Re: cannot load color "black"
On Sat, Feb 18, 2006 at 10:54:27PM +0800, Deephay wrote:
> Thx for your experience.
> I am not very much sure what's the meaning of this sentence:
> > an application that wasn't dealing properly with a remote x-term
> You mean the installation of some apps / libs affects the system?
To really understand X you have to appreciate that it was designed
as a network protocol that could be used to access display (and input)
hardware remotely. An application opens a server using the X protocol,
and is able to interact with the user sitting at that server.
The net effect is that you can be working on numerous different
applications spread over many different computers, and they are
all accessed in an equal manner using the same screen and keyboard.
You choose the computer which handles the login via the XDMCP protocol.
Since then there has been a trend towards building display hardware
and computer in the same box, so that the server software and application
run on the same machine, making for a much faster communications path.
In this situation you can some times get away with things that won't
work in the more traditional configuration. For example, X servers
running on your own CPU have your VM so often have few memory
restrictions, whereas a hardware X terminal (usually) has no disk and
is typically limitted to a few tens of meg. Or if you rely on
continually transferring the same bitmaps rather than caching
them, it might work with a local server communicating via shared
memory, but but struggle on a 10Mb Ethernet.
So for all you X application developers and packagers out there, make
sure you test those applications local *and* remote if we are not to
lose much of the power of X ;)
> I have installed openoffice recently, not sure if that affects..
If the problem only started after that, then it would make it a prime
suspect.
I only use it when some uncultured heathen sends me something in a
Microsoft specific format and I can't get it sent in anything more
Unix friendly. It is much too big and slow for my taste, and I don't
like kitchen sink software that tries to do everything in one big
application - though that is not really a criticism of OO's
designers. They had to follow the lead of the application they
were seeking to provide an escape from.
In any case I was doing so last time the problem happened, so I
suspected it.
Regards,
DigbyT
--
Digby R. S. Tarvin digbyt(at)digbyt.com
http://www.digbyt.com
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