[forum] Future of X ?

[David Bellot]

>
>
> Anyone could tell me what the future is of X now Keith Packard left 
> the core team. I found Keith Packard quite interesting because he was 
> really adding value to the project. So what’s next?
>
> With managers like Gnome and KDE becoming more important we realy need 
> a better underground!!
>
> So why not make the project more open? More developers and more 
> supporters would really add some value. Maybe it’s also an idea to 
> split up the drivers from the project. Lets release Ati and Nvidia 
> themselves.
>
> And why is there no roadmap ? I can’t find anything about Xfree 5. 
> News is very important to keep people’s interrest in the project.
>
> And maybe Keith is right. A fork or maybe should Xfree be rewriten 
> from scratch. X sounds very old to me and it’s slow development is 
> really keeping desktop users away from linux.
>
I agree with you. Despite the fact that X is a very nice piece of code, 
X is old and need at least to be modified in order to take out all of 
those old features that nobody never wants to use.

In fact, X should have a more light kernel, like an operating system, to 
be more scalable : from PDA to the latest SGI station. In fact, given 
the fact that more and more people are using the two leading desktop 
environment GNOME and KDE, there will be no need for a so-complex system 
like X. GNOME and KDE are encapsulating almost everything. I don't say 
that X must go away, but X has to be renewed to be more competitive !

* We need to have a better approach for drivers : ATI, NVidia, etc... 
need it !
* Where is the roadmap ? Is there a "private" roadmap ?
* GCC was not a very open project. Now, GCC is open and has been 
partially rewritten. Everybody agrees to say that it was the best decision !
* What needs the average Joe user ?
More features ? Speed ? Connectivity with a CRAY ZXY ? Good philosophy 
of open source? High framerate under UT2003 ? PDA compliance ?
Mozilla and Evolution on its PDA ? Latest Radeon/GForce/etc... support 
(as soon as those cards are released) ?

X rulez, but X is old, slow and development of X is more old and slow. 
Wake up, folks !

DB

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David Bellot, PhD

SHARP project - INRIA Rhône-Alpes
ZIRST - 655 avenue de l'Europe
38330 Montbonnot Saint Martin FRANCE

Email : David.Bellot@inria.fr
Web   : http://www.inrialpes.fr/sharp/people/bellot
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