Ubuntu moving away from X

[Jerry Feldman]

We'll see what the future brings. X is still a very important product in
the context of remote display. As I mentioned, my company's products are
mostly Unix/Linux based and rely on the remote capability of X, but as
you mentioned there are other alternatives, such as VNC. Even our
products that have been Unix and Linux based many years is being ported
to Windows server.

On 11/06/2010 10:46 PM, MBR wrote:
> Getting back to the original topic -- that Ubuntu is planning to move
> to an OpenGL-based window system and relegate X to compatibility-mode
> status -- my initial reaction was dismay because that will most likely
> mean that X will wither and die over the next 5-10 years. And since X
> is the only window system that allows you to run applications anywhere
> on the Internet and have them all show up on your display, this
> decision seemed like it would mean that that capability would
> disappear as X disappears.
>
> But then I thought about how typical GUI applications are being
> written today. Many (most?) are no longer native applications. They're
> Javascript applications running in the browser.  And for those
> applications, the functionality we once counted on the window system
> to provide is now being provided by the browser.
>
> I'm not sure what the situation is WRT native apps on mobile phones,
> but web browsers provide the same network capabilities in that
> environment that they do on traditional computers.
>
> So, maybe Ubuntu's decision isn't the disaster I initially feared.

--=20
Jerry Feldman <gaf-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
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