From owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Nov 12 13:03:15 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BBD8A16A4CE for ; Wed, 12 Nov 2003 13:03:15 -0800 (PST) Received: from lakemtao06.cox.net (lakemtao06.cox.net [68.1.17.115]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9F3A043F75 for ; Wed, 12 Nov 2003 13:03:14 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from kitbsdlists@HotPOP.com) Received: from fortytwo ([68.109.49.234]) by lakemtao06.cox.net (InterMail vM.5.01.06.05 201-253-122-130-105-20030824) with SMTP id <20031112210313.HTYN24575.lakemtao06.cox.net@fortytwo>; Wed, 12 Nov 2003 16:03:13 -0500 Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 15:02:01 -0600 From: Vulpes Velox To: Miguel Mendez Message-Id: <20031112150201.49789572.kitbsdlists@HotPOP.com> In-Reply-To: <20031112184850.0f752d52.flynn@energyhq.es.eu.org> References: <20031112184850.0f752d52.flynn@energyhq.es.eu.org> X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 0.9.6claws (GTK+ 1.2.10; i386-portbld-freebsd4.9) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: The future of X? X-BeenThere: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Non technical items related to the community List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 21:03:15 -0000 On Wed, 12 Nov 2003 18:48:50 +0100 Miguel Mendez wrote: > Several places have commented on the subject already, it's currently on > /. as well. The relevant link: > http://freedesktop.org/~keithp/screenshots/ > > So, I'm wondering, what do you guys think about the dropshadow and > transparent windows thing Mr. Packard and friends are working on? Could > it help on the adoption of *ix on the desktop? I personally don't mind > some eye candy now and then, so, as long as it can be turned off, it > looks good in my book. I've read some comments saying that some people > get a better undestanding of the desktop if the windows cast a shadow. > On the negative side, I don't think having 3 forks is that good > (XFree86, Xouvert and this stuff). FWIW, the screenshots sure are pretty :) I personally doubt that this new xserver will amount to much. Especially given a major lack of drivers. It could possibly be interesting, but I don't see them really going any where fast or at all. I also get the feeling that they will probally want to try to be linux centric with it. I personally think a module for doing stuff like that would be much more fesable. But from what I have heard getting stuff commited to the XFree86 project is a prob. What could be done is to take the current XFree86 code and put it in a enviroment where things can be more easily added. This would probally be much better since it would not mean writing things from scratch and all ready have a nice amount of drivers to pull from. I also doubt very much that it will help the adoption of unix on the desktop. The biggest problem is how badly thinks like KDE and Gnome are put together and they are suppose to be newbie friendly. Both leave a lot to be desired as they try to tie things down to one set way of doing things. They are both set up to use ways that are entire centric to themselves for doing things like smb and the like... a much better approach would to be allow a piece of software to search for something and then go about mounting it onto the FS under the users home dir or some place. The also both spend a lot of time all ready recreating stuff which there is no reason to recreate... such as a browser... just use mozilla/firebird... A unified look would be good to... none of this going for only gtk/gtk+/qt... what is needed is a app that can configure all three. Ohh, another thing that would be really good is if some one would go and write some widgets for file selection and the like that looks and functioned exactly the same on gtk/gtk+/qt. A few other things that are needed are some nice tools for configing stuff and building stuff. I my self am currently working on the last one. /stand/sysinstall is nice, but it leaves a few things to be desired.