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From: Oregonian Haruspex <no_email@invalid.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: X Window System boot stipple
Date: Sat, 13 Jul 2024 16:16:44 -0000 (UTC)
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Retrograde <fungus@amongus.com.invalid> wrote:
> From the «early days are best days» department:
> Title: Iconography of the X Window System: the boot stipple
> Author: Thom Holwerda
> Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2024 21:22:49 +0000
> Link:
> https://www.osnews.com/story/140211/iconography-of-the-x-window-system-the-boot-stipple/
> 
> 
> For the uninitiated, what are we looking at? Could it be the Moiré Error[1]
> from Doom? Well, no. You are looking at (part of) the boot up screen for the
> X Window System[2], specifically the pattern it uses as the background of the
> root window[3]. This pattern is technically called a stipple[4].
> 
> What you’re seeing is pretty important and came to symbolize a lot for me as
> a computer practitioner.
> ↫ Matt T. Proud[5]
> 
> The X bootup pattern is definitely burnt onto my retina, as it probably is for
> a lot of late ’90s, early 2000s Linux users. Setting up X correctly, and more
> importantly, not breaking it later, was almost an art at the time, so any time
> you loaded up your PC and this pattern didn’t greet you, you’d get this
> sinister feeling in the pit of your stomach. There was now a very real chance
> you were going to have to debug your X configuration file, and nobody –
> absolutely nobody – liked doing that, and if you did, you’re lying.
> 
> Matt T. Proud dove into the history of the X stipple, and discovered it’s been
> part of X since pretty much the very beginning, and even more esoteric X
> implementations, like the ones used by Solaris or the various commercial
> versions, have the stipple. He also discovered several other variants of the
> stipple included in X, so there is a chance your memory might be just a tiny
> bit different.
> 
> The stipple eventually disappeared at around 2008 or so, it disappeared as part
> of the various efforts to modernise, sanitise, and speed up the Linux boot
> process on desktops. On modern distributions still using X, you won’t encounter
> it anymore by default, but in true X fashion, the code is still there and you
> can easily bring it back using a flag specifically designed for it, -retro,
> that you can use with startx or your X init file.
> 
> There’s a ton more information in Proud’s excellent article, but this one
> paragraph made me smile:
> 
> I will remark that in spite of my job being a software engineer, I had never
> spent a lot of time looking at the source code for the X Server (XFree86 or
> X.Org) before. It’s really nuts to see that a lot of the architecture from
> X10R3 and X11R1 still persists in the code today, which is a statement that
> can be said in deep admiration for legacy code but also disturbance from the
> power of old decisions. Without having looked at the internals of any Wayland
> implementation, I can sympathize sight unseen with the sentiments that some
> developers have toward the X Window System: the code is a dead end. I say
> that with the utmost respect to the X Window System as a technology and an
> ecosystem. I’ll keep using X, and I will be really sad when it’s no longer
> possible for me to do so for one reason or another, as I’m extremely attached
> to it quirks. But it’s clear the future is limited.
> ↫ Matt T. Proud[5]
> 
> We all have great – and not so great – memories of X, but I am really, really
> happy I no longer have to use it.
> 
> Links:
> [1]: https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Moir%C3%A9_error (link)
> [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System (link)
> [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_window (link)
> [4]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stipple (link)
> [5]: https://matttproud.com/blog/posts/x-window-system-boot-stipple.html (link)
> 

Ideally, anti-X11 advocates should be deported, or processed into stem
cells.