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If you don't want to use proper drivers, you don't really have the right to complain that things don't work well for you.



Classical problem with X was that stuff moving over your window caused bad artifacts (typically leaving a blank area until repaint was done). This doesn't really happen anymore. I don't know what you mean by problems with contents of the windows, everything seems to work fine for me.

I mean artifacts that are very short-lived but noticeable, widgets that change their state not all at once, but in bits and pieces... like the outline of a drop-down box remaining shortly after the box itself disappears... window contents when resizing not being refreshed in real-time, but instead getting big black areas prior to the full refresh... just generally anything that requires large-ish refreshes seems to happen in jerks or discrete steps rather than smoothly. Sure it may seem "minor", but compared to Windows and Mac it is noticeably less polished. It's just like Linux font rendering used to be: "fine" but noticeably inferior.... I believe this is what ggeldenhuys is referring to below as X's "poor performance" in comparison to the other platforms.

Edited 2010-06-26 16:39 UTC

If you don't want to use proper drivers, you don't really have the right to complain that things don't work well for you. "

What if it's running on decade-plus old hardware that doesn't have a worthy GPU for processing 3D? Maybe the device vender no longer even supports that particular chip, which is highly likely; nVidia seems to have gone through three or four different, incompatible driver generations in the time I've owned this nearly decade-old machine (though its original GeForce2 Ultra has long been replaced). The original GF2:U is now in another machine (currently running Windows and not in my possession, and if I were to install Linux or BSD on it, I would be at least three driver generations behind. No telling whether the drivers would even *work* on modern systems/kernels.)

Or what if using "proper drivers" goes against your wishes, such as using third-party kernel blobs and drivers? Hell, for that matter, what IS a proper driver--the crap nVidia and ATI put out, or something that is more well-designed to fitting into the system as a whole, both in terms of design and philosophy (open source)? Or just the "appropriate driver to get the job done" which, depending on how a person looks at it, could really be either? And if the binary drivers the manufacturers put out are the "proper drivers," then wouldn't that make Windows the "proper OS?"

Really, it sounds like you're saying something along the lines of, "if you don't like the way things are and how the GPU companies are restricting the use of their hardware through drivers, even if you run (or wish to run) a fully open system--you have no right to complain. Either use the blobs if possible, or shut up. Or upgrade to a newer model graphics card. And oh, and if those blobs are incompatible with your particular hardware and/or OS, well... tough luck. Enjoy the glitches."

Edited 2010-06-27 08:48 UTC

KWin includes a 2d compositor (switch to Xrender mode) and you can always use xcompmgr. This mode is often faster on, e.g., radeon cards using the OSS drivers.