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If X11 is lightweight enough that it can be put inside LinuxBIOS, it's good enough for me.
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=linuxbios
I'm not going to sit here and claim it can't be done, but LinuxBIOS is a pretty contrived test case. If you notice, they're using KDrive (Nee. TinyX) which is a highly stripped down X, specifically designed for this type of application, and a very lightweight window manager.
You can strip X down, but you lose most of the modern functionality in the process. If you add a modern toolkit on top of that (I.e. Qt or GTK+) you've broken straight through the 2MB barrier.
It should be possible to do a lightweight system based on a lightweight X, but no one is doing that. The obvious question to ask is "Why not?"
It could be OSX, along with AROS or possibly FBDev, except that
1) OSX isnt exactly light weight
2) OSX is owned by apple, so its not a project people can become involved with.
regarding X11 being good or bad, I had a check with some of the guys in #Xorg and they dont think much of XLIB which is what you have to code in to use X11 -
(unless you use some OpenGL or GTK which intern uses XLIB)
They are working on a replacement for XLIB though that can run alongside X11.
Edited 2007-07-21 18:40
Member since:
2005-09-08
"Personally I would be happy to see a new 'Desktop OS' build on the linux, especially if it breaks away from X11/GTK/QT and standard unix stuff (they are all well and good in their own way but also have drawbacks from unix heritage)."
Yes! I agree - I'd like to see something without X11. Oh wait, that would be OSX?