Re: GGI might be the way...

On Son, 2003-03-23 at 17:15, James Arthur wrote: 
> On Sunday 23 March 2003 09:49, Sven Luther wrote:
> > > 2) Moving to a direct rendering model WILL increase performance. GGI
> > >    provides this model, and also lets us run X today!
> >
> > Why not fbdev/DirectFB/XDirectFB ? It seem to have more acceptance and
> > usage than GGI, which as my following of it has died a few years ago.
> 
> I've always thought that a networked layer on top of a direct rendering model 
> is more sensible than the other way around. 

How does direct rendering over a network layer work, anyway? :)


> I would very much like to see more support for (X)DirectFB in the future. 
> I like it now, but it doesn't have the driver support I need right now to 
> use it in a serious environment (I need hardware OpenGL). Would/could it 
> ever be the case that DriectFB be merged into XFree86, or that the two 
> projects become co-operative so that DRI code is shared?

I'm not sure the former is even a good idea (did you mean XDirectFB?),
but I certainly hope the latter will happen. AFAIK there is some ongoing
work in that direction.


> GGI was a nice idea, but from what I can gather, it does nothing that other 
> alternatives can't do better. But yes, direct rendering layer==good, IMO. 
> Can't see why DRI hasn't got more support when I would say that for a lot of 
> people now, this is more important than network transparency. People do like 
> graphical operating systems, and resonsiveness is key. XFree86 feels more 
> sluggish than Windows on my dual-boot machine, and it's nothing to do with 
> the window manager. 

Well, I was very surprised what a difference the window manager can make
when I first tried metacity, even after several years of using X.

> Things generally run faster under DirectFB natively than under X.

I must say I was impressed how snappy XDirectFB was even without any
hardware acceleration when I tried it a while ago. Apparently lots of
potential there.


-- 
Earthling Michel Dänzer (MrCooper)/ Debian GNU/Linux (powerpc) developer
XFree86 and DRI project member   /  CS student, Free Software enthusiast