Re: BIG xwindow apps
Craig Dickson wrote:
>
> nate wrote:
>
> > in my 5 years of running X windows my experience is X is
> > unusable for the most part with anything below 1024x768.
> > 800x600 is just too painful. i would reccomend using a virtual
> > desktop of 1024x768 or higher if your using 800x600. see
> > the X docs on how to do this, its not too hard. been
> > a while since i had to do it though.
>
> I have never tried to use X on anything less than 1024x768, but why
> should it be any worse than running MS Windows at the same resolution?
> (Purely considered as a graphical display -- ignore the issue of MS
> Windows crashing left and right.)
>
Windows apps, particularly older ones, were designed to be usable at
640x480. I believe X started on Solaris, or at least first caught on
there, and I believe the default then was 1152x864, because at 8BPP, it
fit in 1 MB of video RAM. The first Windows 3.x machines ran almost
exclusively at 640x480, as PC graphics cards really couldn't stand up to
workstation frame buffer devices back then.
X apps *are* generally bigger, and even those that are resizable do not
take into consideration the way the layout shrinks at really small
screen sizes. Most of the WM's use very thick titlebars, KDE and GNOME
by default have very thick panels at the bottom, etc. X at less than
1024x768 is extremely painful.
--Aaron
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