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> It hasn't aged very well, either. "Even today, the X server turns fast computers into dumb terminals" hasn't been true for at least a couple of decades... Yo

> It hasn't aged very well, either. "Even today, the X server turns fast computers into dumb terminals" hasn't been true for at least a couple of decades... You're not wrong, but that's only because people wrote extensions for direct access to the graphics hardware... which obviously don't work remotely, and so aren't really in the spirit of X. It's great that that was possible, but OTOH it probably delayed the invention of something like Wayland for a decade+. It's been ages since I've used X for a remote application, but I sometimes wonder how many of them actually really still work to any reasonable degree. I remember some of them working when I last tried it, albeit with abysmal performance compared to Remote desktop, for example.

Ekaros 6y ago
It's not great even on a local network I can use Firefox reasonably well, but I can entirely forget that on current remote working environment with VPN and SSH... And this is from land-line connection with reasonably powerful machines at both ends. A few seconds response time makes user-experience useless...
the_af 6y ago
Fair enough! I wasn't really thinking of the remote use case which was indeed X's main use case when it was conceived (and which is not very relevant today for the majority of users). In any case, this was just an example. The Handbook is peppered with complaints which haven't been relevant for ages. It was written before Linux got user-friendly UIs and was widespread to almost every appliance on Earth. It was written before Linux could run AAA games. It was written before Docker. It was written before so many people knew how to program simple scripts. It was written before Windows and Apple embraced Unix. If some of these people are still living, I wonder what they think of the (tech) world today. Maybe they are still bitter, or maybe they understand how much they missed the mark ;)
- Quekid5 6y ago
  Oh, certainly. It was really just a nitpick :).

Ekaros 6y ago

It's not great even on a local network I can use Firefox reasonably well, but I can entirely forget that on current remote working environment with VPN and SSH... And this is from land-line connection with reasonably powerful machines at both ends. A few seconds response time makes user-experience useless...

the_af 6y ago

Fair enough! I wasn't really thinking of the remote use case which was indeed X's main use case when it was conceived (and which is not very relevant today for the majority of users). In any case, this was just an example. The Handbook is peppered with complaints which haven't been relevant for ages. It was written before Linux got user-friendly UIs and was widespread to almost every appliance on Earth. It was written before Linux could run AAA games. It was written before Docker. It was written before so many people knew how to program simple scripts. It was written before Windows and Apple embraced Unix. If some of these people are still living, I wonder what they think of the (tech) world today. Maybe they are still bitter, or maybe they understand how much they missed the mark ;)

Quekid5 6y ago
Oh, certainly. It was really just a nitpick :).