Interesting article on the "costs of supporting legacy hardware"

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Christopher Browne <cbbrowne-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>

| http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2012/02/the-costs-of-supporting-legacy-hardware/

I was not impressed by the article.

5% of the code in a window manager is duplicated because it wants to
use OpenGL and we're going through a transition.

1) (curmudgeon mode) why do window managers need to use OpenGL.  When
   I was a boy, they didn't.  Self-inflicted problem, to some extent.
   (I don't like wobbly windows.)

2) He claims that all the hardware that needs this is 6 years old or
   older.  Not true: you can go to Best Buy today and get stuff with
   video that won't support OpenGL 2.0.  For example, most netbooks.

3) I want many years of life out of my hardware.  This does not mean
   that I want the software to be frozen -- that's dangerous.

   I have dozen-year-old boxes still in service.  Why?  Because they
   are doing their job well and I'm having trouble cheaply configuring
   something that will do better.

4) OpenGL 2.0 support is still not there.  ATI/AMD fglrx doesn't do
   it.  Legacy nVidia proprietary doesn't do it (I think).  Open
   drivers are not always the right choice right now.  For example
   if you wish to get sound over HDMI with the recent ATI hardware
   you need to use the proprietary driver.

5) the window manager may be the only code that uses OpenGL that I
   care about.  Not a very large body of code to keep working.

   If he wants to, give us a fallback window manager that doesn't do
   special effects.  Oh the deprivation!

That's like Microsoft when they said that 10 years of supporting XP was
enough.  That's from when they started selling it, not from the end.
(I don't think that that is their current position.)

That the KDE developers are thinking this way strikes me as a
dangerous disconnect from their user base.
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