Xref: utzoo comp.windows.x:26254 comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc:1214 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!altos!altos86!ti From: ti@altos86.Altos.COM (Ti Kan) Newsgroups: comp.windows.x,comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc Subject: Re: X windows on PCs - Who has the best ?? Message-ID: <3868@altos86.Altos.COM> Date: 28 Aug 90 17:26:13 GMT References: <520@lafayet.UUCP> Reply-To: ti@altos86.UUCP (Ti Kan) Followup-To: comp.windows.x Distribution: na Organization: Altos Computer Systems, San Jose, CA Lines: 46 In article benny@vlss.amdahl.com (Benny Schnaider) writes: >I have been using XVision from VisionWare, Ltd., on a 286, using FTP's >PC/TCP communications software via a 3COM 3C503 Ethernet board... I, too, have been using XVision (v3.0) on a 16MHz 386, with FTP's PC/TCP and 3COM 3C503. My video adapter is an Orchid Prodesigner VGA with 512K memory. Monitor is NEC Multisync 3D. The only real difference between your setup and mine is that I have Windows 2.0 (both the 286 and the 386 versions). I have not been altogether happy with this setup. Performance, in my opinion, is abysmal. This is especially bad if you run XVision in the single-window mode (and use a UNIX window manager instead), or if Windows/286 is used. The only nice advantage to using XVision over other PC X-window packages is the ability to concurrently run DOS applications in an MS-window and X client windows. You do pay dearly in sacrificing performance to get this. I also have not been able to get into any more screen resolution than 640x480 and 8 colors with XVision. From all the documentation that I read about XVision and MS-Windows, I could not find a way to reconfigure it. Maybe I am overlooking something. I have since switched to using Locus' PC-XSight X Window package, and Locus' TCP/IP for the PC. This package, compared to XVision, flat out screams. It is seems more than 10x the speed! Moreover, I can use UNIX window managers like mwm, and have true X window look-and-feel. PC-XSight allows you to pop into DOS in full-screen mode, suspending X, and can resume back when the DOS session is done. This is not as nice as XVision, but I can live with this given the vast performance advantage. PC-Xsight isn't perfect, however, occasionally my X server would hang (popping into DOS is possible, but the X session cannot be resumed), and requires rebooting the PC (and restarting xdm on the UNIX host) to recover. I have also tried to use GSS Software's PC-XView, but for some reason I couldn't get it to work. I can get into the X-window screen, but the UNIX host cannot get any clients started on it. I assume it was configuration problem, but since I had Locus' product working reasonably well, I abandoned trying to get this package to work. It would be interesting though, to see how well it stacks up against PC-XSight. -Ti -Ti -- Ti Kan \\\ vorsprung durch technik! \\\ Internet: ti@altos.com /// \\\ UUCP: ...!{sun|sco|pyramid|amdahl|uunet}!altos!ti ////////\