From the «early days are best days» department:
Title: Iconography of the X Window System: the boot stipple
Author: Thom Holwerda
Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2024 21:22:49 +0000
Link: https://www.osnews.com/story/140211/iconography-of-the-x-window-system-the-boot-stipple/
For the uninitiated, what are we looking at? Could it be the Moiré Error[1] from Doom? Well, no. You are looking at (part of) the boot up screen for the X Window System[2], specifically the pattern it uses as the background of the root window[3]. This pattern is technically called a stipple[4].
What you’re seeing is pretty important and came to symbolize a lot for me as
a computer practitioner.
↫ Matt T. Proud[5]
The X bootup pattern is definitely burnt onto my retina, as it probably is for
a lot of late ’90s, early 2000s Linux users. Setting up X correctly, and more
importantly, not breaking it later, was almost an art at the time, so any time
you loaded up your PC and this pattern didn’t greet you, you’d get this sinister feeling in the pit of your stomach. There was now a very real chance you were going to have to debug your X configuration file, and nobody – absolutely nobody – liked doing that, and if you did, you’re lying.
Matt T. Proud dove into the history of the X stipple, and discovered it’s been
part of X since pretty much the very beginning, and even more esoteric X implementations, like the ones used by Solaris or the various commercial versions, have the stipple. He also discovered several other variants of the stipple included in X, so there is a chance your memory might be just a tiny bit different.
The stipple eventually disappeared at around 2008 or so, it disappeared as part
of the various efforts to modernise, sanitise, and speed up the Linux boot process on desktops. On modern distributions still using X, you won’t encounter
it anymore by default, but in true X fashion, the code is still there and you can easily bring it back using a flag specifically designed for it, -retro, that you can use with startx or your X init file.
There’s a ton more information in Proud’s excellent article, but this one paragraph made me smile:
I will remark that in spite of my job being a software engineer, I had never spent a lot of time looking at the source code for the X Server (XFree86 or X.Org) before. It’s really nuts to see that a lot of the architecture from X10R3 and X11R1 still persists in the code today, which is a statement that can be said in deep admiration for legacy code but also disturbance from the power of old decisions. Without having looked at the internals of any Wayland implementation, I can sympathize sight unseen with the sentiments that some developers have toward the X Window System: the code is a dead end. I say that with the utmost respect to the X Window System as a technology and an ecosystem. I’ll keep using X, and I will be really sad when it’s no longer
possible for me to do so for one reason or another, as I’m extremely attached
to it quirks. But it’s clear the future is limited.
↫ Matt T. Proud[5]
We all have great – and not so great – memories of X, but I am really, really
happy I no longer have to use it.
Links:
[1]: https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Moir%C3%A9_error (link)
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System (link)
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_window (link)
[4]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stipple (link)
[5]: https://matttproud.com/blog/posts/x-window-system-boot-stipple.html (link)
Ideally, anti-X11 advocates should be deported, or processed into stem
cells.
For the uninitiated, what are we looking at?
Title: Iconography of the X Window System: the boot stipple
Author: Thom Holwerda
Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2024 21:22:49 +0000
Link: https://www.osnews.com/story/140211/iconography-of-the-x-window-system-the-boot-stipple/
(...)
implementation, I can sympathize sight unseen with the sentiments that some developers have toward the X Window System: the code is a dead end.
(...)
I’ll keep using X, and I will be really sad when it’s no longer
possible for me to do so for one reason or another
On Sun, 28 Jul 2024 21:42:34 +0000, Javier wrote:
... this is a marketing campaign ...
Who is paying for it?
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Sun, 28 Jul 2024 21:42:34 +0000, Javier wrote:
... this is a marketing campaign ...
Who is paying for it?
There is very little money involved with these marketing campaigns.
... this is a marketing campaign ...
On Sun, 28 Jul 2024 21:42:34 +0000, Javier wrote:
... this is a marketing campaign ...
Who is paying for it?
OSnews and other media are publishing these articles to push
the idea that X11 is going to fade as a memory.
OSnews published another article recently about twm. And
in my YouTube feed I'm also getting recommendations
with videos about the history of X11 (from the channel
RetroBytes).
It's quite subtle, but this is a marketing campaign to promote
Wayland and to stop devs from writing applications for X11
(which is the most stable and portable API).
In any case, reading about the history of X11 is an interesting topic.Yes
OSnews and other media are publishing these articles to push the idea
that X11 is going to fade as a memory. OSnews published another article recently about twm. And in my YouTube feed I'm also getting recommendations with videos about the history of X11 (from the channel RetroBytes).
Right now, I am hoping the BSDs would get together to keep X current,
but I kind of doubt that will happen.
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Sun, 28 Jul 2024 21:42:34 +0000, Javier wrote:MS, IBM/RedHat, and the NSA.
... this is a marketing campaign ...
Who is paying for it?
Right now, I am hoping the BSDs would get together to keep
X current, but I kind of doubt that will happen.
Perhaps long-term the issue might be whether it's ported to new CPU architectures like RISCV? That's a long way off though, there might even
be a replacement for Wayland by then.
On 30 Jul 2024 08:52:15 +1000, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
Perhaps long-term the issue might be whether it's ported to new CPU
architectures like RISCV? That's a long way off though, there might even
be a replacement for Wayland by then.
Linux already runs on RISC-V.
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