Re: why X

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On 15 May 2024 09:37:51 +1000, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
 

XFree86 and later X.org used to include the TinyX servers that stripped
out all but the bare essentials for a small, relatively self-contained,
executable which worked (and still works) with most X software.

 
So what's missing? Xrandr? XShm? XFixes? XComposite? XShape?
XTest? Xv?

Nothing to stop most programs from working, as I said. The main
limitation preventing some software from working is that 3D
graphics using OpenGL aren't supported because it doesn't support
GLX etc.

The point is that efforts really haven't been directed at making X
smaller in the recent years up to when the paid developers switched to
Wayland, in fact the opposite has been happening.

 
What sort of things have they been adding that could be removed?

No idea, I was just saying (in the part that, as usual, you snipped)
that the size difference can be observed by building old vs current
X releases on the same platform with the same compiler settings.
Programs I tried that had been built against recent X.org libs
still worked with the smaller XFree86 libs, so the observed
improvement in former was about nill.

When an old program just uses Xlib directly ...

 
You still want to use Xlib rather than XCB?

For existing software Xlib works fine, and in old programs it's
more often seen than XCB, but the point (another over-snipping
victim) applies to either.

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