I am now changing Prometheus to do a lot of things differently.
First, we are going to a complete, full, linux-2.6.0 build. In order
to do this lots of software is checked out of cvs, instead of being
simply downloaded. Mainly glibc.
The move away from XFree86 has begun (sorta, read on). The display
system for Prometheus will be based on DirectFB, which uses the linux
kernel video framebuffer. It is hardware accelerated and allows some
really cool stuff. The first cool thing it does is allows us to to
rid ourselves of XFree86.
Because DirectFB is framebuffer based, we can do some really awesome
stuff. For example, we can not only boot up graphically, but boot up
using OpenGL! that's right, the bootup can actually be OpenGL stuff.
Also, configuration of the system is way easier, the install is cleaner
too, no crazy /usr/X11 directories.
"But wait! You can't just abandon X11! There is a lot of great X11
software I want to run!" you say. No worries, my friend! There is a
project called XDirectFB which does rootless X11 windows, just like in
Mac Os X, so you can still run you're X11 apps too!
This means that for now, we can compile gnustep to use the X11, just as
it does normally. But eventually we should create a new backend for
gnustep which interacts directly with directfb. That work is starting,
and will be the new NuVu project (NuVu was a project I started in
november to create a lightweight window server)
This puts Prometheus way above "just another linux distro". This is
innovation, man! :-)
More to come,
Chad
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