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Re: [BL] Using X 69

From: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
To: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [BL] Using X 69
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2007 00:44:14 +0000 (UTC)

On Sun, 11 Mar 2007 baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org wrote:

On Sun, Mar 11, 2007 at 05:11:19PM +0000,
Sindi wrote:

Thanks for this summary of the advantages of X.

Nobody is claiming that X is not useful, only that X sometimes
won't work on certain systems in BL3. Either there is not
enough RAM

I believe I have read that X will work with 8MB of RAM. If you
don't have that, how are you going to do _anything_?

I have laptops with 12MB RAM that I doubt I could get to view pdf files with xpdf (11.7MB), which can do so with svp/gs.

or hard disk space (in a loop filesystem),

That's a learning tool, not a fully-functional OS. Newbies
_shouldn't_ use X. Start simple and clean and learn the basics of
the shell and develop their typing skills.

I have BL3 in a loop file on a laptop that came with Win98, which I don't want to shrink because last time I did that it destroyed Windows. I don't have the CDs to reinstall the programs on there. I can't add a hard drive. Windows is working with a wireless card that would not work with linux.

I'm concerned here with fully-functional OSes.

or Xvesa won't support the video chip, and the SVGA server
needs changed modelines or also won't support the chip.

Whenever one is dealing with older computers, there are going to
be challenges along these lines. The solution here is to acquire
a video card that has a chip that one of those servers will work
with. They are not expensive.

Some computers don't have free slots and/or take expensive half-height video cards. Laptops would require external video cards plugged in probably via USB. Two of our laptops have pcmcia but not USB. They work nicely with zgv.

And (see below)...

Please remind us whether the TinyX servers are available for
libc5 precompiled.

The two you mention above. And there are several people on the
list who would be happy to create a statically-compiled version
of any of the TinyX servers (Xvesa is statically-compiled) upon
request.

Thanks. I will experiment with i810 and X in BL3. I would still appreciate knowing if svgalib 1.4.3 works with i810 as advertised before I try out X with i810 (which would require removing a PCI video card and finding the X server and setting up XF86Config - right?).

I think you had to change to glibc to get your serial card
working.

To _a_ libc6.

I didn't really have to change. Used statically-compiled (uclibc)
apps for a while. The combination of the unusual (for BL) serial card
and my i810 chip made me decide to switch over to glibc.

I am not using an old computer...

I _could_ have acquired, as you suggested in a previous thread,
a video card (the i810 is onboard) or used a statically-compiled
TinyX and a USB serial port (also your suggestion).

The main drawback of X for me is that I don't like GUIs, and X
programs are usually designed around a mouse and onscreen menus
and buttons.

I would much rather learn the keyboard commands.

With you there. I don't use a mouse for anything but cutting and
pasting, as a rule.

xv can be used without a mouse. The instructions are in xvdocs.ps, over 100 pages, which I had no way to read. I can read it now with svp - t rotates. (or use gs to convert to pdf and use xpdf which is slower).

xpdf does not need a mouse. n and p move between pages.
arrow scrolls. g goes to a page. + - zoom. z - fit page w - fit width Alt-F fullscreen.

These still won't work well on a low-RAM system.

Even without X you are going to need GPM mouse support for that,
unless you use screen.

Screen has the best cutting and pasting functionality in the
world. No other application compares. I really miss that. I'd
love it if someone would make screen graphical. It _is_ if you
run it in an xterm :-\

Thanks for pointing out that screen won't work with graphics. I
could only run the first screen session and had to exit zgv to
access a second screen.

Been there. It's a pain.

I have never had any reason to cut and paste images.

splitvt lets you run two programs and see them at the same time and cut and paste text between them.

The graphics exist in what is effectively a different world than
your ordinary working environment.

If I ever need to paste images I will use X.

That's only a small part of what X provides. The main thing
is an environment that integrates graphics and text.

What do you need that for? I can't think of any need, for myself.

svgalib is admittedly still buggy at times but the latest
version has not crashed for me. I probably need to change one
setting to fix a problem with text mode for my matrox card. The
author welcomes bug reports and is trying to support all recent
video chips in his 2007 version.

That's what he told me several years ago when I was trying to
get it to work without crashing my box!

This is not several years ago. 1.4.3 supports i810 since 2005.
Please could you try the latest version? You don't need to agree to use it, just let me know if it works. I posted svgalib 1.9.25 and the latest zgv for glibc 2.2.5.

On Sat, 10 Mar 2007 baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org wrote:

X provides 5 valuable services for the ordinary
user/sysadmin:

1. An integrated graphical windowing system (it uses only 1
tty per user) that allows cutting&pasting images and text
between windows. The windows can be created at boottime in
any rectangular shape and size and placement, and with any
applications running in them. You can switch between windows
in a blink, creating and killing them at will.

There are window managers that are less than 10KB in size
(failsafewm is one).

2. The ability to log into a remote box directly and run or
join an X session on that box, using it as if it was the one
sitting in front of you.

Yes, you need X to use X. I have not tried running graphical
programs with svgalib on a remote box - can it be done?

Not to my knowledge. Nothing to prevent you from transferring
files with graphical data, of course, but that isn't the same
thing at all.

An interesting experiment but I can't think of a practical use.

I don't really have any reason to run programs on one computer
from another one. We had 24 working desktop pentiums at last
count.

X will certainly run on pentiums.

I do it when I am away from home. Using your own box is far
superior to any other solution.

When I am away from home I don't have any way to access my own computer. I suppose I could leave it running and tie up the phone line, run some server on it that would let me use it from a remote terminal (with a terminal program on a Windows computer), but I would probably get disconnected eventually. But I am not usually away from home long enough to need to use a computer. I can check email via Windows at the library.
We took a laptop computer on a car trip to transfer photos to, but a USB flash drive is smaller and faster.

If I did run programs remotely, I would not need graphical ones.

The rest of this can be done without X, in less space and RAM,
which means you can do it on old laptops.

I'll repeat what I said above: You can run X with 8MB RAM and
swap. These old laptops don't have that?

It is slow using swap, and you still can't use xpdf because it needed about 12MB to display with Xvesa (no wm or rxvt).

A 1280 photo took 13MB with xv and Xvesa. 2MB fullscreen with zgv.
I just checked on the same photo from my camera.
I set Xvesa to use 16-bit color. zgv picks its own colors and probably used 24-bit which the photos was already.

xli would use less RAM. I can't test it right now.

My laptops have 12MB RAM. The kernel needs about 2MB.

Even with 16MB RAM, if you used 12MB, there would be no RAM left to multitask in X.

I can't imagine that they would be able to do graphics with
Svgalib either, then. (But I've never tried.)

You have not tried recently with the version that supports your video chip.

3. Viewing images.

4. Editing images.

...............

5. Running graphical applications. Like web browsers.

Opera requires X, and is all I have been using X for recently
other than obtaining figures on memory usage. It works well in
icewm with keyboard navigation. I am setting it up for friends
who like GUIs.

So you _do_ use X.

When I need to. I have tried using it as an X terminal but have no need for that. I have played with virtual terminals. My partner likes using it because he can't type well and it has a menu.

I have not encountered a single Svgalib user who _doesn't_ use
X to date, so there is a redundancy of functionality going on.

My svgalib libraries and programs take up much less space than all the X programs that I don't need such as xv and xpdf and a GUI frontend to gs for viewing ps files.

(I'm talking about a real OS, not a play box.)

There are xservers available for almost any box that are less
than 1MB in size. These are called "kdrive servers" or "tinyX
xervers". They make all of the above services available.

-------------------------------------------------------------

The most important application an x-window can run is an
xterm (x-terminal-emulator; it would be capitalized if it was
a reference to the x-terminal-emulator that has bears that
name).

This provides direct access to the shell. A command prompt.

So does a console, using less RAM. But you can't run text and
graphical programs on the same terminal in console mode. I
don't mind switching between terminals if I need to do that.

It can be done, but it's very clumsy. Drove me nuts.

X drives me nuts. Why run console programs in an xterm instead of on the console?

Whenever possible, it is best to run non-graphical
applications. They are usually far more versatile and consume
far less system resources than graphical applications.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Instead of X you _could_ use svgalib (sort of), but it will
never provide the integrated functionality of X as described
above. And you'll spend a lot of time trying to even get
close. That attempt will also require more system resources
than X does.

It is not designed to do that. It is designed for graphics
programs that don't need a GUI.

I'm not talking about isolated applications, I am talking about
an integrated user interface to a fully-functional OS.

Why make a big point of calling the X approach a "GUI"? You'll
use a mouse with most Svgalib applications, so that's not unique
to X. And many, if not most, non-X OSes include GPM so that one
can cut and paste with a mouse (etc.). Zgv has mouse support
enabled by default.

I don't use a mouse with any SVGA lib program. zgv -M turns on mouse support. You don't need it. What X programs don't come with GUIs (buttons and menus used with a mouse)? It makes them larger and more RAM intensive (but apparently you can switch to full-screen with xpdf).

And they are both involve graphical applications or don't.
An xterm isn't graphical. And you don't use a mouse with it.
I don't use a mouse to switch between windows...

I don't run things in xterms. If I want to see two programs running at the same time I can use splitvt or two monitors (ttl and vga).
If I wanted to paste between them I could use screen.

Using screen you can have a windowing system and run remote
screen sessions, but screen isn't graphical. So you wouldn't
be able to use the svgalib graphical tools either locally or
remotely within screen. It also requires libncurses, a very
large library.

250K I use it for other things anyway, such as kermit.

My window manager is only 7K...

xinit is 10K, libX11 and the X server a lot more.

Keep in mind that almost no one writes for svgalib because
almost no one uses it.

The only application I've ever used that crashed my Debian
OS is an image viewer called "zgv" running off svgalib. Many
others have had the same grim experience.

Try a later version of svgalib and let us know if it still
crashes.

No thanks. I gave non-X graphically-capable Linux a very good
try. The fact that Zgv crashed my box every now and again was
only _one_ of the reasons I moved to a _minimal_ X.

You gave an older version a try. Try a version that was designed to support your current video card. How can you evaluate something that you never used?

I really am interested, because we have three or more
i810 boards and I got the sound part working and would not
mind trying them with the TinyX server for glibc2. 1.4.3 is in
SW8.1, or download 1.9.25.

I'm using 2.3.1 but the same Xi810 probably works for those.

uclibc-static?

Debian is proabably the most stable OS in the world.

I've seen a lot of people really try to make svgalib work
because they have a bias against X based on ignorance.

Or don't like GUIs. Svgalib is working well for me (except on
one matrox card that needs something adjusted).

We have differing concepts of "working well".

It has been far easier to get working than X, which has crashed on that same video card to the point where I could not reboot. There is a line in libvga.config to uncomment if you have problems restoring text mode.
I can restore in anyway by logging out an in rather than crashing.

I'm talking about an integrated, graphically-capable user
interface, not isolated applications.

(Believe me, I _really_ wanted to avoid X too!)

I was one of them. We all eventually gave it up as a bad job.
And all of us had X to fall back on while we were trying.

I use both, for different reasons.

Which version of svgalib and which video chip did you try?
The BL3 version does not support your chip.

How about you try svgalib/zgv that I compiled, and I will try your wm (assuming it will work with glibc2.2.5 or is not hard to compile).

The bottom line is that you can use anything you want to use!

Mostly, I think the problem was that we confused
graphical-integrated-desktop-environments like KDE and Gnome
and those used by Windows and Mac with X. And they aren't the
same thing at all. Those desktop environements are built on
_top_ of X.

Neither X nor Linux need them. They use incredible amounts of
system resources and are very limited when compared to direct
control from the commandline.

So does X compared to non-GUI programs. Probably a few
orders of magnitude less than KDE,

but still more than console/svgalib.

Not when you take into account the _entire_ user interface to a
fully-functional OS.

You are not being clear. My user interface is a keyboard and two monitors.

Once again, that's what _I_ am talking about. Not isolated
applications.

Thanks for the great feedback,

Thanks for the polite discussion.
Sindi

Lee

Re: [BL] Using X 6A , (continued)