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Technology Stocks : LINUX -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E. Charters who wrote (1290)	3/12/1999 9:39:00 AM
From: Mitch Blevins	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2617

>>I still think it is high time we divorced ourslves of the X-legacy as it imposes future limitations on the development of Linux. It was built fro a previous era and multiple machines and a client server paradigm that we do not use in the PC Linux world.<< We should also give up file and printer sharing (and most networking in general) because it was built from a previous era of multiple machines and a client/server paradigm that we do not use in the PC linux world. Come on, E... there are many reasons to bash X-Windows, but being powerful with a location-independant paradigm is not one of them

To: E. Charters who wrote (1290)	3/12/1999 10:33:00 AM
From: Thomas A Watson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2617

E. I don't think your making good comparisons. The count I did is for X running on all hardware platforms. SGI, dec sparc Intel hp and who knows whatever because nothing is dropped out as X code supports all video cards from the beginning of PC's. 30% of the code is just supporting hardware. Because the code is maintained to support such varied systems, A lot of redundant conditional code is required. If all you ever do is use Intel, then you may fail to appreciate the beauty of running and displaying all kinds of graphical apps across a dozen different hardware platforms. This ability is a force that keeps hardware vendors competitive. There are also freely available tooks to create the code for gui interfaces. I've used interviews and it is quite powerful. tcl/tk makes simple text gui easy. Interviews is more complex but handles images also. And as I speak new tools may be being created and may already exist. I've not done image processing gui programing in a couple of years. If you have a small focus of function with limited hardware support it may seem that X is overly complex. But when you want to do it all, X is a very elegant solution. Xi graphics makes a commercial Xserver which is incredibly fast. FVWM with the Pager module make for a fast and efficient window manager with superb ergonomic management of multidesktop multitasks. home.earthlink.net shows FvwmPager. This pager is about twice the height of the win95 task bar. But it allows me to keep track of dozens of open tasks and by functionally labeling desktops, I gain further efficiency in switching between tasks. The screen repaint on my 1600x1200 16 million color desks is less than 1/4 of a second. I can also drag windows across desktops and this make cutting and pasting mail and other text documents a breeze. Remember X understands a 3 button mouse and left to highlite and move and center to paste from any desktop to any desktop is again a breeze. Of course my system's are multidisplay and I can also cut and paste across displays. home.earthlink.net In view of the fact that X is the most hardware diverse support gui and based on the fact that My best technical judgment says X is robust, stable, ergonomic, extensible and slick, I don't see any reason for looking into a new wheel that may turn out to be square at this time. tom watson tosiwme

To: E. Charters who wrote (1290)	3/13/1999 1:43:00 AM
From: JC Jaros	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2617

I still think it is high time we divorced ourslves of the X-legacy as it imposes future limitations on the development of Linux. It was built fro a previous era and multiple machines and a client server paradigm that we do not use in the PC Linux world. E.- "We" appear to be living in different 'Linux worlds'. You may want to reconsider the emphasis you're putting on the GUI (your Canadianism I suppose<g>). You have a good idea, 10 years ago. The precept of Unix isn't to become a fully realized Mac OS. For whatever reason, you seem to be ignoring key Unix design principles. -JCJ