Star Interview with XFree86's David Dawes
Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Mon 1st Jul 2002 17:50 UTC
Original OSNews Interviews David Dawes is maybe the most active XFree86 developer and he is also the lead founder of the project. He works for Tungsten Graphics, which is the main company working on the XFree, DRI and Mesa codebases today. We are happy to host an interview with David, discussing the present and future of XFree86 project. Update: Still confused how a VSYNCed desktop look like? Read here.
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MKS
by obi on Sun 7th Jul 2002 00:41 UTC

>> do they really need to run the whole thing as root? jeez.
>
> Yes. They do. XFree86 accesses graphics hardware directly,
> and it needs root privileges in order to do so. Normal users
> are prohibited from directly accessing hardware, so that
> they may not compromise the stability of the system.
>
> Please read up on the facts before posting such comments.

I read up on the facts... Do you?

I said: "do they really need to run the _whole thing_ as root?"

Emphasize "whole thing". I believe it should be possible to contain all the real hardware communication in a small module, which is among other things more easily debuggable/certifiable.

the Xserver does more than just access hardware. It's a server, does region management, handles extentions, fonts etc etc.

See for instance GGI/KGI project vs the old svgalib. Or DRI/DRM vs utah-glx.

Please read up on the facts before posting such comments.