Monday, February 27. 2006
Fosdem 2006 notes
Gentoo at Fosdem
Keynote with Richard Stallman about software patents. I already knew this talk, so it wasn't so interesting. I also think there weren't much people in the room that had to be persuaded to resist software patents, so they should have probably choosen a more »visionary« topic for RMS to talk about. After that an interesting talk about the GPL v3 (also by RMS). I asked a question about the problem that GPL v2 only code can't be mixed with GPL v3 code, he asked me to email discuss this with him, what I will do.
There were two talks about Xgl, one from Matthias Hopf telling what xgl is, what problems they face and some compiz presentation (with the always-known whooo-effect). Zack Rusin did a »Why Xgl is not the answer« talk. Was very interesting to hear the pros and cons of Xgl, I don't have a real opinion on that (I don't feel that I understand the technical details enough), but we should probably have an eye on the different futures X has (Xgl and aiglx at the moment).
Another very interesting talk in the X room: Stephane Marchesin is working on reverse-engineering nvidia chipsets and intends to write a free driver for them. It's in a very early stage (basically at the moment just finding out how the chips work), let's wish him all success (see nouveau - his not yet working first sources).
Suse gave out free (as in beer) t-shirts, so don't be amazed if you see me with a suse t-shirt running around ;-)
Some other more or less interesting talks, overall the presentations are the highlights of fosdem, you'll probably hardly find another event with so many interesting, high level talks about open source and free software.
Pictures will be here as soon as I find time to upload them.
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It's very disheartening to hear about the developer dropout from Xgl. I wonder did Zack mean Xgl as in Xglx or Xgl as in the entire Xgl project, including Xegl?
He meant the entire project, his arguments basically were
- What makes xgl interesting (compiz, fancy effects) can be achived easier (aiglx, opengl composite managers on top of current Xorg).
- Xgl has a whole bunch of problems unsolved that nobody really knows how to get around yet (direct rendering on top of xgl, xegl is completely unusable at the moment).
I'm not so negative about this discussion. It sounds sane and I also always had the impression that while xgl can be run at the moment, I consider it is very far away from being widely usable (the majority of users even has not the hardware to run xgl, including me). That makes it interesting to look at alternatives like aiglx.
- What makes xgl interesting (compiz, fancy effects) can be achived easier (aiglx, opengl composite managers on top of current Xorg).
- Xgl has a whole bunch of problems unsolved that nobody really knows how to get around yet (direct rendering on top of xgl, xegl is completely unusable at the moment).
I'm not so negative about this discussion. It sounds sane and I also always had the impression that while xgl can be run at the moment, I consider it is very far away from being widely usable (the majority of users even has not the hardware to run xgl, including me). That makes it interesting to look at alternatives like aiglx.
Actually Xgl can be run on many more cards than aiglx at the moment. The compiz screen distortion bug that I share with you is just that a compiz bug. As glxcompmgr runs fine. I wish I wasnt as inexperienced and I could track down the bug faster. It's most likely a fglrx bug but only gets exposed in some way in compiz.
Anyway Zack himself was very excited about Xegl (read the mailing lists) and now he changed his mind. This leads me to believe he didn't understand Xgl in the first place and didn't see the architectural problems. Now he abandons the projects because AIGLX is easier. This doesn't sit well with me because sometimes the best solution isn't always the easiest. Also just because problems are unsolved doesn't mean they are unsolvable.
AIGLX is GL on demand. Right now it used for accelerated composite. Eventually EXA might be exposed to OpenGL hooks for 2D acceleration. Then Xvideo might get GL acceleration. Then who knows. Basically in the end you get the same thing as Xgl but you get one server that does everything.
Xgl is X-on-OpenGL. OpenGL is used for all rendering and drawing. OpenGL API does everything that is possible. This to me is the more aesthetically pleasing solution. However it is harder to implement. Maybe because I come from a math background I tend to lean towards the more aesthetic. I guess engineers are a little different.
Anyway Zack himself was very excited about Xegl (read the mailing lists) and now he changed his mind. This leads me to believe he didn't understand Xgl in the first place and didn't see the architectural problems. Now he abandons the projects because AIGLX is easier. This doesn't sit well with me because sometimes the best solution isn't always the easiest. Also just because problems are unsolved doesn't mean they are unsolvable.
AIGLX is GL on demand. Right now it used for accelerated composite. Eventually EXA might be exposed to OpenGL hooks for 2D acceleration. Then Xvideo might get GL acceleration. Then who knows. Basically in the end you get the same thing as Xgl but you get one server that does everything.
Xgl is X-on-OpenGL. OpenGL is used for all rendering and drawing. OpenGL API does everything that is possible. This to me is the more aesthetically pleasing solution. However it is harder to implement. Maybe because I come from a math background I tend to lean towards the more aesthetic. I guess engineers are a little different.
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