On Tue, 2002-10-22 at 23:19, Michael Latiolais wrote: > Have you considered looking at the integration in other, similar projects? > Atheos(http://www.atheos.cx/) has an integrated GUI, and may provide a > good model. Just a thought.
Wow. They have done a really good job of intergration in the os. I remember looking at the project a long time ago, but at that time, the kernel had only just started booting. I really like some of the descriptions on the site, and feel that the principles behind the project (intergration and consistency), are a lot more achievable by the DirectFB team, because they have the advantage of already being based on linux, and DirectFB is already getting ports to other systems. A complete atheos base system is only 20mb (gziped). This includes a built-in gui, kernel, desktop manager, etc. DirectFB has under 800k (gziped) of source, and the Linux-2.5.44 kernel has 28.6 mb (bziped2) of source. DirectFB + a GUI would easily fit in as a kernel module to make for a well intergrated os, that would boot of a cd, flash-rom card, builtin rom, etc.. But I know that the advantages of keeping it seperate from the kernel far outway the disadvantages. Anyway, if any body has some good site devel skills, of wants to make a start at getting out something usable, Please drop me a line. (I have started a site, but need some help in setting up phpBB, and something for a mailing-list). Karl Bowden (in part) "AtheOS do not use X11, or any other well known GUI systems/toolkits. The AtheOS GUI looks a bit like X11 at the lowest level, in that there is a server/client system. The comunication is not over TCP/IP though but is handled by the high-speed/low-latency messaging system built into the AtheOS kernel. Another difference is that the server/client lowlevel protocol is not known by applications, but are handled entirely by the GUI toolkit's C++ classes. Applications only know about highlevel entities like windows, views, fonts, bitmaps, etc etc. The AtheOS GUI is a much more integrated part of the OS than in your favourite Unix system." "Not using X has its ups and downs. The big down is of course the lack of applications that can be easily ported to AtheOS. Another down is that the current GUI does not support remote display, even though implementing it should not be hard at all. The up's is that the GUI interface is much more high-level, and is much better at defining how a GUI should work. This leads to better consistency between applications. Drag and drop, clipboard, and other forms of high-level communication between applications are defined by the OS. This will hopefully lead to applications that work well together and that give the user an impression of a complete system with consistency between applications. I belive this consistency is important so the user doesn't have to start from scratch each time she learns a new program to know." (From the FAQ) "Q: Will it be possible to switch to real textmode in the future? A: No. Text-mode support is not planned for AtheOS. AtheOS is centered around the "builtin" GUI and will never support textmode. AtheOS is a desktop OS not a server OS and running it without the GUI would not make any sence." -- Info: To unsubscribe send a mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe directfb-dev" as subject.
