Re: X Window System boot stipple

From the «early days are best days» department:
Title: Iconography of the X Window System: the boot stipple
Author: Thom Holwerda
Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2024 21:22:49 +0000
Link:
https://www.osnews.com/story/140211/iconography-of-the-x-window-system-the-boot-stipple/
 
 
For the uninitiated, what are we looking at? Could it be the Moiré Error[1]
from Doom? Well, no. You are looking at (part of) the boot up screen for the
X Window System[2], specifically the pattern it uses as the background of the
root window[3]. This pattern is technically called a stipple[4].
 
What you’re seeing is pretty important and came to symbolize a lot for me as
a computer practitioner.
↫ Matt T. Proud[5]
 
The X bootup pattern is definitely burnt onto my retina, as it probably is for
a lot of late ’90s, early 2000s Linux users. Setting up X correctly, and more
importantly, not breaking it later, was almost an art at the time, so any time
you loaded up your PC and this pattern didn’t greet you, you’d get this
sinister feeling in the pit of your stomach. There was now a very real chance
you were going to have to debug your X configuration file, and nobody –
absolutely nobody – liked doing that, and if you did, you’re lying.
 
Matt T. Proud dove into the history of the X stipple, and discovered it’s been
part of X since pretty much the very beginning, and even more esoteric X
implementations, like the ones used by Solaris or the various commercial
versions, have the stipple. He also discovered several other variants of the
stipple included in X, so there is a chance your memory might be just a tiny
bit different.
 
The stipple eventually disappeared at around 2008 or so, it disappeared as part
of the various efforts to modernise, sanitise, and speed up the Linux boot
process on desktops. On modern distributions still using X, you won’t encounter
it anymore by default, but in true X fashion, the code is still there and you
can easily bring it back using a flag specifically designed for it, -retro,
that you can use with startx or your X init file.
 
There’s a ton more information in Proud’s excellent article, but this one
paragraph made me smile:
 
I will remark that in spite of my job being a software engineer, I had never
spent a lot of time looking at the source code for the X Server (XFree86 or
X.Org) before. It’s really nuts to see that a lot of the architecture from
X10R3 and X11R1 still persists in the code today, which is a statement that
can be said in deep admiration for legacy code but also disturbance from the
power of old decisions. Without having looked at the internals of any Wayland
implementation, I can sympathize sight unseen with the sentiments that some
developers have toward the X Window System: the code is a dead end. I say
that with the utmost respect to the X Window System as a technology and an
ecosystem. I’ll keep using X, and I will be really sad when it’s no longer
possible for me to do so for one reason or another, as I’m extremely attached
to it quirks. But it’s clear the future is limited.
↫ Matt T. Proud[5]
 
We all have great – and not so great – memories of X, but I am really, really
happy I no longer have to use it.
 
Links:
[1]: https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Moir%C3%A9_error (link)
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System (link)
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_window (link)
[4]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stipple (link)
[5]: https://matttproud.com/blog/posts/x-window-system-boot-stipple.html (link)