Greetings.

As I'm sure many of you have heard, there will be two new releases of Xorg this September (6.9 & 7.0). Version 6.9 will be monolithic as usual, while 7.0 will use a new autotooled modular design. Both will contain identical code. All the buzz about these new versions has me very excited, but there are still several questions I want answered.

The first thing that excited me was the new acceleration architecture, EXA. Finally we will have a properly accelerated Render extension so eye-candy effects will be faster.

The modularity of 7.0 also excites me. This should make development go much faster. Plus, any bug fixes/new features won't require a complete recompile of everything.

Now, all I want to know is if these new developments will help Xorg's performance on the desktop (besides eye-candy performance like shadows and translucency). Anyone who has used X knows that it just feels fat. Even on new hardware, X is much slower than MS Windows. Will EXA help with this fat feeling?

How about adding vsync and multithreading capabilities to the X server? Try grabbing a window in Windows XP and jerking it around the screen. It follows the mouse with no lag, making the window feel light. There is no tearing so the redraw is smooth. Now, go into Linux and try the same thing. In Gnome, for example, when dragging a window around, there is noticable lag (sometimes the window is about an inch behind the cursor) and the tearing effect almost makes me dizzy. One thing I've realized is that the 'fat' feeling in X goes deeper than simple visual clues that it's slow. Oddly enough, my mouse begins to feel heavier when dragging a 'fat' window.

Granted I do not have the latest hardware. I have a simple AMD Duron 1.2 Ghz, 512 MB PC2100 DDR RAM, and an NVidia Ti4200 vid card w/ 128 MB RAM. However, one shouldn't need more than that to have a smooth, fast experience in X. MS Windows running on the same hardware makes the computer feel like a speed demon.

How long do you think it will be before we will see X reach the speed/smoothness/eye-candy that we see all around us in Windows and OS X. Is 2007 (Windows Vista release) reasonable?

PS: please do not start any flames on this topic. I'm faily uneducated as far as X goes, so give me some slack.

UPDATE: I recently tried my 'window jerking' test in KDE. It is certainly better. The window actually follows the mouse almost to the pixel... but redrawing speed (think framerate) is still too slow. Sure, one shouldn't base his/her opinion of the quality of the X server solely on 'window jerking smoothness' (lol). It is used simply for demonstration purposes here.

I am currently building a development snapshot of what will become xorg 7.0. I'll report back if I notice any significant differences.

I do have to say though, I don't notice all the things you mentioned needing fixed. In particular, moving windows works fine for me.

Upon trying more window moving tests myself, I admit my initial observations were a little exaggerated. However, as my update above indicates, I still notice a certain slowness in X compared to Windows. Obviously, some of this is related to how KDE and Gnome are coded and the fact that they're complete desktop managers, not just window managers. Lightweight window managers tend to offer smoother, faster operation. But, Linux users should be able to enjoy the benefits of a complete desktop environment without sacrificing speed.

Perhaps I should clarify my setup:

Slackware 10.1
Dropline Gnome 2.10.2
KDE 3.4.2
Xorg 6.8.2
Kernel 2.6.12

See my signature for hardware details.

I think I may simply be too picky (or cheap). The X server actually does run quite fast given my setup. Considering Windows Vista, which will require brand new hardware to run to it's full potential, I suppose Xorg is doing okay. It runs on some pretty old hardware, and probably performs admirably on new hardware.

But, I'm still sticking to my opinion. I want X to be faster and smoother, and even though it's not strictly necessary, I want eye-candy that doesn't weigh my computer down!

You're asking the thing that need the most ressources in a computer (the graphics) to use less ressources... It's possible, but really really hard to do, do you know that?

Well I've been running the Xorg 7 snapshot for a while now... honestly, seams to perform about the same to me. However, performance of X hasn't been a problem for me on that machine ever.

I know that graphics use much of a computer's resources.

Now, although a Windows vs. Linux comparison may not be fair here, consider this: on Windows, running WindowBlinds and WindowFX (for effects like OS X's genie effect), complete with drop shadows and (semi-)transparency, there is only a slight drop in performance (on my system). On the same system running Linux (now Gentoo 2005.1), with Render and Composite enabled in Xorg 6.8.2, shadows and transparency alone are enough to bog the system down and eventually freeze it. Yes, I know the composite extension isn't stable yet, but that's beside the point. During the time that it actually works, it is very slow. That is what Exa should help alleviate (although it'll be a temporary fix, I've heard). From what I understand, all Xorg needs to do is properly accelerate graphics.

As far as the latest Xorg 7.0 snapshot goes, not all drivers have been modified to take advantage of Exa, and afaik, Exa has to be enabled explicitly in xorg.conf, so performance may not be much different. I think I'll just wait until the final release is made.

To be honest, after running Gentoo for a few weeks, I almost have to take back all that I said about the window moving issues. Compiling everything to suit my system and installing only programs that I need has made quite a difference. Even so, I look forward to Xorg 7.0 and beyond. I can't wait to see what's in store. Plasma/KDE 4 and Luminocity seem quite promising. The videos here are rather exciting, imo. Some people say the wavy windows are useless. Nevertheless, it does make a decent demo.

It's useless of course... but it's still better to have few eye-candy stuff on your computer
The most important is that we must have the choice... the people that don't want them disable them and vice-versa

But for the moment, even the transluency and the shadow has lots of problems...

The idea is to make better use of the graphics card's resources so the cpu may actually have less load.

it was my understanding that xfree4 was the move to modular and i think the issue with gnome repaints is purely a function of gnome.

please bear in mind that x is now sponsored/produced by large corporations and large corporations distort the truth as a matter of advertising and spin. Thus many buzz phrases that make everyone excited but no actual discussion of the complex issues involved in x performance. One would assume this means x performance will be getting worse not better.

FreeDesktop.org is the maintainer of the software we are talking about.

Changes since 6.8. My understand is they are releasing two versions almost simultaneously. Versions 6.9 and 7.0 will have identical code with the exception of a autotooled modular build system that is going to be in version 7.0. Apparently this will be what all future xorg are based on, but they are releasing a version without the new stuff to ease the transition.

The reason xorg-x11 came about is mostly do to a disagreement between the head maintainer of XFree86 and many of the developers over the license changes made around the time of Xfree86 4.4.

The Xorg Foundation runs the whole show.

There are, of course, corporate sponsors (everyone has to eat...). However, xorg is a non-profit open source organization. It is really no more corp. sponsored then the Linux Kernel or many other popular open source projects.

They are, in fact, working on new rendering techniques, a drastically improved composite extension, and a better damage extension to increase X performance, particularly when we have hardware acceleration available.