[lugm.org] Linux on the desktop got a long way to go

Thu Oct 6 17:20:36 UTC 2011

--- On Thu, 6/10/11, selven <pcthegreat at gmail.com> wrote:

From: selven <pcthegreat at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [lugm.org] Linux on the desktop got a long way to go
To: "LUGM Discuss Mailing List" <discuss at lugm.org>
Date: Thursday, 6 October, 2011, 17:35

Well logan you already know the answer to this. First :p devices are documented well enough, in case where blobs are use, it tends to be more than ok. [nvidia? ]. (at some point it should have been acceptable to accept blobs until power was gained and then drop all support for blobs one at a time which would have pressed manufacturers to document more instead of believing in purist who was adamant about certains things ) 

Indeed, for stuff like nvidia, it's no use if manufacturers won't document anything.
We have ATI/Intel who have finally got the message.

As for X being primitive, that it might, but :) windows environment mixes the graphical user interface with the core system itself. While with unix like system, our X is just :p an option.

It's not a well-designed option. We may make fun of windows back in the XP days, but the truth is that they worked on fixing issues, unlike Xorg developers.

Xorg runs in userspace, but as you know, since it works with video card registers,
it needs root privileges. Essentially, you have to allow X to access the hardware
directly without any sort of checking being done.

This also means that you have plenty of memory to run your exploits in the VGA
memory.

http://www.invisiblethingslab.com/resources/misc-2010/xorg-large-memory-attacks.pdf

Windows took a different approach, and integrated their graphics in the kernel,
and implemented some abstraction to allow some checking to be done. For example, in case of problems, windows resets ANY graphics adapter. This implements standard behaviour across different video cards which is a good idea.

It's only now that X developers are starting to think about solving those issues.
But I'm not sure if they're heading in the right direction. The answer is supposed
to be KMS, but it is still a moving target. It's further complicated by the fact
that TTM, GEM, UMS are still being developed, and this fragments the 
developer resources.

I think the Xorg ppl should buy beer for the Windows developers, and learn
how to design a proper windowing model.

[I should add that Xorg ``releases'' is a headache for a lot of distributions, but
that's another issue ]

.Talking about which, i heard that some windows people have started talking like overexcited school kids on the mention of the powershell .. weirdly these people were against 'a command line interface' back when one would have said "our leenix machine pwnz your stoopid limited gui windows world for we've got unlimited ways to do things in a command environment.".

powershell has a long way to go :-) 

Ohh well in this world ... as we say it in creole :p "bef travail souwal manzE", slowly thousands of coders contributed to leenix at some point probably am sure not in the hope that microsoft will be gaining money through that, but then at some point, good faith ends up being exploited .. comes in google, comes in android, comes in " patent infringement coz of fat! " and in the end microsoft gets 5 bucks out of every phone with that hardwork of those coders! 

google pays/hires free software developers. A lot of OpenBSD ppl work for google
and they are paid to take 1-2 week off to hack on Open Source code. 

Microsoft patent rattle is completely stupid. Patent on code is a joke.

:) so yes :p whatever is being done microsoft will copy whatever innovation people with good faith creates and then make money out of it. 
Microsoft devised some clever way to solve the graphic stack problem. They are
putting the barrier higher. Their solution is better than Xorg.

On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 8:36 AM, Nitin K Sookun <nsgupta at indra.mu> wrote:

Like u use to say, "It's against the religion!".

--

Nitin K Sookun

openSUSE Ambassador (Mauritius)

FSF Member #9934

Freenode: Ishwon #opensuse

This email has been sent using openSUSE 11.4 & Novell Evolution 2.32.

On Thu, 2011-10-06 at 15:51 +0400, Ronny R. wrote:

> he sold his soul

>

> On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 3:23 PM, ashvin saminathen

> <csyke.ashvin at gmail.com> wrote:

> > logan praising windows???

> > i've seen it all now, i can die ;P

> >

> >

> > On 5 October 2011 19:23, Loganaden Velvindron <gnukid1 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> >>

> >> I'm running windows 7 in my laptop.

> >>

> >> If there's a problem with the GPU, Windows

> >> resets the GPU, and I get a notification.

> >>

> >> Contrast this to Linux/BSD, where if there's

> >> an error with Xorg, the whole machine goes

> >> down in the process.

> >>

> >> Xorg and friends are still very very primitive

> >> compared to the Windows graphic stack.

> >>

> >> Microsoft's product offering is getting really

> >> good these days.

> >>

> >> Back in the windows XP days, Linux/BSD had the

> >> stability advantage. It's gone now.

> >>

> >>

> >>

> >>

> >>

> >> __________________________________________________________

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> >> Website: http://lugm.org

> >> Mailing list archive: http://lugm.org/pipermail/discuss_lugm.org/

> >> Forum: http://lugm.org/forum/

> >> IRC: #linux.mu on Freenode

> >

> >

> > __________________________________________________________

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> >

> >

>

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