From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.8 required=5.0 tests=DKIM_ADSP_CUSTOM_MED, DKIM_INVALID,DKIM_SIGNED,FREEMAIL_FROM,MAILING_LIST_MULTI autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 18321 invoked from network); 25 Feb 2023 22:50:28 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (50.116.15.146) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 25 Feb 2023 22:50:28 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [IPv6:::1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2D4AF4326D; Sun, 26 Feb 2023 08:50:22 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mail-lf1-x130.google.com (mail-lf1-x130.google.com [IPv6:2a00:1450:4864:20::130]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 418874326C for ; Sun, 26 Feb 2023 08:50:15 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mail-lf1-x130.google.com with SMTP id g17so3816040lfv.4 for ; Sat, 25 Feb 2023 14:50:15 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20210112; h=content-transfer-encoding:cc:to:subject:message-id:date:from :in-reply-to:references:mime-version:from:to:cc:subject:date :message-id:reply-to; bh=yEZ9glWo8Mhaz116bvJ2wD8uYnuQ/O9Ny82g7KNGIrQ=; b=l/RVgsc6FFtLttr+J3ln63X9pJIkLGNAEKsdNOOoFfQhJGS2sx4w0fLph5MTOxeCU+ RzWg6oxlz+NCEbGIvdSDjgEM8X4m0XUnhuXEzmImXKI6+h77xw8FrvKNuMa+0ofAgAoS Fwf+smh6O8pUUXd7AOfhRJp10fc8qahdd6bUi1yx3FLWH3hZV458sruBAGuW2jqyNERI vTg+J9aJVTa+cev4eXfy52dRt5faktgPUQb/EoVikxbooLk9kuxsRsJEY8isoSh2dcL3 OGgO+mDNOwiWADUfChdFHmDfIPQdF/qMTeLHUowvu/t++cXaqaP4jEDk/5ZuIXMANRB8 JoIA== X-Google-DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=1e100.net; s=20210112; h=content-transfer-encoding:cc:to:subject:message-id:date:from :in-reply-to:references:mime-version:x-gm-message-state:from:to:cc :subject:date:message-id:reply-to; bh=yEZ9glWo8Mhaz116bvJ2wD8uYnuQ/O9Ny82g7KNGIrQ=; b=ZCHYvd4QqEevDR/OLCVq9MwnI3TewMedP7SV43trtyoB+Y/7cmQ3UbK9MmMY4kPjX+ Dqrh4L252+VfLxgtK9gSSSFqhJ+11qjg86qD0RAqbnn/XfBw8lkQwYt6uDmQ+qS3/ldx TvxWE/lvcQSPCV/w69w4yQVjwSKbNVv4SZsPuE549g3D4W7i1F0p8qTzUa8zQK/twUJS d3VLUMnm+CkFju2o13zvzQ3vw8ZQm78S3n0r/Ys1qaKZ4uzBxgXSKfH1VU0x9aLFWdBS WhwR4MAilJCFVH/HQ+4SPIh8KZE8+uFEzaT+eL4+ZZJ3OKsw42rdpetZW/Rkw8u1V+Yc EEjg== X-Gm-Message-State: AO0yUKVjEu3m3bMO4SOR/gX7wFJF6+oiUsd9x4ZDlZ9o9zvGAdddjDkJ NdOeTwsDbWDyGiue0bnVH1jxYzxMHqZ5Mk2KEllc6uhj X-Google-Smtp-Source: AK7set+YhZ/ByNP9+q7eqZtfnep01v8YOEcm/C/4NRyoYK0qPmcBrihoAU6gUpbvR5/aIIpnynCJk9knBgg+hpkrCak= X-Received: by 2002:a19:7612:0:b0:4db:1989:8d92 with SMTP id c18-20020a197612000000b004db19898d92mr6113473lff.10.1677365412947; Sat, 25 Feb 2023 14:50:12 -0800 (PST) MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <58626A0B-EF9C-4920-8E20-CE0C4210BA6A@planet.nl> In-Reply-To: <58626A0B-EF9C-4920-8E20-CE0C4210BA6A@planet.nl> From: Dan Cross Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2023 17:49:36 -0500 Message-ID: To: Paul Ruizendaal Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Message-ID-Hash: KO3GHWORFLMFQLBXYTBIOABIQW6XSNEJ X-Message-ID-Hash: KO3GHWORFLMFQLBXYTBIOABIQW6XSNEJ X-MailFrom: crossd@gmail.com X-Mailman-Rule-Misses: dmarc-mitigation; no-senders; approved; emergency; loop; banned-address; member-moderation; nonmember-moderation; administrivia; implicit-dest; max-recipients; max-size; news-moderation; no-subject; digests; suspicious-header CC: "tuhs@tuhs.org" X-Mailman-Version: 3.3.6b1 Precedence: list Subject: [TUHS] Re: Early GUI on Linux List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list Archived-At: List-Archive: List-Help: List-Owner: List-Post: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: On Sat, Feb 25, 2023 at 4:31 PM Paul Ruizendaal wrote: > I think discussion of early Linux is in scope for this list, after all th= at is 30 years ago. Warren, if that is a mis-assumption please slap my wris= t. > > Following on from the recent discussion of early workstations and windowi= ng systems, I=E2=80=99m wondering about early windowing on Linux. I only di= scovered Linux in the later nineties (Red Hat 4.x I think), and by that tim= e Linux already seemed to have settled on Xfree86. At that time svgalib was= still around but already abandoned. > > By 1993 even student class PC hardware already outperformed the workstati= ons of the early/mid eighties, memory was much more abundant and pixels wer= e no longer bits but bytes (making drawing easier). Also, early Linux was (= I think) more local machine oriented, not LAN oriented. Maybe a different s= ystem than X would have made sense. > > In short, I could imagine a frame buffer device and a compositor for top-= level windows (a trail that had been pioneered by Oriel half a decade befor= e), a declarative widget set inspired by the contemporary early browsers an= d the earlier NeWS, etc. Yet nothing like that happened as far as I know. I= vaguely recall an OS from the late 90=E2=80=99s that mixed Linux with a pa= rtly in-kernel GUI called =E2=80=9CBerlin=E2=80=9D or something like that, = but I cannot find any trace of that today, so maybe I misremember. > > So here are a few things that I am interested in and folks on this list m= ight remember: > > - were there any window systems popular on early Linux other than X? Not really. The context at the time was that a lot of folks (well, me) wanted a workstation-like experience, but on a machine we could individually afford. That basically meant bringing over most of the staples one was used to on a (Sun|DEC|HP|SGI) machine, which almost universally implied X as a prerequisite. Folks wanted to be able to use their customized shell startup files and so on, but also their window manager configurations and the like. That said, it was my impression that it took a year or two for X on Linux to really get going, and further that it was really flakey for a while afterwards; you had to have just the right combination of video adapter, monitor, mouse, etc. Before that, I'm sure people played around with mgr and stuff like that, but I don't think anyone really _wanted_ anything substantially different. > - was there any discussion of alternatives to X? Not really. Again, the context is very important here: when Linux started to become a thing, a lot of people who started working with it already had experience with "real" computers, but those machines were not cheap. It was rare, but some people could afford workstation-class hardware at home; most could not. If you weren't independently wealthy, you made do with a PC or something. But the idea that you could replicate your work or research computing environment home was tremendously exciting. Again, more often than not, that meant X. > - was there any discussion of what kernel support for graphics was approp= riate? I have a vague memory that most people wanted to keep this out of the kernel to the extent possible. X did most of the heavy lifting in userspace, writing to a memory-mapped framebuffer; if you could do the minimum to set that up and mmap it into the X server process, you were good to go. But I may be wrong on this. - Dan C.