Comments on: Framebuffer vs. X11

By: mobiphil

mobiphil — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 22:28:55 +0000

news… you may read the final tests on my blog… but openmoko is not slow due to X windows… I am convinced that 90% of slowness is due to other libraries… so first speed up those and then X windows…

By: mobiphil

mobiphil — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 22:26:46 +0000

30% here, 30% there. We think that is not a problem in terms of energy consumption, the same do the managers, politicians etc. It means 30% more waste. Multiplied with number of years and so on… It is a huge number… So better redesign now than later. We need to redesign several things on earth… And Xwindows is one of them

By: mokobits

mokobits — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 02:01:08 +0000

Hi,

Lame_Dude: well, but there a port of GTK to directfb instead of X. Even Gimp runs without X! Also, Qtopia does not need any X related stuff (AFAIK). Maybe directfb increases the speed of GTK. Apart from QT and GTK, there are IMO not a lot GUI libraries which would need support anyway.

The current OpenMoko interface on GTA01 feels veeheheery sluggish and I think performance needs to be improved alot (a 200MHz CPU should be able to do usual smartphone apps quickly, even my old m105 palm was able to do that!). Of course, optimization is the last thing to consider, … but here it would change alot in terms of usability.

I have my neo-GTA01 in dualboot with QTopia on the SD-Card and (apart from the still not finished GTK Openmoko Desktop, but that’s ok), QT feels like a usable phone in terms of speed, whereas you can see the different drawing operations of GTK and you will become impatient very soon.

To summarize, I really like to have an image of all the openmoko apps built on top of GTK/directFB, to test this combination (and I think it would be good for openmoko to have this feedback to know what to finally put on the market).

Also, isn’t it possible to have a combination of GTK+directfb and an X server which would be optionally started ‘on another console’ for those who really need their special X apps? If such a combination will be chosen, I do not see the reason for an additional X layer below the core OpenMoko apps at all.

Maybe - ok, this is baad blasphemy I know - the Openmoko project would have a lot less headaches if they simply switch to QTopia.

By: Mr Nice

Mr Nice — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 12:36:43 +0000

Hi,
I like the idea of something like xynth [1] for smartphones.

1 http://xynth.org

By: Paul Sokolovsky

Paul Sokolovsky — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 15:54:51 +0000

Only by 50%?! Tests must be wrong! I’d expect 2-3 times real-world slowdown with all the byte-banging X does…

By: Wertigon

Wertigon — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 23:24:00 +0000

Lame_Dude: I’d hate to see, say, Pidgin as it is right now on the Neo1973. Why? Because the interface would *suck*. Not only would it take up like, the entire screen and then some, it’d also probably consume tonnes of resources. An application based on libpurple might be better suited, but then libpurple doesn’t have any dependencies on X (AFAIK).

So, you’re left with either really good apps crippled and shoehorned into a format that obviously doesn’t fit too well, or fix the interface for those apps so they work well with the OpenMoko platform. If you do the later, might as well write a new interface while you’re at it.

So I don’t buy that particular argument; I do however buy the argument that GTK, QT etc all exist for X with bindings in multiple languages. That in and of itself is worth quite some consideration…

By: Lame_Dude

Lame_Dude — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 16:34:56 +0000

Can we do not use X-windows?Yeah.But this will be sort of dumb lame dialer only.At very most, it will run couple of native graphic programs aware of framebuffer + maybe have.Hardly can be called a smart phone or communicator.Just dialer.Yeah, controlled by Linux.But still pretty useless brick not so far from these 150$ proprietary “dumb dialers”.Because you can’t for example expect to see featured apps (like Pidgin for example).So only dumb things are fast.On PC text-mode console is even faster when it comes to text output.So what?It’s also so boring…

By: mickey

mickey — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 08:45:02 +0000

I left two tests out of the graph which had very high scores which would have ruined the scale. I’ll update the blog post on how to reproduce these tests tomorrow, so you can play with it.

@Nikolaus: Even on faster CPUs, X11 will still be slower by about the same amount. And it’s not just about slowness, it’s also about power consumption, of course. And i’m sure you will agree with me that one can never have enough usage and standby time…

By: Nikolaus Schaller

Nikolaus Schaller — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 08:39:37 +0000

I do not see how you come to 50% overhead.

Let’s take the highest peak: 30 vs. 23 fps. This means:

fb 33ms
X11 43ms = 33+10 i.e. 30% overhead

So, the overhead is less than 30%. A 50% faster CPU will outweight this. And in one year we can have 100% faster CPUs.

And, approx. 80% of the benchmarks have the same speed. So, why care about it?

By: Michael Krog

Michael Krog — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:18:58 +0000

I really dont see how a window server, that already doesnt perform *incredibly* on a 3 Ghz PC with 2 Gigs of ram and a decent screen card, should ever be made to perform good on a small unaccelerated phone.

When openmoko was first announced I was delighted. Finally a free phone OS. But - comparing its current performance to any other phone OS just doesnt cut it.

In my (humble) opinion the eyecandy of this phone wont happen soon with an X server.

Furthermore - Trash GTK as long as its performance and API stinks.