A Crazy Demo Showing The Ilixi Compositor In DirectFB 1.6

[phoronix]

Phoronix: A Crazy Demo Showing The Ilixi Compositor In DirectFB 1.6

While the DirectFB 1.6 release has suffered multiple delays since its original slated release for January, DirectFB 1.6 looks to be finally working its way out the door with its many new features...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTA4OTI

[Hirager]

Do I get it right? DirectFB is Waylands competitor?

[Chewi]

Do I get it right? DirectFB is Waylands competitor?

I think DirectFB is more focused on embedded hardware, though given the number of old PC graphics cards it has accelerated support for, that may not have always been the case. Wayland seems to be more of a general X replacement but it also has great potential on embedded hardware.

[Hirager]

Do I get it right? DirectFB is Waylands competitor?

I am confused. If I do get it right, that means two projects are simultaneously working on same problem. If they joined forces, it would go twice as fast.

[RealNC]

I am confused. If I do get it right, that means two projects are simultaneously working on same problem. If they joined forces, it would go twice as fast.

They don't compete. DirectFB runs on the framebuffer. You don't have Gallium3D and such. Just a framebuffer and pixels.

[Hirager]

They don't compete. DirectFB runs on the framebuffer. You don't have Gallium3D and such. Just a framebuffer and pixels.

Aha. Now I do get it. DirectFB is for simple graphics only, while Wayland excels at the heavy duty graphics.

[renox]

I know you're joking but..

Aha. Now I do get it. DirectFB is for simple graphics only, while Wayland excels at the heavy duty graphics.

I know you're joking but I am really curious about the differences: for me DirectFB was for embedded only, I thought that only one application could use it, but apparently several applications can use it at the same time as seen in the video, so I'm lost.
I've tried to look at their website for the documentation, but let's just say that it is "very sparse" to be polite..

[Chewi]

I know you're joking but I am really curious about the differences: for me DirectFB was for embedded only, I thought that only one application could use it, but apparently several applications can use it at the same time as seen in the video, so I'm lost.

It's been able to run multiple applications for years. It requires an additional layer, which they call Fusion.

[renox]

Document on DirectFB still hard to read

Their slides are still difficult to understand but the ilixi's FAQ is much more readable: http://www.ilixi.org/index.php/faq

(Thanks BTW for correcting me on DirectFB / Fusion ).

The current difference I see with Wayland is that ilixi display only one application at a time (from the FAQ), while Wayland is capable of doing more.

[bountykiller]

From the DirectFB website:
DirectFB is a thin library that provides hardware graphics acceleration, input device handling and abstraction, integrated windowing system with support for translucent windows and multiple display layers

Basically, it is a library which (partially) use the linux framebuffer to render graphics.
But in fact, this can do a lot more. It is for example able to render image, or decode video. It has also a builtin compositor.
It is also able to render multiple window at the same time (and use for that the fusion module as already stated in this thread).
DirectFB itself does not have a integrated windowing system, but it can be handled through a module called sawman. Anyway and AFAIK, no efficient window manager does exists right now. (the limitation of showing one application at a time in the demo is more due to ixilli than DirectFB itself).

Now for Wayland:
Wayland is a protocol for a compositor to talk to its clients as well as a C library implementation of that protocol. The compositor can be a standalone display server running on Linux kernel modesetting and evdev input devices, an X application, or a wayland client itself.
So Wayland isn't a library as DirectFb, but is a protocol + an implementation of that protocol. If I understand things well, it rely on a server application to talk with in order to draw graphics, just like the X11 protocol/servers, but it is not a X11 server by itself (as I though until I went to their web site just right now :-)), and it integrate a compositor by itself and allow to do direct rendering.

So now, back to the dicussion:

DirectFB is Waylands competitor?

Well, in fact I do think so, since it seem to achieve the same functionnality, even if they do a different way. (lib vs client/server approach)

If they joined forces, it would go twice as fast.

Probably. In fact, that people didn't took a lot of attention to DirectFB (and i'll say it never receive the attention it merits, from my own point of view). The best exemple I think is that while some people tried in the past to implement a directfb backend for GTK-2, they never had a lot of support from the GTK team, and finally this port was abandonned when the version 3 comes :-(.

You don't have Gallium3D and such. Just a framebuffer and pixels.

It's probably true that no Gallium3D version exists for DirectFB (but i'm not an expert here). Anyway, it can do a lot more than just drawing graphics. (Take a look at their screenshot section )
It was also at a time able to run opengl, but this suffer of a lack of support and drivers. (At the time I saw it, I ran only on matrox cards. Don't know if the situation did move or not since that time).

A phoroniw reader with interest in directfb since a lot of time