Re: [Pan-users] How to use Numeric Pad 'Delete' key

[Zan Lynx]

On 05/20/2016 04:40 AM, Rhialto wrote:
> (This whole Kernel Mode
> Switching is a disaster: now you need drivers for your graphics card in
> your kernel as well as in the X server. Idiotic.)

Need to check your history on that. EVERYTHING UNIX, except for the x86
Unix'ish systems, had kernel controlled frame buffers. I used to be able
to run X on Sun machines without running X as root. I am pretty sure
HP-UX was the same although at the time I only had access via ROM coded
X Terminals.

x86, because of various lame problems with writing proper hardware
drivers for the Linuxes and the BSDs, did ridiculous things like put x86
real mode interpreters into the X server and made it require root access
so it could directly twiddle the PCI bus. This was madness. An XFree86
or X.org server crash could leave the machine unusable because the
kernel had no idea of how to recover. Suspend/Resume cycles were also
ridiculously complicated.

Now the driver problems are fixed, mostly because BSDs have become
ignorable. BSD systems can duplicate the Linux drivers, or die.