Re: [TCLUG:3372] UI (was: Windows NT pricing)

[Michael Hicks <hick0088@tc.umn.edu>]

> Unix proper is so good -- what went wrong with X?

Well, like all of Unix (and all of every OS there ever has been..)
things just kept getting added on, over and over, not really thinking
about how a new procedure creates problems for old ones and future
ones..

I actually downloaded the source to the X servers once..  That was
frightening!  The code tree doesn't seem to make any sense at all (but
maybe that's just because I came at it from the perspective I did -
without any real knowledge of it..)

IMO, X's codebase is probably too large -- people get lost..  I guess I
don't know exactly the licensing that X is under, but I figure that
whatever it is is preventing people from helping (that, or people are
just scared to dink with it..)

I'm amazed that X is as stable as it is.. X has probably crashed less on
my box than the kernel.  However, X is a _real_ pain to configure,
requires restart when changing color depth, etc.  So, save for the fact
that it barely ever crashes (for me), X is a huge pile of dung...

> > the others really are not a alternative until they have all of the
> > applications.
> 
> Again, though, X is lacking in applications, as well -- at least
> compared to the real UIs (including CLI). So there's not a monumental loss
> that has to be swallowed if a switch is made to one of the alternative
> graphics systems.
 
IIRC, most 'alternative' graphics systems at least _try_ to emulate X to
some extent.  (I believe that GGI does this, for instance..)  If not, it
probably wouldn't be impossible to get Xnest to display to this new
system, while interpreting the older X system..

Also, GTK/GDK (the toolkit I like most, at least visually) could
probably be ported fairly easily -- GDK was changed to work with Win32,
and therefore allowed all sorts of programs (like The GIMP) to suddenly
run on it (well, sort of..).  Gnome could be running on almost any other
graphics system in less than a month, if someone really wanted to do
it..

Of course, if the Linux Community decides that there is something better
than X, 
we'll probably start using it.  It's happened before in Linux:
ext->ext2, a.out->libc5, libc5->glibc2, and so forth.  Unfortunately,
many programs won't just require a re-compile to use the next-generation
GUI environment.  If GTK/GDK gets ported, people will have a wealth of
apps that already work, because _they_ would only need a re-compile. 
Other toolkits would probably be a lot more messy, I think...

I just hope we make that decision soon, before there are tens of
millions of Linux systems to convert.  (Not to mention the problems with
legacy Unix systems and programs -- the other Unix vendors will be
playing catch-up, and probably not very well..)

Looks to me that the most likely contender to replace X will be
GGI/Berlin (Berlin runs on top of GGI, if I understand correctly).  I
guess I might actually have to download a copy one of these days :-)

-- 
.------ ----- ---- ---- --- --- -- -- - -  -   -    -
|               Mike Hicks | Linux User Since: 1.2.13
: http://umn.edu/~hick0088 | mailto:hick0088@tc.umn.edu
`              icq:6883760 | Current Kernel: 2.2.0-pre6