[newb] Will xorg still allow non-hal config?

William Tracy afishionado at gmail.com
Sat Nov 29 12:59:27 PST 2008


On Sat, Nov 29, 2008 at 10:12 AM, Colin Guthrie <gmane at colin.guthr.ie> wrote:
> ?? Xorg is the xserver and related drivers and apps. While this is a
> critical part of the puzzle I doubt this is anywhere near comparable to
> what you would call a operating system.

In many ways, Xorg sure seems like an operating system kernel when you
look at it under the hood; it has a separation of "kernel space" and
"user space" (server and clients talking via sockets), it has drivers,
and it even has its own task scheduling algorithm (!!!).

That said, Xorg is moving *away* from being an "entire operating
system", if anything. There is a push to move most of the drivers into
actual kernel space, and some of the work Red Hat is doing seems to
push half of the X server into the kernel. (I'm not that familiar with
Wayland, so no doubt "half of the X server" is a gross exaggeration,
but my basic point still stands.)

-- 
William Tracy
afishionado at gmail.com -- wtracy at calpoly.edu
Vice President, Cal Poly Linux Users' Group
http://www.cplug.org

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your
right to say it."
    -- Evelyn Beatrice Hall, frequently mis-attributed to Voltaire



More information about the xorg mailing list