On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 10:18 AM, Thomas Hruska <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> You've run into two of the major weaknesses of Linux: > > - A lack of a unified GUI architecture. Many Linux afficianados don't see this as a weakness :-) > - A lack of a unified inter-application architecture. The latter isn't entirely true -- inter-application (more precisely, inter-process) communication has been present in POSIX systems for a long time. The model is very different then what is on Windows, of course, and while IPC is pretty low level on Linux, it is pretty seamless and almost as easy as opening files. But a more general application level communication architecture is lacking on Linux, although Gnome and KDE both implement ones for their specific desktop environments, and there are some specific types of inter-application communication tailored for media streaming that are independent of the GUI. One of the best inter-application architectures I have seen on Linux is the Jack Audio Connection Kit (aka JACK). It is an audio routing daemon that allows the user to connect multiple audio (and even some video) applications together the same way you would connect hardware components together -- via MIDI, digital audio, and other kinds of synchronization, and many, of not most, audio applications on Linux are conforming more and more to this. The nice thing about JaCK also is that it is not GUI based at all (although there are GUI tools to configure it). Of course, this is an architecture for a specific class of applications and not a more general one like COM. Of course, higher level distributed architectures are available on Linux like CORBA and RPC. But who uses that stuff these days? :-) -- Brett ------------------------------------------------------------ "In the rhythm of music a secret is hidden; If I were to divulge it, it would overturn the world." -- Jelaleddin Rumi
