Why is Qtopia much faster?

Tue Jul 22 10:58:57 CEST 2008

Am 22.07.2008 um 02:38 schrieb Lorn Potter:
> Tilman Baumann wrote:
>> Am 21.07.2008 um 20:08 schrieb Lorn Potter:
>>>>> Tilman Baumann wrote:
>>>> Yorick Moko wrote:
>>>>> This might be a stupid question, but it isn't the first and will 
>>>>> not
>>>>> be the last stupid one I ask :).
>>>>> I have glimpsed at the 2007.2, ASU and qtopia image (the latest
>>>>> builds) and a very noticable difference is the speed.
>>>>> Will this improve in the ASU and the 2007.2 or should I not get my
>>>>> hopes on? Qtopia just responds and seems to load everything 
>>>>> faster.
>>>> Qtopia has a more integrated aproach. They load plugins for 
>>>> different
>>>> features. (AFAIK)
>>>> And the other systems launch new programs for each task. Sometimes
>>>> even
>>>> based on different frameworks. (e,gtk,qt)
>>>> There are ideas how to speed them up. Like pre-loading or 
>>>> integrating
>>>> the basic phone apps into one binary.
>>>>>>>> If you want speed now, take qtopia. What you get is a phone.
>>>> The other systems go a few steps further...
>>> how so?
>>>> Well, a almost desktop compliant x11 system with a wide variety of
>> frameworks, libs and programming languages.
>> It will be hard to achieve a consistent look and feel across all 
> these toolkits.
> Not to mention inter process communication.

Well, yes. Not everything that is possible actually makes sense.
But it _can_ be done.
>>> Openmoko is by design more something like a mobile computing platform
>> wich has GSM too.
>>>> I might do qtopia more wrong than is fair. But they modelling just a
>> regular smart phone like you can get from most vendors.
>> With a very closed (but opensource) framework wich you can develop 
>> for.
>>>> You can not port your garden variety x11 app to qtopia. Which you can
>> (almost) do with the other frameworks.
>> Any Qt app can be 'ported' easily. Just as with gtk, or efl, or pick- 
> your-toolkit for any library
> that is on the device.
> So yes, you _can_ port your garden variety app to Qtopia. It just 
> needs to be written with one
> common toolkit - Qt.

Good point actually.
>>>>>> And of course the fact that it does not use x11, i expected you to
>> know that. ;-)
>>>> It really depends, many people like the simple qtopia stack. But i 
>> did
>> not buy my Neo to have a phone that does essentially what any better
>> Motorola or Nokia could do too.
>> Qtopia is not simple. The ui is (or should be), as that is needed on 
> these devices that are screen
> real estate challenged.

It would look great on a motorla razr (or however these things are 
called today)
But i did not find it to fit very well on the extremely large screen 
resolution and touchpad only input.
>> What do the other 'stacks' available for neo do any better?

Currently i like the gtk stack (2007.2) best.
Btw. I don't say qtopia is bad. I just don't like it very much. (tough 
it works really well)
And Sharp Zaurus is proof that really nice qtopia based systems are 
doable.
And not using x11 is probably a very sane step, if you can live 
without the portability factor. (That's porting other apps)
I just don't like how qtopia looks and feels on openmokos phones. It's 
just too much as i am used from regular phones.
And it's dataaccess layer is the qtopia api (like accessing contacts). 
I would like this api probably very much if i would code something in 
qt for qtopia.
And i still have a project laying around here where qtopia phoene 
would fit very well. Maybe i will some day use it.
But i want the extreme freedom for my phone not just opensource. And i 
wand something outrageous and maybe stupidly new and exiting. 