On Mon, 15 Jul 2002, Lukas Molzberger wrote:
> Hello,
> in recent years many people were talking about Linux on the desktop.
> However, before there is any real chance that this could happen a few
> fundamential problems in XFree must be solved. These are:
>
> 1. XFree is far too slow.
No it isn't. Your apps are stupid or the drivers you are using
are under accelerated.
> 2. What is presented on the screen should always be consistent (i.e. no
> flickering).
> (3. It should be possible to configure XFree over a dialog that is intergrated
> in Gnome and Kde.)
Talk to the Gnome and KDE people then.
>
> I'm sorry to say that and I really don't want to offend any people. But
> I've hardly seen any progress regarding these problems during the last two
> years and I don't see any way how this could change in the next two years.
> XFree is evolving very slowly despite the fact that some of the best
> developers are working on it. I think the reason for that is that XFree is
> far more complex than necessary for its intended job.
You say it's too complex and then you say we need more features?
> I know there have been countless discussions on the X messaging system, but
> most of them missed the point. That is that such a messaging system
> introduces an enormous amount of complexity. As far as I know the only reason
> for having the X messaging system is the remote display feature. But I guess
> that less than 5% of the XFree users are actually using this feature and
> there are already other solutions like VNC available.
> Another source of complexity comes from the ancient, more than 10 years
> old X API. Many people argue that one just has to add new extensions to keep
> XFree up to date. But this way X gets more and more complex. And why are the
X is highly extensible by design. It's far less complex than alternative
window systems like MS Windows or OS-X and is probably more extensible.
> 2d graphics drivers in users space while the 3d drivers are in kernel space?
You are mistaken. 3D drivers are not in kernel space. OpenGL is in
user space in every OS I can think of.
> As a result of this complexity the developers working on XFree are less
> efficient and it also keeps new developers from joining this project.
> What I want to suggest is to start from scratch and design a new, clean
> and modern windowing system without any legacy. I know this would be a
> pretty radical cut, but I personally don't see any alternative to overcome the
> current problems of XFree.
> The main problem with a new graphics API would be to keep backward
> compatibility with the current application base. But this problem is easy to
> solve by just porting XFree to the new API, the way it is done for OS X and
> Windows.
>
I think you have the wrong mailing list. XFree86 is an implementation
of the X-Window system. The key phrase here is "the X-Window System".
XFree86 is headed in the directions of an "X-Window compatible" system,
meaning we intend to extend XFree86 well beyond the base sample implementation,
and in many regards we have done this already, but we have no intention of
dropping what you call legacy support.
As far as development being stuck, no, I don't think so. It's just
that the people who know enough about anything to get things done are
very few.
Mark.
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