Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 5th Dec 2012 16:56 UTC, submitted by estherschindler
"For two decades, X has been the foundation for Linux graphics. Ubuntu's decision late in 2010 to switch to Wayland shakes things up all the way to those roots. Just over a month ago, the official 1.0.0 release of Wayland appeared, as well as its associated Weston project. How will these milestones affect working GUI programmers? What will happen to all the existing toolkits - Qt, wxWindows, Tk, and others - on which so many graphical applications already depend?"
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RE[3]: X's era is in the past
by Morgan on Thu 6th Dec 2012 00:00
in reply to "RE[2]: X's era is in the past"
Member since:2005-06-29
RE[3]: X's era is in the past
by zima on Thu 6th Dec 2012 09:32
in reply to "RE[2]: X's era is in the past"
Member since:2005-07-06
Reading "One technology that hasn't happened yet is GPU based glyph generation. When that happens it will likely have a large impact on the desktop" reminded me about Matrox Parhelia - though it was much simpler ("Glyph acceleration, where anti-aliasing of text was accelerated by the hardware" from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrox_Parhelia )
But still, what "large impact on the desktop" do you envision?
RE[4]: X's era is in the past
by WereCatf on Thu 6th Dec 2012 09:55
in reply to "RE[3]: X's era is in the past"
Member since:2006-02-15
Reading "One technology that hasn't happened yet is GPU based glyph generation. When that happens it will likely have a large impact on the desktop" reminded me about Matrox Parhelia - though it was much simpler ("Glyph acceleration, where anti-aliasing of text was accelerated by the hardware" from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrox_Parhelia )
But still, what "large impact on the desktop" do you envision?
But still, what "large impact on the desktop" do you envision?
I don't know what he meant with it, but well, glyph acceleration would mean higher-quality text rendering even when the text is in motion (think of e.g. during scrolling up or down, various window transformation-effects and such) leading to a smoother experience. Also, rendering text is somewhat of a heavy task and it only becomes heavier with the ever-increasing display resolutions, so the decrease in resource-usage is always welcome.
Still, I don't see it being THAT much of a large impact.
Member since:2011-04-11
There was a great post detailing why exactly X.org sucks and why it holds Linux Desktop back big time and needs to be replaced by something better. Too bad it was on linuxhaters blog and nobody is aware it exists. Here it is if you want to read it http://linuxhaters.blogspot.gr/2008/06/nitty-gritty-shit-on-open-so... (just don't read the comments, it feels like having your head drilled with a cheap drill)
Long story short, support for even basic stuff invented 15 years ago like pbufffers (at SGI -1997) is missing from X.org. Nvidia had to replace the 1/3 of X to get their closed drivers working and fully supporting OpenGL. I think X.org has played a MAJOR role in the flamewars surrounding Linux.
User with a Nvidia card: Linux is good
User with ATI/Intel: WTF is this crap!
Edited 2012-12-06 10:09 UTC
RE[4]: X's era is in the past
by jonsmirl on Thu 6th Dec 2012 12:31
in reply to "RE[3]: X's era is in the past"
Member since:2005-07-06
GPU glyphs are the final piece needed to allow apps to draw resolution independently. Currently apps are forced to query the display resolution and do all kinds of calculations involving anti-aliasing. All of that platform specific code would disappear.
HTML is an example of something that is partially resolution independent.
Features
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 11:29 UTC
The day has finally come! Jolla has finally announced the launch device for its Sailfish operating system - and by god this is a looker. It's decidedly different from other phones out there, but it has good specifications and carries a relatively reasonably price tag - EUR 399, and it's up for pre-order today, shipping in the fourth quarter of this year.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:33 UTC
Why does Google get so much credit in the technology industry? Why, despite the company's many obvious failings, do many geeks and enthusiasts still hold a somewhat positive view on the all-knowing technology giant? A specific talk at Google I/O this week provides the answer.
Linked by David Adams on 05/16/13 4:23 UTC
OSNews is a sponsor of this year's O'Reilly OSCON in Portland, Oregon, USA. A lucky OSNews reader will win a free three-day pass, including two tutorials days. To win the pass, post a comment on this story saying something about Open Source Software or OSCON. We'll pick a winner at random next week. If you don't have an OSNews account, you may email us your entry. Part of the conference is the 9th annual Open Source Awards, and today the 16th is the deadline for nominations. If you'd like to nominate an outstanding open source contributor, do it here. Read on for more information about OSCON. Update: The 20% discount code for OSNews readers is "OSN."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/11/13 21:41 UTC
"Windows is indeed slower than other operating systems in many scenarios, and the gap is worsening." That's one way to start an insider explanation of why Windows' performance isn't up to snuff. Written by someone who actually contributes code to the Windows NT kernel, the comment on Hacker News, later deleted but reposted with permission on Marc Bevand's blog, paints a very dreary picture of the state of Windows development. The root issue? Think of how Linux is developed, and you'll know the answer.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/08/13 14:22 UTC
This is one of those news items that's fun to write, fun to read, fun to comment on, and where no one will be able to say anything unkind. It's all just one big ball of awesome fluffiness. TuneTracker, the BeOS radio automation software, has just released something very special: TuneTracker System 5, the first version designed entirely and specifically for Haiku. In fact, it actually includes Haiku in the software package. Better yet, TuneTracker also unveiled several system-in-a-box products - which have Haiku and TuneTracker pre-installed.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/02/13 15:28 UTC
Exactly twenty years ago, a document was published that played a huge role in establishing the web as we know it today. Twenty years later, and this simple and straightforward document is proof of an irrefutable fact: while closed technologies can change markets, open technologies can change the world.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/29/13 21:06 UTC
Oh multitasking. That staple of computing that got thrown out the window with many modern smartphones. We got some rudimentary thing in its place - but even as multitasking on phone and tablets improves, its user-visible side remains cumbersome. Windows 8 has a neat implementation, and now it's time Android follows in it footsteps.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/24/13 22:24 UTC
They're here! Whether that excites you or not remains to be seen, but the Galaxy S4, which will most likely become the best selling Android smartphone of the year by a huge margin, has been reviewed by all the major sites, and there's lots of interesting conclusions in there - although I think most of you will get the gist.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/18/13 11:21 UTC
Nokia has posted its quarterly results for the first quarter of 2013, and just like the quarters that came before, there's not a whole lot of good news in there. The rise in Lumia sales still can't even dream of making up for the sales drop in Symbian phones, and when broken down in versions, the sales figures for Windows Phone 8 Lumias in particular are very disappointing. In North America, Nokia is getting slaughtered.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/16/13 9:29 UTC
The day has finally come: Google has started shipping Google Glass to the lucky few early adopters. Now that it's shipping, Google has also unveiled a lot more about the API and the specifications of the device itself. While the company had already given out substantial details at earlier occasions, there are still a few surprises here.More Features »
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Member since:
2005-07-06
I'm no Mac expert so I don't know what they are up to. The basic concept is to download TTF fonts (probably preprocessed) into the GPU. You then give the GPU a string of text and a rectangle in your coordinate system. As that rectangle is transformed by the display system the GPU would generate the best text possible (including subpixel rendering) without application involvement.
This is not giving the GPU a texture with the glyphs on it and then scaling. The GPU has the equations for the fonts, transforms those equations and then draws with subpixel antialiasing.
The problem being addressed is that apps can't do the antialaising if the window is going to be transformed in any way. Slightly transform the app's antialiased window and all of the antialiasing gets broken. We need a scheme where the drawing system does the transformation based antialiasing without application interaction.
There have about ten papers written on this subject but I didn't know anyone has deployed it.
Edited 2012-12-05 23:02 UTC