Xplain: Explaining X11 for the rest of us

In his &#x27;90 Usenix presentation, Dennis Ritchie reminded the audience that Steve Jobs stood at the same podium a few years back and announced that X-windows was brain-dead and would soon die. &quot;He was half-right. Sometimes when you fill a vacuum, it still sucks.&quot;<p>-- Dennis Ritchie, coinventor of UNIX, from an article in UNIX Today<p><a href="http://www.anvari.org/fortune/Miscellaneous_Collections/133229_in-his-90-usenix-presentation-dennis-ritchie-reminded-the-audience-that-steve-jobs-stood-at-the-same-podium-a-few-years-back-and-announced-that-x-windows-was-brain-dead-and-would-soon-die.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.anvari.org&#x2F;fortune&#x2F;Miscellaneous_Collections&#x2F;1332...</a>

I haven&#x27;t really gone through X11 before, but the API really is terrible. How have we managed to hang onto this monstrosity for so long? I get people have a fondness for something that has held up for so long, but the huge complexity and difficulty of hardware acceleration means it&#x27;s time to throw it out.<p><a href="http://magcius.github.io/xplain/article/x-basics.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;magcius.github.io&#x2F;xplain&#x2F;article&#x2F;x-basics.html</a><p>Head over there and drag the kitten around to see why. Now your average Linux desktop builds a lot on X11 to get it to perform how it does now, but all this effort is a huge waste. Just compare it to something like Apple&#x27;s UIKit or Android&#x27;s layouts - it&#x27;s well past the sell by date.

The more important question of whether or not systems like C++ and X-Windows cause actual permanent brain damage in humans, will have to wait for the autopsies of human brain doners. That won&#x27;t be soon, since they&#x27;re still only in the animal experimentation stages. But I think it&#x27;s reprehensible how they&#x27;re exposing all those poor innocent bunnies to shoddy static class libraries without garbage collection, and high doses of raw Motif.<p><a href="http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~chak/quotations.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cse.unsw.edu.au&#x2F;~chak&#x2F;quotations.html</a>

This is pretty awesome. Love to see great write-ups of popular *nix components. Can&#x27;t wait to read more!

I&#x27;d like somebody to remind me when this is finished and I can read it all. Great stuff!

Great read, especially enjoyed learning about why IE6 did that thing it did[0].<p>I&#x27;m not sure why I enjoy reading things like this. I have no intention of getting into X development or graphics programming for that matter but it was fun read nonetheless.<p>[0] <a href="http://www.mrdoob.com/lab/javascript/effects/ie6/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mrdoob.com&#x2F;lab&#x2F;javascript&#x2F;effects&#x2F;ie6&#x2F;</a>

Lovely guide, too bad that it is so short: only one chapter and the introduction.<p>Any plans for new chapters?

This article is really helpful, I&#x27;ve been looking for something exactly like this.

Nicely done. I love it that you have a server running in JS. Very nice. Very much looking forward to the next installment.<p>...I&#x27;ve always been a bit of an X11 fanboy, so thanks for this.

Pardon the honesty, but this too academic, and not tasked based, for a &#x27;rest of us&#x27; style.<p>Further reading: OK, this is an X developer&#x27;s guide. You should call it that. It will help developers find it and stop the average Joe who wants to run a remote app on his local display from trying to use the wrong guide.