[rescue] Re: G5 case

Jonathan C. Patschke jp at celestrion.net
Fri Jun 27 15:59:40 CDT 2003


On Fri, 27 Jun 2003, Frank Van Damme wrote:

> Define "better".

1) Something that isn't so damned chatty.  For a networked window
   system, it appears to assume that bandwidth is free.
2) Something that can upload small amount of code server-side (like
   NeWS)--this would go impressive lengths to solving #1.
3) Something with a not-nearly-as-easy-to-fuck-up configuration system.
   XResources blows!
4) How about a standard widget set that -doesn't- look like ass[0] so
   that not everyone and their brother goes around making a new one to
   avoid paying $bigNum for the one standardized (but commercial) widget
   set?
5) Authentication that's a little less insane.  Ever had xauth just
   decide one day that Something had changed?  Invariably, this happens
   when you need a display RIGHT NOW, so you end up falling back on
   xhost, anyway.
6) Perhaps a less fragile method of inter-application communication than
   XSHM and the clipboard.
7) Something with a more coherent idea of a "session".  Getting XSM to
   DWIM never ceases to be an all-day affair.

> There has flown a lot of ink and bytes over the question wether X
> isn't an old bloated piece of crap not adapted to todays' desktop
> users' needs and if id needs to replaced.

X isn't bloated.  Well, it is, but not in terms of feature creep:

   PID USERNAME THR PRI NICE  SIZE   RES STATE    TIME    CPU COMMAND
 22908 root       1  59    0   53M   46M sleep    3:56  0.64% Xsun

As much as I hate to say it, the GUI in Windows XP doesn't eat that much
memory, and these numbers are a -huge- improvement over older versions
of Xsun that leaked memory like sieves.

However, that may largely be a Sun problem.  The numbers I'm getting
from the AIX systems here are much nicer, but they also are just
displaying the login banner instead of 10 rxvts and a window manager.

> Btw, there ARE new guis in development. The most well-known are probably
> Berlios (which doesn't seem to get anywhere)

Is that what used to be called "Berlin"?  I remember reading about that
years ago and thinking it was really slick.

[0] xaw.  *puke*
-- 
Jonathan Patschke   )  "Leave your lawsuits at home.  I have guns."
Elgin, TX          (                      --"Kountry" Mike Lundgren



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