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I hate Linux Graphics (Linux Hater's Blog)I hate Linux Graphics (Linux Hater's Blog)Posted Jul 2, 2008 10:20 UTC (Wed) by karlmag (subscriber, #4415)Parent article: I hate Linux Graphics (Linux Hater's Blog)
I guess he's on to something.
In addition, if I may be so bold to add it, from a more user centric angle to look at Linux
graphics;
Why is it so extremely hard to configure X? In particular using tools. Smart or not.
I would think it has - at least in part - to do with what the blog and some commenters point
out. But it can't be all of it either.
I know X is supposed to autoconfigure itself. In theory you should not even need an xorg.conf
file. In reality, well... I guess more people than me have tried. There are so many things
that can go wrong, I know.
But what I *really* miss is a tool (one -1- tool, that always works) that you basically can
tell "make me an xorg.conf that uses driverX, resolution(s)Y, I have Z monitors which I want
to use as {cloned|xinerama|separate}, and the monitors can do the following resolutions and
frequenzies" etc. It should ideally work with both free and closed drivers. (No, I'm not a fan
of the latter either, but have to accept them since there are users demanding things like
working 3D over multiple monitors, etc)
Such a tool is probably not 100% trivial to do, but many parts of that should be possible.
Thanks for listening to my little rant.
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I hate Linux Graphics (Linux Hater's Blog) Posted Jul 2, 2008 15:14 UTC (Wed) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link] Just out of interest: have you tried SuSE's SaX?
I hate Linux Graphics (Linux Hater's Blog) Posted Jul 2, 2008 18:42 UTC (Wed) by karlmag (subscriber, #4415) [Link] No I haven't. Given that the computers I admin are running Fedora it is not that likely I will in that context, but I probably should look a bit into it anyway.
I hate Linux Graphics (Linux Hater's Blog) Posted Jul 2, 2008 16:34 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] This is another one of those things that people are working on fixing. Like Gallium3D or DRI2 and moving mode setting into the kernel and such things. The Linux kernel itself, and all the userspace daemons, have all sorts of hot-plug goodness. If a driver is present in the Linux kernel it will: detect the hardware load the module configure the hardware create any dev files on the fly. (and this is configurable.. most of the time they use traditional files like /dev/sda, but it can be /dev/puppykitties if you want, no symbolic links needs) set permissions on the fly. It will provide notifications to userspace. provide easy way to access hardware configurations. We have a system bus that we can use to have 'helper' programs running with root permissions perform tasks on behalf of users without the need for setuid root processes or gtksudo anything like that. I should be now completely possible to avoid the whole: "Hey everybody! We need a way to update the OS without a root account enabled... hrm... I got a idea! Lets use gtksudo and require that users are given root permissions to thousands and thousands of lines of C code (aka synaptic)! In their GUI! (because X protocol is sooooo secure) Pulling in most of GTK and Gnome as dependencies, too! (more thousands of lines of C code) With root permissions! That'll be secure!" All of this is done on the fly. Any program can take advantage of it. Things are starting to become sane, as far as Linux desktop usage is concerned. All the video cards, all your input devices.. everything. All configured, and reconfigurable, on the fly. And guess what? Until very recently X couldn't use any of it. It was in it's own little world. Not requiring a Xorg.conf is just the first step. So that X can configure itself automatically on start up. Next step is allowing X to be reconfigured without having it to be restarted. Requiring that users need to log out of X, and restart X, in order to get all their mouse buttons, or whenever they plugin a wacom tablet or anything like that, is poo-poo. It's only one level above Windows 98-era usability. In fact on modern machine it will probably be faster to restart Win9x then it is to restart Gnome. It doesn't really matter, at that point, what sort of GUI applications you have for configuring stuff. It needs to be dynamically reconfigurable. _Then_ we can actually make useful GUI configuration tools. I don't know how far along they are. Everything is much easier then it used to be. For example: I love xrandr! That program is fantastic and it allows me to have better display hotplug characteristics then what is possible with XP. Hopefully everything will be like that.
I hate Linux Graphics (Linux Hater's Blog) Posted Jul 2, 2008 19:26 UTC (Wed) by karlmag (subscriber, #4415) [Link] I am glad (and I do know) the world goes forward. At least generally. But I also do believe this is one of the big problems for Linux vs random users. It is much better now than it was just a couple of years ago. The 'simple' standard setup with monitor, keyboard and mouse works out of the box in most cases now. When it comes to a bit more 'exotic' setups it is not so easy. One would think setting up dual monitors isn't too difficult. It is harder than it should be, and - in my experience - it needs some level of manual configuration to get it right. That doesn't scale too well when there are about 3+ dozen Linux client machines (out of about 400-450) with two monitors. The machines are usually not identical, they have different graphics cards (few manufacturers, but many models) and many different monitor types and models. So believe me, X that configures itself is one of my wet dreams. And I also believe it will get there, or nearly there in time. But I need something in the mean while. Command line tools, so it is possible to script things. :-)
I hate Linux Graphics (Linux Hater's Blog) Posted Jul 3, 2008 3:55 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] If you think it's complicated now, just image when you have people connecting their phones or their notebooks to displays wirelessly. It's not to far into the future were when you want to watch a video or whatever on your cell phone, you sit it on top of your television and press 'connect'.
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