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In-Reply-To: <20011021093728.A17786@vega.digitel2002.hu>
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 <20011021093728.A17786@vega.digitel2002.hu>
Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2001 09:33:34 +0100
To: lgb@lgb.hu
From: Jonathan Morton <chromi@cyberspace.org>
Subject: Re: The new X-Kernel !
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
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Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org

>  > Boots up with X, that means.
>
>I've never understood why people want X, StarOffice (OpenOffice) etc to be
>moved into kernel space :) IMHO it's strictly user space issue. You can
>start X or gdm/xdm/kdm from a boot script and so on. No kernel modification
>is needed for this.

Probably because they don't know the difference between kernel and 
user space.  Kinda understandable when you come from a Mac or Windows 
background, where (in the former) there is no distinction or (in the 
latter) it's so blurred as to make little difference.

And if they *do* understand it, from a dispassionate point of view, 
it does seem to make sense to put graphics drivers in the kernel - 
they're implemented as "device drivers" in every other desktop OS. 
Except MacOS X, where's it's an application layer like glibc, but 
nobody understand OS X yet beyond the hardest of developers.

But they don't realise that XFree86 has an *enormous* amount of 
developer time behind it, which would need to be duplicated to make 
it work in kernel space with full backwards compatibility.  Oh, and 
did I mention this would all be for one platform - XFree86 is 
designed to run on many!  It would also bloat the kernel tremendously.

-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------
from:     Jonathan "Chromatix" Morton
mail:     chromi@cyberspace.org  (not for attachments)
website:  http://www.chromatix.uklinux.net/vnc/
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