On Sun, 16 Jul 2000, you wrote:
> On Sat, 15 Jul 2000, Ian C.Sison wrote:
> ..
>
> > Check out this article. This is basically agrees with my position
> > that X Windows is hopelessly bloated and in fact even getting much
> > bigger as we speak. Creeping featurism, poor design, inefficient code,
> > they are all slipping into what was once our favorite compact and
> > lightweight OS. Even now we can't have a linux kernel that is less
> > than 500MB.
>
> Little-known fact: X11R5 can function satisfactorily on an 8MB
> SparcStation I. That's a 486-20 equivalent.
>
> > SO what is X? It's old technology being constantly added on to be able
> > to "live another day" in the age modern computing requirements.
>
> It may be old but it serves its purpose. It has a well-defined extension
> architecture (remember XVideo? GLX? DGA?) and it is a standard. Try to
> bring in another GUI standard and all the vendors will be jumping over
> each other trying to leverage their proprietary technologies.
Methinks now is not the time for another GUI standard. Now is the time to take
the codebase of X, cut out all the fat, the never used features, FORGET
compliance with that watyamacallit X consortium, and plain and simply keep the
focus: Desktop GUI. No more fancy stuff like remote X connections which aren't
really used, and who's functionality can be duplicated with programs like VNC.
This way, you have a lean and mean X, with the same API, and all the Qt/GTK
toolkits will still be available. Theoretically, no upper application software
changes should happen.
> Try running with fvwm1 and just use Xterms. You'll be surprised at the
> performance. My first Linux desktop had 8MB of RAM and a 386-40
> processor. I got usable work out of that, just using cmdtool and olvwm. It
> was "just" as good as a Sun back then.
I've recently installed a 486-66 PC with 8MB ram, with windows 95.
Surprisingly the system was snappy, the desktop was usable, and as long as you
didn't install hogs like Office, you could get by using the usual wordpad and
netscape browser.
This i fear i can never see happen to Linux. Not unless X is re-engneered and
optimized for PURELY desktop functionality.
> The problem your KDE desktop is slow is because the KDE design sucks. Qt
> is a bloated C++ library system that feeds on itself (polymorphism can be
> a bane as well as a boon). Check out the size of a kterm. You'll be
> surprised.
The performance problem is not only limited to KDE, but to your favorite GNOME
as well. And guess what is the common layer between the two. Hmmm, X?
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