Xplain: Explaining X11 for the rest of us
magcius.github.io
Xplain: Explaining X11 for the rest of us
1–10 of 21 posts
Re: Xplain: Explaining X11 for the rest of us
#2This is pretty awesome. Love to see great write-ups of popular *nix components. Can't wait to read more!
Re: Xplain: Explaining X11 for the rest of us
#3I'd like somebody to remind me when this is finished and I can read it all. Great stuff!
Re: Xplain: Explaining X11 for the rest of us
#4Pardon the honesty, but this too academic, and not tasked based, for a 'rest of us' style.
Further reading: OK, this is an X developer's guide. You should call it that. It will help developers find it and stop the average Joe who wants to run a remote app on his local display from trying to use the wrong guide.
Re: Xplain: Explaining X11 for the rest of us
#5Nicely done.
I love it that you have a server running in JS. Very nice.
Very much looking forward to the next installment.
...I've always been a bit of an X11 fanboy, so thanks for this.
Re: Xplain: Explaining X11 for the rest of us
#6I haven't really gone through X11 before, but the API really is terrible. How have we managed to hang onto this monstrosity for so long? I get people have a fondness for something that has held up for so long, but the huge complexity and difficulty of hardware acceleration means it's time to throw it out.
http://magcius.github.io/xplain/article/x-basics.html
Head over there and drag the kitten around to see why. Now your average Linux desktop builds a lot on X11 to get it to perform how it does now, but all this effort is a huge waste. Just compare it to something like Apple's UIKit or Android's layouts - it's well past the sell by date.
Re: Xplain: Explaining X11 for the rest of us
#7I haven't really gone through X11 before, but the API really is terrible. How have we managed to hang onto this monstrosity for so long? I get people have a fondness for something that has held up for so long, but the huge complexity and difficulty of hardware acceleration means it's time to throw it out. http://magcius.github.io/xplain/article/x-basics.html Head over there and drag the kitten around to see why. Now…
X has had a feature, called backing store, to get around that since the 80s. Individual windows can request backing store, and there's an option you can set in xorg.conf to enable backing store for all windows.
X11 actually anticipated a future of composited windows, each with their own separate buffer to draw into, well before its rivals -- due in no small part to being intended to run on much more advanced hardware than Windows or Mac OS.
Re: Xplain: Explaining X11 for the rest of us
#8In his '90 Usenix presentation, Dennis Ritchie reminded the audience that
Steve Jobs stood at the same podium a few years back and announced that
X-windows was brain-dead and would soon die. "He was half-right.
Sometimes when you fill a vacuum, it still sucks."
-- Dennis Ritchie, coinventor of UNIX, from an article in UNIX Today
http://www.anvari.org/fortune/Miscellaneous_Collections/1332...
Re: Xplain: Explaining X11 for the rest of us
#9The more important question of whether or not systems like C++ and X-Windows cause actual permanent brain damage in humans, will have to wait for the autopsies of human brain doners. That won't be soon, since they're still only in the animal experimentation stages. But I think it's reprehensible how they're exposing all those poor innocent bunnies to shoddy static class libraries without garbage collection, and high doses of raw Motif.
Re: Xplain: Explaining X11 for the rest of us
#10Lovely guide, too bad that it is so short: only one chapter and the introduction.
Any plans for new chapters?