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Re: [Pan-users] How to use Numeric Pad 'Delete' key


From: Rhialto
Subject: Re: [Pan-users] How to use Numeric Pad 'Delete' key
Date: Sat, 21 May 2016 11:55:32 +0200
User-agent: Mutt/1.5.24 (2015-08-30)

On Fri 20 May 2016 at 21:38:19 -0600, Zan Lynx wrote:
> On 05/20/2016 04:40 AM, Rhialto wrote:
> > (This whole Kernel Mode
> > Switching is a disaster: now you need drivers for your graphics card in
> > your kernel as well as in the X server. Idiotic.)
> 
> Need to check your history on that. EVERYTHING UNIX, except for the x86
> Unix'ish systems, had kernel controlled frame buffers. I used to be able
> to run X on Sun machines without running X as root. I am pretty sure
> HP-UX was the same although at the time I only had access via ROM coded
> X Terminals.

Yes, and in that situation, the driver would be entirely in the kernel.
It would nicely abstract the hardware.  No driver in the X server.
That's also fine: no interdependent drivers in both places.
(I did run X on a Sun myself, actually, as a diskless workstation.
Beautiful big sharp monochrome screens they had. And I used a HP X
terminal after, because having colour is nicer :-).

> x86, because of various lame problems with writing proper hardware
> drivers for the Linuxes and the BSDs, did ridiculous things like put x86
> real mode interpreters into the X server and made it require root access
> so it could directly twiddle the PCI bus. This was madness. An XFree86
> or X.org server crash could leave the machine unusable because the
> kernel had no idea of how to recover. Suspend/Resume cycles were also
> ridiculously complicated.

Well, pc hardware *is* crappily designed, I agree with that.
Each graphics card is needlessly different from each other one.
And each other type of card is too. It is an annoying mess.

> Now the driver problems are fixed, mostly because BSDs have become
> ignorable. BSD systems can duplicate the Linux drivers, or die.

Now, that arrogance is what I hate of the Linux communitity. Especially
given some of the horrible software coming from that direction (such as
pulseaudio or systemd, another case of reinventing poorly, even many
Linux people agree with that).

-Olaf.
-- 
___ Olaf 'Rhialto' Seibert  -- Wayland: Those who don't understand X
\X/ rhialto/at/xs4all.nl    -- are condemned to reinvent it. Poorly.

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