Based upon a recent email to the X.Org developers' mailing list, Canonical is nearing the point of one of their goals for Ubuntu 10.10 of a rootless X Server, or being able to run the X.Org Server without root privileges.
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Member since:2006-01-07
On a server, you don't need to run X at all. Indeed, Ubuntu Server Edition does not include X. Of course, that means you must do everything in text mode, which is not much fun if you're also going to use the machine for other things.
For many people, it would definitely be nice to have the ability to run X on a server without compromising security. Actually, I've wanted to do that myself. So I would say that this is very good news. Thus, a big "thank you" to the developers from me.
Edited 2010-06-26 03:10 UTC
Member since:2007-04-23
Member since:2006-06-12
It is able to handle it if you configure it corectly.
Xorg is one of the best piece of technology available in Linux. But it is like KDE, many of the best features are unknownes by the users. Only causing bugs and problems in the small set of features they know about, like displaying local content on your screen.
It is great when you have to use a window over the network (without any additional software), thin client mode, input periferal over the network, proxy, Xfbdev/KDrive/Xephir, X in X, multiple X server, per screen fine grained control and client over ssh.
It is also great when you think of all the developpers specifications, APIs and extensions that are not used as much as they could be.
Just saying: "Arg, I hate X because I use XRandR and it is not perfect on my unsuported, Linux unfriendly Laptop and I don't want to ever edit xorg.conf, so X suck" is just trolling.
Member since:2006-01-10
This new feature sounds really good!
Has this been resolved yet?
http://www.osnews.com/story/21999/Editorial_X_Could_Learn_a_Lot_fro...
Member since:2008-12-26
Xorg is one of the best piece of technology available in Linux.
Agreed.
Some would argue that showing local content on screen is what X should do, everything else is bloat. But I guess we don't need to care since the bloat is harmless.
KDE is an exaggerated comparison; KDE also does millions of things but struggles with the basics (pulseaudio, networkmanager), while the basics in X seem to be in a pretty good shape.
I have to say, though, that with Lucid and the latest nvidia driver, I'm very happy with X, using both laptop screen and monitor at the same time, as well as using projectors without issues.
Member since:2010-03-08
As a former Linux user, I find this insulting for my previous OS of choice. There is great tech in the Linux world, sure : JACK, networkmanager, udev, APT... But X.org is *not* among them. It's slow, it kills all apps when it crashes, its standard widgets (Motif) haven't been updated for ages, leading to appearance of a bunch of incompatible toolkits... And let's not consider the time it took to get mouse hot-plugging working.
The sole thing which Xorg does very well is error messages. /var/log/Xorg.0.log is a great way to know what has happened when X has crashed. Again.
Edited 2010-06-26 14:04 UTC
Member since:2006-01-18
Actually because you mentioned remoting as strong side of X, it is not really Xs strong side because the protocol is way too low level. Just have a comparison of X and RDP. RDP wipes Xs buttocks and have been for years. Xs remoting worked fine for simple terminals and the Athena widget set but thats it, once you move beyound that you have to rely on protocol compression hacks or entirely different remoting protocols like VNC to get a decent performance over an average network.
Member since:2006-11-13
Replacing X with something new would be very welcomed by me. I'm a GUI toolkit and desktop application developer. X has the worst performance of the big three (OSX, Windows, X) - even a relatively new project like Haiku seems to have better graphics performance than X.
I hope one of the big players like IBM could start such a project. Many individual developers have tried, but those projects very quickly get discarded.
As for the "wonderful" remote/networking support built into X - I don't see that as relevant any more. That was designed for mono terminal displays of 20+ year ago. VNC, RDP and a host of others all manage the same thing (in color) with much better performance!
Apple had the right idea with OSX, by writing their own GUI - it's time the rest of the *nix world wakes up to that fact - X11 sucks in performance.
PS:
I run Linux at work and home, as my only development platform. Windows only lives in VM session on my systems. So please don't take this up as a rant/flamewar request - it's purely my observation of X in my day-to-day work.
Edited 2010-06-26 09:12 UTC
Member since:2007-08-17
X? So are you referring to all X11 implementations, or a particular one out of: X.org, Accelerated-X, Hummingbird eXceed, Reflections X, Cygwin/X, ...
Edited 2010-06-26 09:41 UTC
Member since:2005-11-27
I hope one of the big players like IBM could start such a project. Many individual developers have tried, but those projects very quickly get discarded.
An Redhat X employee is developing an lightweight alternative - Wayland http://groups.google.com/group/wayland-display-server
The good news is that he has knowledge about x, because he works with it, whats good and what's bad. And more, with his Stack its possible to run an X-server on top for application that is dependent on X. More good news is that Wayland uses the new driver infrastructure that is also used by X. These drivers exist as I understood for ATI and Nvidia, but sadly not for Intel.
I think there are already proof of concept integration with GTK+ running on top of Wayland.
Member since:2006-01-02
Member since:2006-01-18
Actually even the remoting of X is protocolwise lousy, while it scaled perfectly for a few lines widgets like the Athena widget, it falls flat on its face with complex modern UIs trafficwise. You need protocol hacks to get the dataload down.
People have been saying that X sucks for 10 years and I agree it might be the time to either let it rest or make a huge overhaul into X12 instead of doctoring around on X11.
Member since:2008-10-23
Use the frame buffer then. The rest of us are happy with X.org. GTK works FB, your toolkit should be able to do it to.
I hope one of the big players like IBM could start such a project. Many individual developers have tried, but those projects very quickly get discarded.
As for the "wonderful" remote/networking support built into X - I don't see that as relevant any more. That was designed for mono terminal displays of 20+ year ago. VNC, RDP and a host of others all manage the same thing (in color) with much better performance!
Apple had the right idea with OSX, by writing their own GUI - it's time the rest of the *nix world wakes up to that fact - X11 sucks in performance.
Member since:2006-01-22
Member since:2010-02-14
Member since:2008-03-17
true he can't. But it is a example of one ways that X is inferior to any other window servers.
It is something the x devs have said would require re-architecting X in order to accomplish yet is something I definitely expect ( It drives me up the wall looking at videos with peoples faces torn down the middle).
Member since:2005-11-11
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Member since:
2006-10-31
Maybe they should work on getting rid of X altogether instead... They might be able to come up with something that's able to handle vsync...