angry Birds on 1, 4, or 8 bit screens. -- -Alan Coopersmith-alan.coopersm...@oracle.com Oracle Solaris Platform Engineering: X Window System ___ xorg@lists.freedesktop.org: X.Org support Archives: http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg Info: http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xorg Your subscription address: arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: X Window system on Handheld devices
You are making assumptions, that no company will ever produce a hardware device that has a monochrome screen. Yet, a monochrome screen would be suitable for ereader devices such as a kindle. As for code, memory today is cheap. I've looked closely at X memory useage and it seems from what i can see anyway that X server code consumes less than 10 MB, with all of the compability infrastructure. Maintaining code for compatability and backwards compatability has value greater than saving some kilobytes or a megabyte in the age of hundreds or thousands of megabytes. If a handheld device manufacturer has very limited memory to work with, maybe they could do their own custom compile X, if necessary, without some sections of code. But I am doubtful that will often be the case that this is necessary. But, for a desktop system today, it simply does not make sense whatsoever, the backwards compatability with older X applications is far more valuable. Ive been using X since the days of 90 MB of RAM. X memory usage has never been a big issue, the idea that X, including code for backwards compatability, uses a lot of RAM is an old lie that refuses to die. Blowing up baclwards compatability to save a megabyte or 2 of RAM makes no sense whatsoever. On Sun, Jul 17, 2011 at 2:33 AM, Alan Coopersmith alan.coopersm...@oracle.com wrote: On 07/16/11 06:43 PM, David Jackson wrote: Has the X.org organisation ever thought of promoting X.org for use by companies on thier handheld devices such as phones? You mean like back in the days when Jim Gettys was one of the leaders of handhelds.org and doing research at the Compaq/HP labs on the iPaq? Yes, I think there might have been a bit of thinking, especially when they hosted the X.org Developers Conference there - as hard as it is for some people to believe we ever do any thinking here. Or perhaps you mean the last couple of years, when Nokia's (now Intel's) Meego developers have been one of the major contributors to X.Org. Years ago, in their infinite wisdom, X.org developers removed monochrome support and low colour support, Nope, sadly, both are still there, though I think the mobile developers like those on the Meego project wish we'd dump more code like that which just bloats their embedded systems, since no one wants to browse the web or play Angry Birds on 1, 4, or 8 bit screens. -- -Alan Coopersmith-alan.coopersm...@oracle.com Oracle Solaris Platform Engineering: X Window System ___ xorg@lists.freedesktop.org: X.Org support Archives: http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg Info: http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xorg Your subscription address: arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: X Window system on Handheld devices
Responding inline. On Jul 17, 2011 9:38 AM, David Jackson djackson...@gmail.com wrote: You are making assumptions, that no company will ever produce a hardware device that has a monochrome screen. Yet, a monochrome screen would be suitable for ereader devices such as a kindle. No such assumption was made; Xorg still supports low color depths. As for code, memory today is cheap. I've looked closely at X memory useage and it seems from what i can see anyway that X server code consumes less than 10 MB, with all of the compability infrastructure. Maintaining code for compatability and backwards compatability has value greater than saving some kilobytes or a megabyte in the age of hundreds or thousands of megabytes. Yes, we know. Only a few of us have been pursuing lower memory footprints... If a handheld device manufacturer has very limited memory to work with, maybe they could do their own custom compile X, if necessary, without some sections of code. But I am doubtful that will often be the case that this is necessary. But, for a desktop system today, it simply does not make sense whatsoever, the backwards compatability with older X applications is far more valuable. ...and those guys work for Nokia. Nokia, of course, is the cell phone manufacturer which put Xorg on some of their phones. Ive been using X since the days of 90 MB of RAM. X memory usage has never been a big issue, the idea that X, including code for backwards compatability, uses a lot of RAM is an old lie that refuses to die. Blowing up baclwards compatability to save a megabyte or 2 of RAM makes no sense whatsoever. We aren't claiming this at all. On Sun, Jul 17, 2011 at 2:33 AM, Alan Coopersmith alan.coopersm...@oracle.com wrote: On 07/16/11 06:43 PM, David Jackson wrote: Has the X.org organisation ever thought of promoting X.org for use by companies on thier handheld devices such as phones? You mean like back in the days when Jim Gettys was one of the leaders of handhelds.org and doing research at the Compaq/HP labs on the iPaq? Yes, I think there might have been a bit of thinking, especially when they hosted the X.org Developers Conference there - as hard as it is for some people to believe we ever do any thinking here. Or perhaps you mean the last couple of years, when Nokia's (now Intel's) Meego developers have been one of the major contributors to X.Org. Years ago, in their infinite wisdom, X.org developers removed monochrome support and low colour support, Nope, sadly, both are still there, though I think the mobile developers like those on the Meego project wish we'd dump more code like that which just bloats their embedded systems, since no one wants to browse the web or play Angry Birds on 1, 4, or 8 bit screens. -- -Alan Coopersmith-alan.coopersm...@oracle.com Oracle Solaris Platform Engineering: X Window System ___ xorg@lists.freedesktop.org: X.Org support Archives: http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg Info: http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xorg Your subscription address: mostawesomed...@gmail.com ___ xorg@lists.freedesktop.org: X.Org support Archives: http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg Info: http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xorg Your subscription address: arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: X Window system on Handheld devices
On 07/17/11 09:38 AM, David Jackson wrote: You are making assumptions, that no company will ever produce a hardware device that has a monochrome screen. Yet, a monochrome screen would be suitable for ereader devices such as a kindle. I own a kindle so understand that well. The only assumption I made is that you have little idea what has been done here for the last decade. As for code, memory today is cheap. I've looked closely at X memory useage and it seems from what i can see anyway that X server code consumes less than 10 MB, with all of the compability infrastructure. Maintaining code for compatability and backwards compatability has value greater than saving some kilobytes or a megabyte in the age of hundreds or thousands of megabytes. Yes, we keep trying to tell that to the handheld device makers, and they keep arguing for cutting back more and more. Much of the disagreement has moved into configure flags so they can compile out the bits they don't want. Ive been using X since the days of 90 MB of RAM. X memory usage has never been a big issue, the idea that X, including code for backwards compatability, uses a lot of RAM is an old lie that refuses to die. Blowing up baclwards compatability to save a megabyte or 2 of RAM makes no sense whatsoever. Glad to hear you agree with our general direction in these matters then. -- -Alan Coopersmith-alan.coopersm...@oracle.com Oracle Solaris Platform Engineering: X Window System ___ xorg@lists.freedesktop.org: X.Org support Archives: http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg Info: http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xorg Your subscription address: arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: X Window system on Handheld devices
Feel free to ask the Android Linux teams why they didn't feel Xorg was a good fit for their distributions. The answers might surprise you. Sending from a mobile, pardon my terseness. ~ C. On Jul 16, 2011 6:43 PM, David Jackson djackson...@gmail.com wrote: Has the X.org organisation ever thought of promoting X.org for use by companies on thier handheld devices such as phones? X has really missed the boat on this one. Years ago, in their infinite wisdom, X.org developers removed monochrome support and low colour support, things that would have been perfect for many handheld devices such as kindles. There is really no good reason why X cannot be used on handheld devices and it woule encourage more use of a standardized platform like X rather than yet more proprietary systems. Another issue with possible use of X by other companies is the need to provide a device driver facility that supports backwards compatability, that a device driver will continue to work on newer X servers, without being recompiled. That would go for all drivers for all parts of an OS. One thing corporations do not want to do is have to distribute 40 different versions of a device driver and end up with a huge mess where device drivers packaged with older devices no longer work. In relation to Linux and X, the only way to get these systems to be useable for most people is to have hardware companies provide drivers for it, since they can do all of the testing to make sure the driver works well with the hardware. This is the only way to get timely hardware support. Average people dont want to use Linux because of how shoddy the hardware support is. If its anything slightly unusual, it wont work. Some corporations may want to distribute binary drivers, thats just a necessary evil to help get an open source OS more widely used, and as well, eventually open source replacements would still get developed anyway. In fact binary drivers from companies would make Linux more useable to more people, so we would see in increase in user use of Linux, and more opportunities for open source companies to be able to fund open source driver development. Ive been watching Linux for over 10 years and I have seen virtually no progress on the desktop. The big reason it still is not useable is the hardware problems. And the attitude of the Linux community as a whole is the cause of that, the reason why so few people use Linux today, I have to recommend people who want to use Linux to not use it and stay with Windows, because I know what a hassle it is, it really is still hard thing to use because it does not work right with so much hardware out there. And thats due to the attitude of Linux developers who have a knee jerk reaction against 3rd party drivers, when 3rd party drivers could make Linux useable to far more people and actually increase potential to fund Linux development. Both Linux kernel itself and X.org, if they were really serious about making Linux practical to common users, would make it easier for third party drivers to be developed, including better documentation of the APIs so a company does not need to spend a year trying to understand it. ___ xorg@lists.freedesktop.org: X.Org support Archives: http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg Info: http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xorg Your subscription address: arch...@mail-archive.com
