rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) (04/13/91)
gamiddle@watmath.waterloo.edu (Guy Middleton) writes: > X does suck, but its popularity seems inevitable, since it doesn't cost any > money... Guy, I know what you mean, but you're wrong. X costs a bundle. First, it costs at least 4 Mb extra RAM, one notch of CPU upgrade (and an FPU helps), and probably about 20 Mb of disk--PER MACHINE. There are some additional display costs (relative to what a better window system would require), but they're harder to figure. Next, although the software base code is "free", it takes a lot of work to make it into usable software. You have to port the server to various display interfaces (and in the PC-compatible world, there are scores of them); then you've got to tune it up. Both of these are made much harder by the gratuitous complexity in X. -- Dick Dunn rcd@ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd Boulder, CO (303)449-2870 ...While you were reading this, Motif grew by another kilobyte.
stripes@eng.umd.edu (Joshua Osborne) (04/18/91)
In article <1991Apr12.192658.25172@ico.isc.com>, rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) writes: > gamiddle@watmath.waterloo.edu (Guy Middleton) writes: > > X does suck, but its popularity seems inevitable, since it doesn't cost any > > money... > > Guy, I know what you mean, but you're wrong. X costs a bundle. > > First, it costs at least 4 Mb extra RAM, one notch of CPU upgrade (and an > FPU helps), and probably about 20 Mb of disk--PER MACHINE. There are some > additional display costs (relative to what a better window system would > require), but they're harder to figure. I run 22 VS2000's off of about 15Megs. Total. Including the one 6M read-only swap. Adding more VS2000's costs about 40 bytes each. Sure the VS2000's are only X terminals, sure they are (moderately) slow ones at that (Sun 3/50's are fast enough). But the people who use these things are used to Sun 3/60 speeds, and we won't (ever) see that on a VS2000. > Next, although the software base code is "free", it takes a lot of work to > make it into usable software. You have to port the server to various > display interfaces Normally you get a server that already works. Still it is far easier to port something you have source to then something you don't. > (and in the PC-compatible world, there are scores of > them); then you've got to tune it up. Both of these are made much harder > by the gratuitous complexity in X. Much of the "gratuitous complexity" is to make X easy to port. Just look at the Visual types and think about it, they expose the user level code to the reality that you server only has 128 colors rather then making the server cope with a client that thinks it can ask for 600... It also deals with direct map vs. color table lookup, etc. You want to port the X server to a new framebuffer? If you want it slow, you can write 10 (easy) functions, all in one directory, 3 different .c files. Want it acceptably fast? Write about 25 functions (I haven't done this, I have done a 10 function port). Want it fast? Work on it for awhile. > -- > Dick Dunn rcd@ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd Boulder, CO (303)449-2870 > ...While you were reading this, Motif grew by another kilobyte. ^^^^^ Not over here, we erased it. -- stripes@eng.umd.edu "Security for Unix is like Josh_Osborne@Real_World,The Multitasking for MS-DOS" "The dyslexic porgramer" - Kevin Lockwood "CNN is the only nuclear capable news network..." - lbruck@eng.umd.edu (Lewis Bruck)