Re: GGI, EGCS/PGCC, Kernel source

Nathan Uno (nuno@coat.com)
Wed, 25 Feb 1998 09:31:21 -0500 (EST)


On 25 Feb, MOLNAR Ingo wrote:
> On Tue, 24 Feb 1998, Stefan Mars wrote:
>> On Tue, 24 Feb 1998, Pavel Machek wrote:
>>
>> > Please do so. This mail was mostly meant as 'some people have valid
>> > objections to ggi' :-).
>>
>> No, that would be "Some people have valid objections to the current state
>> of ggi without knowing what is being worked on in the project :)"
>
> IMHO, GGI still has no strong concepts to support accelerated operations
> on PC GX cards. XFree86 has a strong concept, XAA. Not using acceleration
> puts us back into graphics stone-age .. (for windowing that is, some cool
> games like Quake do their own stuff).

Define "strong concept". I lurk on the GGI mailing list, and this is a
hot topic of discussion. Several drivers already do accelerated
operations on their PC GFX cards.

> just compare XGGI and XFree86 xbench numbers on an accelerated card...

Which accelerated card? Yours? So GGI should be thrown out because it
doesn't support acceleration on your card?

> just look at how Win95 and NT have ducked this problem, Win95 gives full
> access to user code, NT 4.0 has put the graphics code into the kernel. GGI
> would be something like NT 3.51, dead slow doing graphics, and no games
> would run on it at sane speeds ...

Have you *tried* GGI? We have GGI Descent, many GGI demos, etc. Once
you've tried it, you can comment on whether or not the speed is sane.

> -- mingo

Arguments like these are valid, in the sense that GGI must be usable in
order for it to be used. It should be well-organized and stable and
support lots and lots of cards and options before inclusion in the
mainstream kernel.

But NONE of the above arguments will hold water with me UNTIL the GGI
people start pushing to include GGI in the kernel. As long as GGI is
alpha and still a separate project, they should be allowed to do as
they please, and SHOULDN'T be criticised for not being perfect.

When they ask to be included in the kernel proper, THEN we can hold
them to a high standard of excellence, NOT BEFORE.

-- 

Nathan 'Nato' Uno nathan.uno@coat.com

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