Linux Desktop Without X11

A writes "Rocklyte systems have announced the first version of their Athene Operating System. It is a desktop and embedded operating system built on the Linux kernel, but without the "aging X11". Instead, it uses the SciTech SNAP graphics system with which it is possible to completely re-theme the desktop to look like the famous AmigaOS GUI or another famous UI. For backwards compatibility, an X11 server is also available in the system. The system can run completely off the CD, without needing to be installed on the harddrive."

Old sztuff repackaged

[Lumpy]

Hmm, I've been using an embedded linux with a NON X gui for at least 2 years now....

it's called picogui [picogui.org]

Plus you dont have to buy it, and it's much smaller.

Google cach available

[SlightlyMadman]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF -8&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.rocklyte.com%2Fathen e%2Findex.html&btnG=Google+Search [google.com]

X11 alternatives

[Hajoma]

What's so amazing about not having X11? There are already many alternatives, like PicoGUI [picogui.org] and DirectFB [directfb.org]. PicoGUI in particular seems quite similar to SciTech SNAP, but is free while SNAP is proprietary.

Re:something i always wondered about

[m0rph3us0]

Do you realize that most of X being "slow" is really XFree86 being slow.
In fact some X servers for Linux are FASTER than Windows.

Check out the benchmarks [xig.com]

Re:When is X12 coming out?

[neurostar]

Geeks around the world are still expecting XXX :)

nope [thehun.com], they [autopr0n.com] aren't [thumbzilla.com].

increased security

[Anonymous Coward]

The system can run completely off the CD, without needing to be installed on the harddrive

Isn't this one of the security options suggested in proftpd.org and a few other howto's in most distros?

Something about configuring your system exactly the way you want it then burn it to CD so even physical access to the system won't compromise it.

Really?

[truthsearch]

With Windows, every version retains legacy compatability for almost all applications written for a previous version.

When Rob Short, the vice-president of Windows Core Technology, was asked [zdnet.co.uk], "How many applications will transfer over from [Windows] NT4 or 2000 [to Windows Server 2003]?" he answered: "I'm not sure what the exact number is for taking an NT4 application and running it -- it's in the high 60 percent. It's not 90... Most of the time, if the application is following the [security] rules then it will run. But I must admit the rules haven't been well publicised."

Full Windows backward compatibility is a myth.

Re:Always Wanted This

[yanestra]

You should try Knoppix www.knoppix.org or it's derivatives.

Re:something i always wondered about

[tuffy]

Even Xfree86 isn't all that slow - so long as it's got decent drivers to work with. But people tend to load lots of Gnome/KDE stuff to get their machines to look/act more like Windows, then complain that their machines run at Windows-like speeds. But X11 is easy to blame because few understand what it is or what it does; kindof like a "not invented here" syndrome for the open source world.

Archive of Screenshots

[jacobb]

AmigaOS [tinyurl.com] , WinTel [tinyurl.com], and More [tinyurl.com] Screenshots, all thanks to The Internet Archive [archive.org]

NOT FREE

[baudtender]

They want $99NZ (approx $42US) for each machine
running Athene in a commercial environment.

Baudtender

Re:something i always wondered about

[tuffy]

Excuse me...but I run both Win98SE and Redhat 8 with Gnome, and I can truly say that Windows is the faster of the 2.

That shouldn't be too surprising, since Win98 is 3-4 years older than Red Hat 8. Gnome (and KDE) has added *a lot* of stuff since then that'll make your system crawl. But to get an idea of how fast X11 itself is, try making a dummy account with a .xsession (or .xinitrc on occasion) file containing the lines:
#!/bin/sh

twm &
xterm

Make the .xsession file executable and then login to the dummy account. (The account will log-out when you exit the xterm) I think you'll find the speed faster than Win98, and I hope it'll demonstrate exactly where Linux's desktop slowness comes from.

Actually...

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

Your claim about source code availability is only 70% true.
From the faq:

We do not distrubute all of the source code, but the components which we deem to be helpful to third-party developers and which do not risk the dilution of our intellectual property are available to you at no charge. Approximately 70% of the source code is currently available to the public.

-jussi

Re:famous AmigaOS GUI?

[KingDaveRa]

Yeah, I think considering what was available at the time it came out, it did an awful lot. It was doing overlapping windows, and all sorts of other stuff we'd now consider very basic and trivial, but then was a feat of coding to do.
Don't forget it could do all this off one disk too. No hard disk install required for a complete 32-bit (ok, bits of it 24) multi-tasking operating system with a pretty good, and very usable GUI.
Workbench is a damn good example of usability in GUIs.

Re:not the best chipset support... (yet!)

[Anonymous Coward]

SciTech is currently in the process of certifying its existing SciTech SNAP binary drivers for use on Linux. With more than 180 existing SciTech SNAP drivers to draw from our QA team has their work cut out for them.
Prior to being added to the list below each driver is subjected to a battery of test in the SciTech SNAP test harness. To date we have completed more than 1/2 of the total list and will continue to expand this effort until all relevant chipsets are supported.

The Flying Circus That Is X

[DeadVulcan]

The UNIX-HATERS Handbook [art.net] has a chapter called The X-Windows Disaster [art.net]. Near the end, there is a hilarious bit about colours. The durned lameness filter prevents me from posting it.

Search for the word "circus" in that chapter, and you'll find it.

Re:On alternate graphics layers.

[5.11Climber]

There are two major items that contribute to the slowness of X. The first being a minimal set of standards on how to draw objects. The second being how client requests are handled.

Unless there is an accelerated X server, all wide line stuff is drawn using spans which are dreadfully slow. The good thing is that X will guarantee that lines are drawn consistently with regards to caps and joins. If you want fast, use zero-width lines and an accelerated X server.

The biggest problem is how X handles client requests. Unless utherwise told, X will only handle so many requests from one client before moving on to the next. So you could in effect cause some clients to get starved. There have been a few attempts to correct this behavior but none too successfully implemented.

All this being said, I think that the biggest advantage to X is its' network transparency and its' standards. Most of the discussion here revolves around using the GUI locally only so we're really talking apples & oranges.

Re:I'm happy with XFree

[bigmase521]

I have been running Mandrake 9.1 with XFree 4.3.x and I have to say that the speed concerns in X isn't as bad anymore. On an Athlon XP 1700+ and 512mb ram, Mandrake on X, KDE 3.1, and the newest Nvidia drivers, is just as fast, and in the majority of cases (mozilla loading time excluded) is faster than Windows. KDE is a mem hog, and I wish they would optimize it a bit better, however I have no complaints as to the overall slowness of X. Especially in games, OpenGl on X playing UT2003 is just as fast as windows in most cases. If a new X server re-written from scratch with newer optimizations came out, this problem that many do have would disappear, and the speed of X would be a moot point.

Re:One comment:

[mrroach]

It's called gcc. The config files are a little tricky though. Have fun!

-Mark

Download it here ---->

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the freely available version of Athene and DML. The Pandora Engine is also included in this archive.

http://www.simtel.net/pub/dl/60070.shtml [simtel.net]

http://216.239.53.104/search?q=cache:http://www.ro cklyte.com/downloads.html [216.239.53.104]

Re:CD based

[Joe Tie.]

Never tried doing so myself, but Morphix [sourceforge.net] is supposed to be pretty easy to add new programs to. They also have a few different main builds, one of which is called lightGUI, and comes in at less than 200MB.

Source tarball here, download ASAP

[0x0d0a]

Feel free to grab it here [cmu.edu].

There's also a perl script in there (which I didn't write, just found somewhere else) which does more nice analysis of X memory usage.

Grab it ASAP, as the server is going down permanently within a couple of days. Matter of fact, if you want to make it available yourself for anyone interested, I'd appreciate it.

I use the XRes extension, which is relatively new...you can't be using an ancient copy of XFree86.

Full Mirror w/Picts (Archive.org)

[ProtoStar]

Athene [archive.org]
MS Pict [archive.org]
Omega Pict [archive.org]

Re:Isn't linux monolithic?

[JoeBuck]

Certainly the lowest level of the X server, namely the framebuffer, can be put into the kernel, and a number of X implementations have done just that.

fvwm2

[KPU]

Looks like someone wants to use fvwm [fvwm.org] and the variety of themes [sourceforge.net] with different looks [sourceforge.net] and actions [sourceforge.net]. Only window manager I've seen that can do windows, mac os (who would want that? *duck*) and CDE.

Re:something i always wondered about

[arkane1234]

twm is just the window manager, so that's the point that was being made. As another person pointed out, you can use fluxbox or blackbox, also. I personally use Window Maker, because it offers ease of use, it's functional, pretty where it counts, and leaves me deskspace :) It's also very low on the memory usage. (about 3 megs)
Don't take the full memory usage of X into account, because it uses AGP memory also in that listing.
Here's mine:
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ Command
7585 root 9 0 273m 17m 4328 R 0.0 3.4 0:07.66 X

You'll notice the resident size is 17 meg, and the shared memory size is 4 megs (approximately).

17 megs for X, 3 megs for Window Maker... that's 20 megs for everything X related. Of course the XTerms take up like 3.3 megs a peice on my system, but then you have ATerm which on my system takes up 1.5 meg a terminal session.

Phoenix is what I use for a web browser, which takes up 30 megs. (6 sessions, 24 megs each, 23 megs of that shared between sessions, which means the first is 24 megs and the others are 1 meg)

Other apps take their respective memory usages, but that's the breakdown. It's not X that takes alot of memory, it's the toolkits used over top of it.