Re: SDL vs GGI

[Pierre Phaneuf <pp@ludusdesign.com>]

Brett_A._Letner@NOTES.UP.COM wrote:

> The real question is - Why run X?
> The only reason I can come up with is that some applications only run under
> X.  If netscape and xboard ran in the console I would have almost zero
> reason to run X.
> What does X buy me that I couldn't get from fbcon?

Monitoring a download while coding something else? Using a debugger to
debug a program while it is running without two monitors or switching
virtual console? I agree that virtual consoles and GPM makes for a
killer combo (try to go back to DOS, or even, to the text console of a
SPARC running Solaris!), but the really nifty stuff, I do with my Window
Maker applets (licq for example, ICQ is a very evil thing to use in text
mode) and with windows.

But I can understand you, I was like that a while ago. Then, I bought a
good 17" monitor (a ViewSonic P775, I recommend it heartily, or its
bigger brother, the PT775), and found that X was *good* after all! After
I upgraded my S3 ViRGE 2 MB to a Matrox Millenium G200 with 8 MB, I
definitely wouldn't go back.

> I'm not suggesting that we don't use the capabilities of modern graphics
> hardware, in fact, I'm suggesting just the opposite.  Why access this
> hardware through another layer such as X, when you should be able to get at
> the hardware directly though the kernel?

Because now we can't without the X layer. Except for a few borderline
cases, GGI is either using Svgalib (which freaks me out), fbdev (which
is mostly unaccelerated, except for very few video cards) or X (why use
GGI then?).

And X applications are better behaved. I just feel that taking over the
full screen with the rest of the computer screaming in pain isn't
exactly my idea of Unix, which is more of a friendly, resource-sharing,
exchange-saavy kind of thing.

> >>Now, do you want to be defining the future or do you want to be living
> >>in the past?
> Well, beer was cheaper back then.

That's a *very* good point tho. :-)

-- 
Pierre Phaneuf
Ludus Design, http://ludusdesign.com/
"First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you. Then you win." -- Gandhi