Wayland Archive

Some Trolltech programmers are doing some optimization work in the x.org RENDER extension. RENDER has been used with COMPOSITE to make "transparency" and "shadow" effects, and its slowness has stopped it from being widely adopted. Hopefully, this optimization work will make things better, although it's not clear in the email if this addresses the "XAA sucks, someone needs to take KAA to x.org" problem which is often said to be the real problem of render slowness. RENDER is also often used to do more things, like AA fonts, so this will be good for X desktop in general.

Seth Nickell posted some screenshots and videos showing the experimental Luminocity window manager & Cairo which enable a XOrg-based desktop to get accelerated GL eye candy graphics. update: more here.

Periodically we hear someone say that Linux isn't suitable for graphic design work. One common complaint is its lack of an integrated system-wide color management system (CMS). Fortunately today's Linux systems have free cross-platform open source color management alternatives. Happy Note: On an unrelated note, this is our 10,000th story! Took us 3.5 years to get here.

The X.Org Foundation today announced the fourth release of the X Window System since the formation of the Foundation in January of 2004.

FOX is a platform independent GUI toolkit by Jeroen van der Zijp. v1.4 has some exciting new features.

X11 (the X Window System) is a widely-used graphical user interface on UNIX. Read this article to learn how to set up and use X11 applications on your Mac OS X system.

The X Window System, which is the foundation of graphical displays on Linux, Unix, BSD, and optionally on Mac OS X/Darwin, has long stayed submerged in the public consciousness just as it has been submerged under window managers and heavyweight desktops.

This article aims to clear up that confusion about the different font types and how Linux (and other Unix-like operating systems) incorporates them into the user experience.

The X.Org Foundation announced the release of an update for the X Window System, which addresses the possible security vulnerability announced on September 15, 2004. This bug affects all known versions and releases of the X Window System shipping versions of libXpm, whether from X.Org or other vendors. Slackware upgraded to it today.

The X.org Foundation has released the sources for Xorg 6.8.0. Announcement here.

The X.Org Foundation announced today that it has begun tagging pre-release builds for the X11R6.8 release of the Xorg server & X Window System and asked for volunteers to start building and testing them. The Release Plan and Status web page lists the new features and changes included in this release, and updates on bugs found in testing so far.

KDE and GNOME combine window managers with suites of applications to create comprehensive work environments. As complete as they are, it's easy to forget that there are other graphical ways to work on a Linux desktop. Sometimes a lighter-weight window manager is in order, such as for laptop usage, children's use, or quick startup applications. Here are four "alternative" window managers that are mature, fast, and functional. My Take: Should we also add *Box, WindowMaker and XFce to the mix?

From Slashdot: Metisse is a special X build and window environment working with OpenGL and accelerated graphics.

Sun finally released a preview of Project Looking Glass. Sources are of course included, and it's GPL-ed. Project Looking Glass is/should_be a revolutionary new aproach to the way we interact with the applications, the biggest change to GUI in 20 years. I wonder if 21" is enough, cause having 20 windows folded like the ones in the screen-shots should be a bit troublesome at 'only' 1600x1200.