Roland Nagtegaal wrote:
> Another thought:
>
> The major Linux distributions all come with non-standard kernels.
> They all ship systems with enhancements to the kernel like the
> improved RAID system, ReiserFS, extra drivers etc. etc.
>
> Somebody on this list was busy with making a GGI centric Linux
> distribution.
> Now what could be done is to distribute the whole KGI/GGI/XGGI
> system as an addon for the major Linux distros.
>
> Make a bundle of RPM's for at least RedHat and SuSE in which you put:
>
> - the KGI subsystem integrated in a enhanced kernel package
> (with a source rpm along with it of course);
> - the complete libGGI and extension libraries;
> - the GGI Xserver.
> - make the system so that you define one of the unused runlevels the
> GGI runlevel, but all the 'normal' runlevel stay intact.
> (for instance RedHat:
> runlevel 1 = single user
> runlevel 2 = network but no nfs mounts
> runlevel 3 = complete network and services but no X
> runlevel 4 = unused
> runlevel 5 = complete network and X
> )
> Now, in the RedHat example, you make runlevel 4 the GGI runlevel,
> so that the KGI kernel modules is loaded, and XGGI run instead of
> the normal Xserver. Your GGI RPMs contain all the necessary /etc/rc.d
> scripts for this.
> If the user is finished with GGI, or it doesn't work right, he can
> always go back to runlevel 5.
> With a set of RPMs like this, you don't have to make a complete Linux
> distro, people can keep their normal systems, and GGI could get more
> users.
>
> Of course, in the near future things like a hardware accelerated glx
> based on GGI/KGI should be developed, because right now the DRI system
> is the only way to get decent 3D graphics in Linux.
> And with a GGI version of glx should come a GGI version of XFree 4.0,
> which is a lot of work, but XFree 4.0 is the future of graphics in Linux,
I don't agree with you here. It can be the political future, but I can see a
lot of bad things in X that don't make it the proper election for the future.
>
> especially with the upcoming Render extension. (Render does alpha
> channels in X, anti-aliased fonts, faster rendering etc.)
>
> I still think that an improved X Window system is the future of Unix
> graphics, and GGI the right layer to realize the improvements.
>
> Roland Nagtegaal
>
> On Sat, Nov 25, 2000 at 03:24:25AM -0800, Jon M. Taylor wrote:
> > On Sat, 25 Nov 2000, Jon M. Taylor wrote:
> >
> > > Linus would just say what he has always said:
> > >
> > > * Show me the code
> > > * Direct Rendering is necessary for performance reasons
> >
> > Woops, I accidentally posted this before I finished arguing those
> > points:
> >
> > > * Running X as a trusted userspace binary is OK
> >
> > It isn't necessary anymore, even with DRI.
> >
> > > * X is not obsolete
> >
> > X is quite obsolete. That is an entirely separate issue from
> > whether the kernel should establish a device driver interface for
> > accellerated video rendering and general video hardware resource
> > management.
> >
> > > * Who will maintain KGI in the kernel?
> >
> > The current maintainers, plus other people who will see it
> > distributed with the kernel sources and become a contributor in the grand
> > free software tradition. That's the way it usually works.
> >
> > > * The abstraction is unnecessarily complex
> >
> > It is complex enough to properly abstract and virtualize access to
> > the video hardware resources and capabilities, which is as complex as it
> > needs to be. OS designers do not have the luxury of saying that certain
> > features don't need to be accounted for, because leaving out "features"
> > leads to dangling nodes in the graph of all legal hardware states, which
> > leads to system instability.
> >
> > > * He doesn't like UDI
> >
> > Steffen's implementation is pretty lightweight. Most of it is in
> > the driver layer. You _can_ write monolithic drivers if you want. As far
> > as driver portability is concerned, that is vitally necessary for
> > maintenance reasons alone. Rewriting any substantive portion of a driver
> > for a given PCI device should not have to be done more than once. It puts
> > a brake on hardware development progress.
> >
> > Jon
> >
> > ---
> > 'Cloning and the reprogramming of DNA is the first serious step in
> > becoming one with God.'
> > - Scientist G. Richard Seed
