10 ms·
X debut 40 years ago (1984)
- bsdice 2y agoSmall tip for anyone running a superlight and minimally distracting Linux desktop with X11, i3, and no compositor. Until recently, tear-free video playback necessitated double buffering hacks and older Intel drivers, or using a compositor like picom. Results were always sub-par imo. Along came Mr Sultan Alsawaf: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/commit/0dacee6c5149b63a563e9bed63502da2e9f1ac1f https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/commit/0dacee6... Been running the patch set through Arch's xorg-server-git package ever since it came out, and with mpv as player spaceships have never been zooming smoother along the starry sky. For ultimate playback smoothness I scan the video file for dimensions and refresh rate and then set a custom modeline using xrandr to match display timing with media fps, while maxing out the capabilities of the display link.
- klaussilveira 2y agoDo you have a script to set the custom modeline?
- brendadavis22 2y ago[flagged]
- musicale 2y agoUnfortunately by June 1984 people had already seen the Mac and Lisa. Fortunately 2024 is the year of the Linux desktop, while Apple and Microsoft are busy adding creepy and intrusive AI features.
- guerby 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System "X originated as part of Project Athena at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1984.[3] The X protocol has been at version 11 (hence "X11") since September 1987."
- semi-extrinsic 2y agoFWIW the XML specification has been at version 1.1 for 17 years as well. The CEE/7 standard was last revised in 1983 and is used by hundreds of millions of people every day.
- tannhaeuser 2y ago> the XML specification has been at version 1.1 for 17 years as well ISO 8879 (SGML), which XML is a subset of, was ratified in 1986 already, making it closer to X11. Also, you may want to check what XML 1.1 as opposed to 1.0 is about [1] - the vast vast majority of XML is 1.0 and has no reason to ever declare itself as 1.1 and in fact, every reason not to. [1]: <http://www.ibiblio.org/xml/books/effectivexml/chapters/03.html http://www.ibiblio.org/xml/books/effectivexml/chapters/03.ht...>
- lubutu 2y agoMeanwhile, Kerberos (also Project Athena) has been at version 5 since September 1993.
- EdiX 2y agoThe reason it's been stuck at version 11 is because X11 added an extension mechanism to the protocol and all improvements since have been added as extensions.
- tapia 2y agoIt was fun to read the recommendation to switch from W to X. I guess we are now back to W :P
- arjvik 2y agoayland :)
- richie-guix 2y agoAccording to Lindy's Law this means I'll be ready to switch to Wayland no sooner than 2065.
- bee_rider 2y agoI’ll be really surprised if Wayland is still popular when X is really ready to be tossed out. But surely by 2065 somebody will have come up with an entirely new successor.
- ithinkso 2y agoI'm switching to Wayland on the New Year's Eve of the year of Linux desktop
- ForOldHack 2y agoPrior comment was 2065, so there is stilla good 41 years to get it right.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- vetinari 2y ago“The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed." (― William Gibson)
- vundercind 2y agoX was about 25 years old when Wayland came out. By that timeline, we’re only a decade from Wayland’s successor protocol being released. It may, optimistically, have had five entire years of being the unequivocal standard by then!
- hollerith 2y agoInstead of looking at how long it will take Wayland to mature, let's look at how long X has been obsolete (for some applications): for example, Apple rejected X way back in the 1990s for use in its new OS (which they released to users in 2001). In contrast Wayland is mature enough that ChromeOS decided to go all-in on Wayland, and Microsoft uses it too, for WSL2. ChromeOS has been using Wayland in Crostini and ChromeOS's Android emulator for years, but only in the last year or so have versions of the OS rolled out to ordinary users that use Wayland also for the main UI (browser and task bar and such). Till then ChromeOS used a hand-rolled graphics system for that. Also Wayland was embraced many years ago by makers of graphical user interfaces for cars.
- modeless 2y agoHa, I didn't know the name came from incrementing W. Surprised I haven't seen a Y window system. A quick search shows that there have been several, but none successful obviously. Edit: it gets better. Apparently W ran on the V operating system.
- Findecanor 2y agoI have come across projects called X12, Y and Z, but I don't think any amounted to anything. 20+ years ago, I joined a group of open source devs wanting to build a successor to X11, and I suggested "Umlaut" as a working name because of Germanic languages' alphabets typically had letters with umlauts after 'Z'... However, we wanted different things, so we disbanded. I wanted to push network transparency with object capability-based security and SVG-like vector graphics. Others wanted something more similar to what Wayland is today, or even simpler: with 32-bit framebuffers like what SerenityOS has. Today I think perhaps a capability-based windowing systems would best be built on top of a capability-based OS — building it on top of Unix/Linux would be a kludge at best.
- gumby 2y agoIIRC, Symbolics' "Dynamic Windows" window system (later CLIM) was originally called Y windows.
- justin66 2y agoThey could have called Wayland "Y," but we can be grateful they didn't. The Wayland jokes and abuse asking "why?" are already pervasive.
- smcameron 2y agoSometimes I tell people that "vi" is the successor to earlier editors "v", "iv", and "iii" and a couple others I don't remember the names of.
- ForOldHack 2y agoI saw that. You told a Unix joke.
- 2y ago
- worksonmine 2y ago> Anyone who wants the code can come by with a tape. Made me smile.
- asveikau 2y agoTurned out to be adequate for experimentation. I think it's interesting they had a CLU binding before C. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLU_(programming_language) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLU_(programming_language)
- kkylin 2y agoOMG. We used CLU in a software engineering. The compiler (really a CLU-to-C translator I think?) was sooooo painfully slow. Can't imagine using it for anything moderately complicated.
- bitwize 2y agoI know what CLU the language is and its significance, but every time I read about CLU I still think: "Forget it, Mr. High and Mighty Master Control. You aren't making me talk."
- larsbrinkhoff 2y agoJust chipping in that an early CLU compiler for the PDP-10 has been recovered from backup tapes, and can be run on an emulator. https://github.com/get-a-clu/ https://github.com/get-a-clu/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PF9jbzncgM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PF9jbzncgM
- jll29 2y agoFor years, I had seen X11 desktops in magazines before Linux and the Intel 80486DX-33 permitted me to first boot X11 on my own machine in 1992 (after installing it from fifty 3.5" floppy disks, which required two trips to the nearest university, as the first time one of the disks was faulty). Still remember that feeling of first typing xeyes & and xlock & and inspecting the result on that 14" color CRT screen (I was beaming more than it, perhaps). Then by winter term 1996 I owned a refurbished HP9000-715/75 running HP-UX 9.03 (also X11-based), pre-owned and via uni discount and still the price of a car at the time... the only undergrad on my corridor who had a workstation in the dorm room (its 21" CRT filling most of the 9 m² space that was not occupied by the bed). My next goal then was to get all the manual books (X11 and HP-UX) - still got 'em. HAPPY 40th BIRTHDAY, X11! And thanks to the X11 authors for making it available for free - imagine, X11 supported mice with 16 buttons already back then!
- jeffbee 2y agoI don't guess you went to Texas A&M. I remember about '96 we scanned the residence hall local network for XDMCP services and discovered the one weirdo with a HPUX box.
- mshroyer 2y agoHa, this brings back memories. Around 2003 I used either XDMCP or plain X11 forwarding over SSH to access my dorm room computer while at home visiting my parents, and later got a letter from school IT warning me about abusive network traffic.
- technothrasher 2y ago> the only undergrad on my corridor who had a workstation in the dorm room In 1993, I worked my way up to becoming the lab manager for the residential computer lab in my dorm (basically a bunch of Macs for people to use, as we were the dorm farthest away from the library's undergrad computing center). I did that so I could put my SGI Indigo XS24 directly onto the 10Base2 Ethernet, rather than connecting it via the university's phone system in my room using PPP at 57kbps. I went back for a reunion about five years ago and the lab was still running (although in a different dorm now). I talked to the kid running it, who was nice enough, but he said nobody used the lab really, and he didn't know the first thing about networking. He was a gamer who "wanted to learn more about Linux". I tried to keep an open mind, times have changed, and he was eager, but boy was it depressing that the old culture is long dead.
- _joel 2y ago2024 is finally the year of the X desktop
- lmz 2y agoThe XL year of the X desktop, even.
- dale_glass 2y ago> Anyone who wants the code can come by with a tape. What kind of tape would that be in those times?
- hagbard_c 2y agoSome QIC format most likely - a fairly sturdy aluminium-backed cartridge containing two spools and a pressure roller with which the quarter-inch tape (hence the name, Quarter Inch tape Cartridge) was pressed against the tape head. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter-inch_cartridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter-inch_cartridge
- eschaton 2y ago“Drop by my office with a tape” probably would’ve referred to DECtape (TK50), the ancestor of DLT. That and QIC-24 were the sorts of tapes one would carry between offices in those days; TK50 was extremely common in the DEC world and QIC-24 was used pretty much everywhere else.
- slashdave 2y agoReel to reel
- thequux 2y agoMost likely 9 track (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9-track_tape https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9-track_tape)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- abridgett 2y agoI still remember playing Quake on Linux - with the X display being displayed on a different computer over the network. The different computer was running HP-UX (HP's Unix) on a PA-RISC chip.
- fullstop 2y agoThey didn't trap Ctrl+C on Linux, so you had to be really careful about key binds.
- astrodust 2y agoThe idea that you could hook several X terminals up to a modest system like a SPARCstation and share it was kind of amazing. Even mid-range workstations were insanely expensive back then. (May have played an inordinate amount of Netrek on those.)
- User23 2y agoXpilot did some damage to productivity at more than one computer lab.
- jandrese 2y agoI thought it was a missed opportunity that X never got an audio protocol built-in. I guess streaming audio was considered too exotic in the 1980s, but getting sound to chase X applications around is still an unsolved problem. I think it would have forced Linux and other Unix-like OSes to fix their broken and crufty audio subsystems much earlier. It was a real nightmare getting audio out of sound cards back in the 90s and even 2000s. I still remember having startx finally work properly on my FreeBSD 2.1 system running on a Pentium-75 with 16MB of RAM (so luxurious!) back in 1995. The fixed sync monitor[1] coming to life with that black and white crosshatch pattern, and probably TWM decorating that terminal window that would shut down X if you closed it. Luckily at that time there were quite a number of window managers so you could try a bunch to see which one you liked the most. The hardest part of getting X running was tracking down those magic numbers you had to enter for the modeline in the configuration file, although old X used to ship with a database you could look up of older monitors that were no longer in production, but might be kinda close to what you had. [1] Supporting 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768(interlaced only)
- kevincox 2y agoMy too. I tried opening a feature request on the Wayland tracker but it got closed as not wanted. I can think of various use cases such as screen-sharing a window and its audio together or remote access to a single window + audio.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- LgWoodenBadger 2y agoIt’s funny because I recognize all the details you mention and know where you went to school because of it. For the longest time the top result when searching for my real name was a mailing list post asking about getting sound working on that same FreeBSD Pentium 75. We had to carry that IBM behemoth across campus to “prove” that we installed FreeBSD onto it for one of the CS lab courses.
- DonHopkins 2y agoNCD (Network Computing Devices) made an audio server for their X terminals, that was largely based on the X11 server and client code, around 1993. I made a TCL/Tk sound mixer that supported NetAudio for multi player SimCity on TCL/Tk. NetAudio really sucked. That's probably why nobody uses it (or X terminals) any more. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20313616 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20313616 DonHopkins on June 29, 2019 | parent | context | favorite | on: Red Hat Expecting X.org to “Go into Hard Maintenan... NCD (Network Computing Devices), who made X Terminals, came up with a sound server called "NetAudio", based on the X11 server, protocol and client library, with the graphics ripped out and sound stuck in. I used it in the early 90's to support the Unix/X11/TCL/Tk multi player version of SimCity, with a scriptable TCL/Tk audio server that could drive either /dev/audio on Sun/SGI/etc or NetAudio on NCD X Terminals. Other TCL/Tk clients like SimCity (but possibly others) communicated with it via the TCL/Tk "send" command, which bounced messages off the X server. http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/simcity/simcity-announcement.html http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/simcity/simcity-announcement... NetAudio had its problems, but basically worked. Except that it insanely mixed audio by AVERAGING (add waveforms then divide by the number of sounds) instead of adding and clipping, and I couldn't convince the NCD engineer that was the wrong way to mix sound, and to just add and clip instead, like sounds mix in the real world: When you talk over music, the music volume and the volume of your voice doesn't magically lower by half. Hopefully they've fixed that problem by now. https://donhopkins.com/home/archive/NeWS/sound-mixers.txt https://donhopkins.com/home/archive/NeWS/sound-mixers.txt It evolved into the Network Audio System (NAS): http://www.radscan.com/nas.html http://www.radscan.com/nas.html I can't say how popular it is, or if anyone actually uses it, though: The Release version is now 1.9.4 (10/07/2013).
- HumblyTossed 2y agoMuch respect.
- ori_b 2y ago11 revisions later, they ended up at X11, and then time stopped.
- somat 2y agoYou have to remember X11 is a protocol not an api. 11 revisions in 5 years 1984 - 1989 At that point they stopped changing it. And we have enjoyed 35 years of compatibility since then. Api's come and go, in and out of fashion. But I bet you could take your brand new linux X server and still have your 30 year old sun workstation drawing windows on it.
- fiddlerwoaroof 2y agoOne cool thing is old non-Linux machines like the Symbolics Lisp machine and their library descendants (CLX for Common Lisp) still basically work with modern X Servers.
- lispm 2y agoMinor complication: For its user interface Symbolics Genera needs the "cursor warp" feature, since it moves the mouse cursor under UIMS control. Noteworthy: CLX is written in Lisp and does not use Xlib (which is a C library).
- o11c 2y agoReally: and then everything else was added by means of optional extensions.
- debo_ 2y agoIt took 40 years to get its own social network, for shame. I remember the first time I saw an X terminal in my first year at college. I didn't have a computer of my own, and windows labs were overcrowded, so I figured I'd cut my teeth and learn this Unix thing a year earlier. It was SunOS with twm, and the defaults made the font size unreadably small. I went to the bookstore, bought some Unix beginner's guide (I made sure it had an xwindows chapter, since I mistakenly thought I was using an "xwindows OS.") I spent more time figuring out that environment than I did working on my assignments, but I had a great time. The advantage of working in a lab with older students is I could see what they had on their screen and ask them about it. Lovely memories. Hard to believe I've been an X user in one form or another for more than half of its existence. It already seemed ancient when I first started.
- kjellsbells 2y agoThe comment about documentation made me smile: one of my first jobs was as a UNIX admin and I well remember the enormity of the Xlib programming manuals. Those beasts took up a whole bookshelf. Another memory: joining a bioinformatics lab and encountering a fleet of NCD boxes that could do nothing more than bootp/rarp their way onto the network and run an Xserver, with all the processing happening down the hall on a SparcStation. Blew my young mind that network booting was possible, but then again, those were the glory days of Sun, and the Network Was the Computer.
- benreesman 2y agoI think I got XFree86 brought up on like, Slackware or something in the early 90s, I want to say like 1994 but I’m not sure. IIRC there was some terrifying step involved around setting scan frequencies or modelines or something that was advertised as making it possible to set a CRT on fire (which could have been the maintainers being cheeky). Does anyone remember that era well enough to know the details?
- jedberg 2y agoIt probably wouldn’t set the monitor on fire, but this was before they added confirm/revert for resolution changes, so if you put it in an unsupported mode, you couldn’t get it back without booting from the install media. And it could damage the monitor in the process.
- ssl-3 2y agoThat's what ctrl-alt-backspace was for: To exit X and get back to a BIOS-based text terminal (ideally, one set to some absurd tinytext mode with SVGATextMode), so the modeline could be adjusted.
- immibis 2y agoSome displays piggybacked the high voltage generator's oscillation on the horizontal sync signal because it was about the right frequency. Stopping horizontal sync in the right phase could lead to the high voltage generator acting as a short circuit. If you've got the kind of really cheap display that does this, maybe it also doesn't have a fuse...
- antod 2y agoI remembered the warnings, but was lucky enough to always have common predefined monitors that already had settings. Until probably about 2005 when dealing with an unusual monitor when I had to do my own modelines because nothing was working out of the box. Searched the web as much as possible to try and get horizontal scan rates etc, not quite feeling completely comfortable, then biting the bullet with my best guesses. Luckily it worked - to much relief that I hadn't burnt out one of the offices more expensive monitors.
- ggm 2y agoSeeing X10 was a revelation. I'd used OS specific windowing systems, and being presented with this one was a significant "aha" moment. Sun Views was interesting but this had a whole quality of anywhere, anytime. X11 was X10++ and I think we've been coasting since. Wayland has confused me.
- throw156754228 2y ago>Anyone who wants the code can come by with a tape. Love it!
- bitwize 2y ago1950s schlock-horror title card: From deep within the labs at MIT, it's The Thing That Just Wouldn't Die! Shambling onwards for 40 years and counting! After I expressed interest in learning how to program X on my first Linux machine in 1995, a friend showed me the giant wall-o-manuals (I think that's how O'Reilly got its start) and said "Are you ready to read all of these?" I got by learning the basics of Xlib with the man pages and, I believe, Kenton Lee's site. X's display model is really straightforward if you already understand something like Win32, which is one reason why Wine was able to make rapid progress: translating GDI calls to X calls required only a thin shim. X ran FAST, too. If you set the GC clip origin and mask you could blit a sprite in one XCopyArea call; I banged out a game engine based on that and was able to get draw speeds that Windows required DirectX to match (assuming a local display).
- eichin 2y agoYeah, X had a lot of aggressive performance tweaking in ways that noone even understands today, let alone actually needs :-) Creating windows with zero round trips, event-shedding that let you sensibly run a remote window manager over a 1-megabit network...
- convivialdingo 2y agoMy story about X windows... I was invited to the Atlanta Linux Symposium in the late 90s and met just about everyone around the Linux/Slashdot/X11 world. I had been hacking on OpenGL drivers and one of the first to "integrate" 3dfx 2d acceleration into X. I had a wonky alpha AXP desktop I'd built from random parts and porting X11 to 64 bits on Linux as the code & binary was actually still 32bit. I'm chatting with rasterman for a bit and up walks an older gentleman. He'd been listening in on our conversation and was eager to get my take on X. I told him straight-up I thought it was kinda crappy and it should have used blah blah bah. He said "I'm Jim Gettys and I co-wrote X windows.." I was aghast...Oh shit. He laughed and we had a long conversation about how X was implemented.
- ibiza 2y agoI wonder if a Sun, Dec, or HP of the 90s would have had a fighting chance against Windows NT had they not embraced X, and instead developed a local-first stack optimized for their considerable hardware. Related, I've always found it odd that in Linus' history of Linux, part of it was a desire to implement an Amiga-like OS on a PC. This is the message-passing-bad guy. What happened?
- hagbard_c 2y agoXFree86 happened, it was an easy port to Linux and opened up a world of X11 software. The 'win' of Windows was not due to the adoption of X11 but due to the fact that it ran on all those clones out there while the Unix vendors were busily fighting their own turf wars - the 'Unix wars' [1]. Microsoft's underhanded tactics were another part of securing their 'victory', this was back in the time when manufacturers would loose their Windows licence if they dared to offer any alternative choice besides what MS had to offer. No Windows licence may not have been a problem for a company like Sun or Silicon Graphics but it did keep 'clones' vendors from straying. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_wars
- wiz21c 2y agoI once heard that XWindows predates source control tools. Was it developped without CVS (or any other) ?