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X.Org's XDS2012 Will Celebrate 25 Years Of X11

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  • #11
    Originally posted by uid313 View Post
    Unix and Internet are old too, they're way older than 25 years. But its good stuff.
    lol i'm not sure i agree with the internet thing. yes, it's great, but ipv4 and its addressing is becoming a serious problem. we've already experienced moments of running out of ip addresses, it's time we move onto ipv6, but that won't be an easy transition.

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    • #12
      Originally posted by uid313 View Post
      http://www.x.org/wiki/Development/X12
      Just because something is old, it does not mean that it is inherently bad.
      The protocol is 25 years old, but the implementation (code) may have been worked, refined, rewritten, tuned and improved.
      Oh yes, it does mean it's bad, because it's computer technology.

      Unix and Internet are old too, they're way older than 25 years. But its good stuff.
      OK, lemme see. Unix is being worked-around and bypassed like hell these days (SELinux, ACLs, ConsoleKit, PAM, graphics don't use /dev anymore, etc, etc, etc). And the Internet protocol is a huge failure, and again being worked around with SSL and stuff. And then email. OMG to that one. No sender authentication and spam anyone?

      All of these old techs pretty much suck. We don't use them because they're so great. We use them because we're stuck with them.

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      • #13
        Originally posted by schmidtbag View Post
        it is time for x12. maybe wayland wouldn't have been necessary if x12 were released a long time ago with the fixes that wayland proposes. having 2 competing graphical servers will propose more hardware compatibility issues than we have already.

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        • #14
          Originally posted by RealNC View Post
          OK, lemme see. Unix is being worked-around and bypassed like hell these days (SELinux, ACLs, ConsoleKit, PAM, graphics don't use /dev anymore, etc, etc, etc). And the Internet protocol is a huge failure, and again being worked around with SSL and stuff. And then email. OMG to that one. No sender authentication and spam anyone?

          All of these old techs pretty much suck. We don't use them because they're so great. We use them because we're stuck with them.
          SSL runs on top of the Internet Protocol, so what "stuff" bypasses the Internet Protocol? How do you feel about the Transmission Control Protocol?

          You are forgetting something important about email: *it works*. Spam is an irritation, but if you send an email to Jo then (barring very unusual abnormalities) she receives it. Exactly as it was sent. Very quickly.

          By denouncing the creators of SMTP you seem to be suggesting that they should have anticipated problems that would exist 30 years in the future, and that they are negligent for not doing so - it was invented when the notion of a computer that wasn't in a university, multinational company of military complex was laughable. To veer into hyperbole, isn't this like decrying the inventor of the internal combustion engine for not anticipating and finding a solution for traffic jams? ;-)

          Old might mean boring, but it doesn't mean bad - if the ideas were bad then we wouldn't be discussing them in this manner.

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          • #15
            Originally posted by archibald View Post
            SSL runs on top of the Internet Protocol, so what "stuff" bypasses the Internet Protocol? How do you feel about the Transmission Control Protocol?
            SSL is a layer on top. Pretty much what X11 has become with all the extensions. IPv6 is a good example of doing the right thing instead of trying to introduce some layer on top of the current IPv4.

            However, were "the Internet" to be designed today, it would look quite different.

            You are forgetting something important about email: *it works*. Spam is an irritation, but if you send an email to Jo then (barring very unusual abnormalities) she receives it. Exactly as it was sent. Very quickly.
            You seem to be confusing "it works" with "it's of a very good design by modern needs."

            By denouncing the creators of SMTP you seem to be suggesting that they should have anticipated problems that would exist 30 years in the future
            Of course not. That would be very unfair. What I'm trying to say is that those old technologies show their age. Same with X11. It's not made for modern computing. Its core is pretty much irrelevant these days and everyone depends on the layers (extensions) that were put on top of it.

            This is what I'm always told when I complain about the performance of something that runs in X11. For example, I pointed out to the KWin folks that I can run Windows Aero very smoothly even when my GPU switches from 850MHz to 50Mhz (not a typo, it really runs perfectly with just 50MHz and the power consumption drops significantly). KWin on the other hand becomes a sluggish snail at that GPU clock. I was told that this can't be avoided, since Aero is a modern design with very few indirections, while X11+composite has a lot of overhead and needs more GPU and memory bandwidth.

            Other OSes have modernized and overhauled their graphics stacks. Linux is still using a 25 year old core with a lot of hacks on top of it.

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            • #16
              My apologies - I misunderstood what you were saying.

              However, I think you undervalue technology like IPv4 and SMTP - they are flawed, but they have the benefit of being extraordinarily well tested - their limitations are well known and understood. IPv6 is the way forward (I don't think many would argue otherwise), but IPv4 is certainly rock solid.

              I may be overly-cautious, but I've seen (and caused) problems from the desire to upgrade and move on to better technology, and I wouldn't like the internet to be glitchy :-)

              In terms of graphics, the migration from the classic radeon drivers to the gallium drivers seems like the right way to go (if memory serves, both were supported and developed for a while) for migration from X11 (NB: this is the point of view of an outsider, so take it with a pinch of salt).

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