[H-GEN] The State of X

[David Jericho]

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On Tue, Apr 29, 2003 at 02:10:29AM +1000, Nikolai Lusan wrote:
> I am interested in hearing peoples views on the current state of X.

No real gripes that I can think of. It works, and it works at least as
well as Windows XP on the same hardware[1].

It's unfortunate that it's my benchmark. Having said that, my PIII XP
machine at home hasn't actually crashed once running a older set of
ATI video drivers.

> It seems to me that with all the new render features and specific
> accelerations in XFree86 - and the programmers directly calling these
> extensions - that the days of X as a remote system are numbered.

Rubbish, and double rubbish. Given the cost of hardware, it's little
wonder that it's often cheaper to just install a more capable PC instead 
of a X-terminal. X-terminals are currently overpriced as they are. It's
actually quite fascinating that some manufacturers still design their
own ASICs and so on when there are high quality, high speed[3] GPUs
available very cheaply. 

A good quality monitor (i.e. 1600x1200 on 17" at 70Hz, and clear)
costs around $600 - $700. Strap on a board with some cheap commodity
hardware, and add some margin for the software development costs, and
you've added $300 - $400. 

Wyse are there price wise, they've just boned it up by removing X
functionality. But like I said before, a whitebox desktop with drive
and some more smarts comes in at only marginally more.

> I use a number of different Xterminals (all real Xterminal, not LTSP 
> boxen or similar) in my home environ, none of these terminals run XFree86 
> and I am running into more and more situation where running non-local X  apps
> on a display without the specific extensions in XFree86 makes things
> unusable.

I'm sure if you had a few hundred, or thousand of the said units,
you'd be able to put some weight on the manufacturer to extend the
functionality of their X server. It's all software after all.

> Programs like Wine (and hence crossover plugin) and just don't
> like my teminals and refuse to run, where as the likes of abi word
> simply complain alot and behave in a degraded fashion.

You've got the source (to most things anyway). Backport it. Or I
believe in many cases you can just run the crap inside Xnest or vnc.
In anycase, a Via C3 based board is only $200 - $300, and I'm sure you
have monitors. I know you have the skill :)

> I like use in remote X and am feeling disapointed that I am going to
> have to resort to long VGA and PS2 cables to keep my machine away from
> me should I wish to do certain things. I don't view all these new
> additions to X servers as a good thing,  they seem to me to be limiting
> the use of X in general.

I haven't yet started it because of time issues[4], but I'm going to
borrow many ideas from speaker design and actually build a couple of
cases out of wood for my machines. Given some effort and thought, and
some sound absorbant material, it'd be quite easy to prevent
transmission of system noise to the outside world.[5]

After all, a 3 quarter inch thick peice of heavy pollished wood won't
quite vibrate in the same way as a 1/16th inch steel sheet :)

[1] As much as XP is Microsoft, it generally just works on most hardware.[2]
[2] As much as I may hate to admit it.
[3] NVIDIA TNT GPU as an example, is around $2USD per GPU.
[4] And that living in a city apartment precludes me having my
    own backyard shed in which to make a mess.
[5] Sound reduction is actually my major goal, without actually
    reducing any speed of the machine due to underclocking or slower
    drives.

-- 
David Jericho


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