GP2X X Server

[Auritribe]

Hi, I'm a newbie to the forums, but I figured I'd make my first post with a humble question. Just shooting ideas into the air here,

Does anyone have any plans on porting an X server to the GPX2? Or does it already come built with an x server?

I ask, because while the system may run on a linux kernel, many of the games that run on linux run through an X Server. I figured it would probably be easier to port them if an X server ran on the handheld.

Of course, this would use up more memory, etc. So perhaps it would not be worth it. Of course I'm not a dev, so you all likely know more about all this than I do. Be kinda funny seeing Windowmaker on a handheld though...

 

[theoddbot]

Most of the Linux games use SDL, which works fine on the framebuffer. I might get around to porting one of the mini X-Servers later, but I wouldn't expect much.

 

[aapje89]

That would be very cool

 

[Aaaaaaaa]

what is x server?

 

[barnesy]

It's the part of X which displays stuff on the screen. X (Also known as The X Window System) is the thing which gives linux a windows-ish GUI. Having one could make a lot of programs developed for X become available, but the GP2X will get along fine without one.

 

[Auritribe]

It's the part of X which displays stuff on the screen. X (Also known as The X Window System) is the thing which gives linux a windows-ish GUI. Having one could make a lot of programs developed for X become available, but the GP2X will get along fine without one.

​

Yeah, I asked 'cause I had wondered to myself what porting SDL like things would be without an X server. I'm out of touch with the current linux scene, I haven't used Linux for about 5 years now, but I remembered all the SDL based games I played ran through the X server, that just about everything I used ran through the X server other than the terminal based stuff I would use. It's very good to know that the SDL based games can run through the framebuffer though, I feel that porting an X server would be pointless ( if cool) at that point.

The problem I saw with having an X server ported was the matter of input and other things. It would seem redundant to port it over if it's not needed for porting linux games. Still be a nifty thought though @_@;;

Thanks for the replies.

 

[Aimless_E]

There are also quite a few native X programs that can be run directly from the console if you have a framebuffer I used to use the FB on my ati radeon card when I wanted to watch or play something on my TV (the driver didn't support the TV-out).

 

[Sonic-NKT]

x would be nice for matchbox, Opie and GPE.
even if the gp2x has no touchscreen, i would still like to use it sometimes as something like a PDA

 

[paranoidd]

*** Please ignore this message, I posted it as if the talk was related to GP32 ***


There is already an X-server compiled for the GP32. We have been able to get Nano-X and the Xserver (the old one taken from freedesktop.org's CVS) up and running.

I've compiled on the last month the incoming modular Xorg 7.0 (release candidate). It's working very fine on another ARM I have here, and runs pretty well on the GP32 as well. For Linux 2.4, we even have an input driver for it which maps the joystick as to a standard mouse.

I just haven't seen anyone doing some serious development based on GP32Linux. Maybe that's because of the overhead on having to boot another operating system, waiting for the X server to get up, and just then starting to launch the application itself. Not to mention that the system is time sharing, which means that the application won't have the CPU available for it full time.