jawdropping anti-bloat.

FBUI.

i was sat there, installing parabola gnu/linux on a virtual machine, and was just installing xorg, with some reluctance, at it's 150mbness.

so i hit enter, n went off to do another search for xorg alternatives. and then i encountered fbui.

FBUI.

http://home.comcast.net/~fbui/

fuck yes!

it all sounds too good to be true, and with that, experience has taught not to get hopes too high... however, when it comes to performance, the website isnt telling fibs.

the logic is flawless.

well worth reading through http://home.comcast.net/~fbui/

the more I read about fbui, the more I'm in love. X has long been lauded as the achilies heel of gnu/linux. a necessary evil of a sort. the reluctant ally, a major boon, but a major bloated pain in the ass.... fbui looks like it could sort us all out.

idk how much effort is involved in starting to port X apps to work with fbui, but oh my sweet lord.... the performance boon, the anti-bloat, the keeeeeen savvy of it... ahhh...

this is what makes free software great. that someone can come along and go "i have a better way of doing it!"


however, so far, it's a case of "so close n so far."
fbui's live cd booted ok, n I could launch apps ok... alas, mouse in virtualbox fails.

gonna have to burn a cd (its only 11mb!) to check it out native hardwise.

yes, thats right, didnt i mention ther's a live iso to try it out. THERE'S A LIVE CD FEATURING IT TO TRY OUT!

i wonder if tinycore know about this. ^_^

it's certainly not a final destination, production ready sort of tool yet, but my oh my, it's a lot further on than one might think of such a little known about gem of the free software community.


what i really love about such concise lightweight code, not highlighted to great extent on the page, is that you can read it all. easily can expect to read through the entire code of your whole os, in your own lifetime, if it's only 11mb.

bloated free software projects, like (e.g.) GNOME, are waaaay bloated, too bloated to make it even close to reasonable, that you might read all the code. three new versions will have come and gone before you likely even reach half way through. a bootable os, in just 11mb though! that's doable. and that's what i rly like. the idea of many eyes, at it's best, where not only is it available to be looked upon, but it's not such a daunting hurculean, gargantuan mamoth of a mission, that more people are likely to take it up. ok, so the source is probably more like 23mb, but that's still in a pheasible range.

with people able to have a useable os, that they can know every line of code to it, makes the userbase HIIIIGHLY competent, makes the OS super secure, and no longer susceptible to a boy crying wolf, sending you running off to get a "security" update, that patches in more malware... because you know what it all does.

idk where that takes us in terms of analogies involving raised and lowered bars, but it's a vision of a future os that makes me smile.