From owner-freebsd-newbies Tue Aug 4 06:19:36 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id GAA23417 for freebsd-newbies-outgoing; Tue, 4 Aug 1998 06:19:36 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from gw1.konstanz.netsurf.de (gw1.konstanz.netsurf.de [194.163.242.39]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id GAA23405 for ; Tue, 4 Aug 1998 06:19:33 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from Rainer.Duffner@konstanz.netsurf.de) Received: from duffner.konstanz.netsurf.de (surf85.konstanz.netsurf.de [194.163.242.85]) by gw1.konstanz.netsurf.de (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id PAA16303; Tue, 4 Aug 1998 15:19:23 +0200 Date: Tue, 4 Aug 1998 14:57:03 +0200 (MESZ) From: Rainer M Duffner Subject: Re: Graphical Shell (my ideas) To: Joey Garcia cc: newbies@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19980803214436.0069d360@pacificnet.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII X-Organization: enigma, http://www-stud.fh-konstanz.de/~enigma X-Mailer: ANT RISCOS Marcel [ver 1.46] Sender: owner-freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Tue 04 Aug, Joey Garcia wrote: > > Hey all! > > The other day I was at work doing my thing, and waiting for 4:30 to come > (going home time). Well, I was thinking about Unix, Graphics, and Unix > GUI's. I was thinking....okay, there's a Bourne shell, C shell, Korn > shell, etc. Why wasn't a graphical shell created? A Graph Shell perhaps? CDE -Common Desktop Environment (Commercial, Motif-based, resource-hog) It provides access to the 54 most often used Unix-commands via a GUI. It's not that bad - you can do some pretty nice things and it is rather nicely laid out - if you have a reasonably new Workstation and reasonably much memory (>>64MB...). (That didn't stop the people here from installing it on 7 year old HP-UX 'Workstations' with 32MB RAM, together with HP-UX10.20) IMO, a shell is a shell and a GUI is a GUI. You can't have both in one ('two in one') 'thingy'. I am writing this on a computer that has the best and fastest GUI on planet ever - but the OS doesn't have a (real, powerful) shell (and some other - for today's users almost unbelievable - constraints that make it really difficult to use in certain occasions). --I like it nevertheless as it is very productive. Free Unix has had enough attempts for nifty 'Window-Managers', that accumulated many features, much functionality and clever tricks. But what-ever window-manger you write and however clever the GUI you create is: it is useless without the support of a huge number of applications specifically written for this specific window-manager. Instead of writing the fifteenth clone to fvwm, people had better started on _real_ problems. As of now, KDE seems to cure some of the shortcomings and ommitions of 5 years free Unix development (at last). cheers, Rainer [partly inspired by JKH's 'freshmeat' editorial recently....] -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |Rainer Duffner, E-Mail: duffner@fh-konstanz.de | | & Rainer.Duffner@konstanz.netsurf.de | |Fachhochschule Konstanz, Germany | |"What's a Network ?" - Bill Gates, early 1980s | | WWW:http://www-stud.fh-konstanz.de/~duffner | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message