Bad NIH, good NIH [LWN.net]

Bad NIH, good NIH

Posted Mar 11, 2013 12:27 UTC (Mon) by dgm (subscriber, #49227)
In reply to: Bad NIH, good NIH by nix
Parent article: Canonical reveals plans to launch Mir display server (The H)

There are many things that can run smoother over the network if done more cleverly than just copying frames around, but:
1. Most people do not need to work over the network, specially those that have the greatest need for performance: games, video playback and such.
2. Copying frames is by far the simplest solution.
3. Being able to copy frames doesn't mean you cannot _add_ a cleverer solution.

So, a local only display covers maybe 95% of user needs, and with dumb frame copying you may be getting that up to 99% (statistics right out of my hat, but still). The remaining 1% _can_ be worked out, or just keep using X11.

The alternative is forcing network "transparency" down everybody's throat, even if they do not want or need it.

It's not really that nobody needs X11. I do, for instance. But I'm not so stupid to not realize that most people don't. And forcing them to play a price for something I need doesn't sound like a great idea.

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Bad NIH, good NIH

Posted Mar 11, 2013 15:27 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

I find it hard to believe that you think that playing video rendered over the network (without using something like Youtube) is a more common case than rendering scrolling text buffers over the network. The latter is about 99% of what people use X remotely *for*.

Bad NIH, good NIH

Posted Mar 12, 2013 12:21 UTC (Tue) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]

> rendering scrolling text buffers over the network [...] is about 99% of what people use X remotely *for*.

Probably, but what percentage of people do use X remotely, actually?

Does it make sense to design the solution around that use case? Or would it be better to design things around the *common* use case (computing and display on the same node), specially when alternative solutions do exist?

Bad NIH, good NIH

Posted Mar 13, 2013 21:41 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

I can't tell you how common it is, or isn't. I don't see how you could claim that you know that non-remote use is so common that the remote case should be disregarded, either.