[Discuss] State of X

Fri Feb 15 15:11:28 PST 2008

Thanks for the reference and links.  The GTK talk I found quite interesting.

John Blomfield

Alan W. Irwin wrote:
> Those who are interested in free operating systems should pay 
> attention to
> what is going on with X since it is the basis of all free desktops. One
> fundamental change is the serene (but slow) "Cathedral-style" X 
> development
> that occurred in the XF86 era has now been replaced by rapid but 
> seemingly
> chaotic "Bazaar-style" X development of the xorg era.  With so much 
> going on
> in X these days it is hard to keep track of the bigger picture, but 
> the post
> to the xorg list that I forward below gives some extremely useful 
> resources
> to help you get up to speed with recent X changes.
>
> So far I have only listened to three of the talks (by Keith Packard, Carl
> Worth, and Dave Airlie), but it appears to me when the dust settles 
> about a
> year from now we are going to have an X that will run without any special
> root privileges (a huge improvement in security), which will have a much
> better fundamental design (so that the various X components can 
> communicate
> much better between themselves), and which will take full advantage of 
> video
> chipset capabilities whether open (Intel, AMD/ATI) or reverse-engineered
> (nvidia and others unless they follow Intel and AMD/ATI's lead and start
> being more open about their hardware).  These advances should not only 
> make
> it much easier to do further improvements in X, but also should give a
> tremendous practical boost to Linux 3D desktops and games.
>
> Enjoy the most interesting talks referenced below.
>
> Alan
> __________________________
> Alan W. Irwin
>
> Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and 
> Astronomy,
> University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).
>
> Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state 
> implementation
> for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting 
> software
> package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the 
> Loads of
> Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
> (lbproject.sf.net).
> __________________________
>
> Linux-powered Science
> __________________________
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2008 18:54:05 +1030
> From: Peter Hutterer <mailinglists at who-t.net>
> To: Harald Braumann <harry at unheit.net>
> Cc: xorg at lists.freedesktop.org
> Subject: [xorg] Re: State of X - Google Tech Talk
>
> Harald Braumann wrote:
>> On Mon, 11 Feb 2008 22:37:34 -0800
>> But even as a frequent reader of this list it is hard to follow the
>> development of all the new and shiny things done in and around X. Until
>> smth has been released, information about what's going on is scattered
>> on multiple mailing lists, irc channels, devs' personal blogs, etc.
>> Also dedicated news sites of some projects are usually updated
>> enthusiastically only for a short time after they have been set up.
>>
>> Maybe people intimately familiar with the development of X could drop a
>> line now and then on this list about what's going on. I think many
>> would be interested in this kind of update and the barrier to do so
>> would be lower than writing an essay to be published on the web
>> somewhere or maintaining some news site.
>
>
> Right now, it is actually a good time to get up to speed.
>
> Go to http://linux.conf.au/programme/presentations and watch the
> following talks:
> - X Acceleration That Finally Works presented by Carl Worth
> - Redefining input in X presented by Peter Hutterer
> - Application performance profiling with Xorg presented by Adam Jackson
> - Bringing kittens back to life - continuing story of open source
> graphics drivers presented by Dave Airlie
> - Roadmap to recovery: Pain and Redemption in X driver development
> presented by Keith Packard
>
> There was an additional talk by Jesse and Eric at the kernel miniconf. I
> don't know if this one has been videotaped and/or is available online.
> - Enhancing Linux Graphics     Jesse Barnes
>
> I think this covers the big things going on right now.
>
> In addition, there are XDS and XDC from last year, which have a wiki
> page and summarise the talks.
>
> http://wiki.x.org/wiki/XDC2007Notes (Feb 2007)
> http://wiki.x.org/wiki/Events/XDS2007/Notes (Sep 2007)
>
> These notes were more or less updated live, so I presume this will
> happen during the next XDS/XDC too (whenever they are, I don't know)
>
> LWN had two articles that were summaries of the above talks:
> http://lwn.net/Articles/268378/ "LCA: Two talks on the state of X"
> http://lwn.net/Articles/267672/ "LCA: Bringing X into a two-handed world"
>
> And finally, there is planet.freedesktop.org, which does help in keeping
> up with what's happening. To some degree anyway.
>
> Perfect solution? No, but it is a start, and quite a good one I think.
>
> Cheers,
>    Peter
> _______________________________________________
> xorg mailing list
> xorg at lists.freedesktop.org
> http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xorg
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss at vlug.org
> http://ladybug.vlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>