FBUI

Framebuffer UI (FBUI) is an in-kernel windowing system for Linux (kernel version 2.6.9 only, currently outdated) that sits on top of the framebuffer subsystem. Unlike the X Window System, FBUI consumes very little memory: the entire subsystem is about 50 kilobytes. FBUI supports features expected of modern windowing systems, such as moveable overlapping windows, multiple windows per application, events and common drawing functions, as well as windows on every virtual console. Graphics operations are executed on a first-come, first-served basis inside the kernel, and there is no server that queues requests.

Included with FBUI is libfbui, which provides abstractions for windows, events, images, fonts, etc., as well as quite a few sample programs such as load monitor, clock, calculator, scribble pad, image viewer, window managers, and a simple MPEG2 player.

FBUI, being only 50 kilobytes, offers solid proof that a windowing system need not be several megabytes in size, as is the case with X Window System.

FBUI is primarily intended to be a 2D graphics system, although it does include a triangle-fill routine.

The problem with X is performance, but it's no surprise that its Internet white knights can't see it. And no, Vista didn't move to an "X model". Drawing something or getting a mouse move item still requires just a user-kernel context switch (whether the drawing occurs in userland or kernel is not important), and all the data is passed in the most efficient format possible (not some network-like protocol).

If you think this is untrue, then please explain to me why things that draw stuff to the screen (say, web browsers for example) manage to run 10 times as fast in Windows as they do in Linux*, even though OpenGL applications or direct overlay video run at similar performance in both.

At 2GHz it's mostly bearable, but with the CPU downclocked to 600MHz, I can SEE how it draws the stuff. The last time I saw that in Windows was in a 386.

* I actually benchmarked this on a nightmare page (think MySpace-like). Plugins were disabled on both platforms; actual speed difference factor was 4.8.