Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!ncar!ico!vail!scottw
From: scottw@ico.isc.com (Scott Wiesner)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: 386/ix X11 info wanted: Summary
Message-ID: <1989Dec8.002122.334@ico.isc.com>
Date: 8 Dec 89 00:21:22 GMT
References: <8912071756.AA12931@CRC.SKL.DND.CA>
Organization: Interactive Systems Corporation, Boulder, CO
Lines: 43

comeau@CRC.SKL.DND.CA (Phil Comeau):
> First of all, just about everybody said 4Mb was too tight if
> not impossible. One replier stated flatly that 386/ix and X11
> would not run in 4Mb. 

The last statement is untrue.  4 Mb is painful if you're doing anything 
"real" like compiles or have a large application, but it will run.  In 
fact, you could probably even run in 3 Mb, but I wouldn't want to try it.

>The general consensus was that 6 or 8Mb was
> doable but straining and only at 12Mb would things get really
> comfortable. 

I think things are pretty comfortable at 8 Mb.  6 can be ok, depending
on your application.  If you're really running a 2 Mb app, 8 is better.

It's possible to have a 2Mb application run on
> a machine with 6Mb, but an 8Mb system is required for development.

"Required for development" is an interesting notion.  It all depends
on how much performance you want.  In general, in System V, if you have
to start hitting the disk (paging), you'll wish you had more memory.

> Some other random facts reported about 386/ix X11:
> - a floating point coprocessor is advantageous because Interactive's
>   server is largely compiled from the MIT sample server and
>   uses floating-point math for line drawing.

Floating point is used for arcs and wide lines.  0 width lines are done
in integer arithmetic on most (if not all) of the servers.

> - host based TCP/IP is required because Xlib makes calls to
>   a TCP/IP library.

Again, untrue.  If you don't have TCP/IP, you'll get a warning message
from the server telling you you won't have access to a network, but 
things will run, and you can build stuff.  You have to link with the
networking library, but we supply that with the X development environment
since some people don't have the host based TCP/IP package.

Scott Wiesner
Interactive Systems
X Development Group