Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2001 03:42:40 -0800 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@atkielski.com>, "FreeBSD Questions" <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: Re[2]: Tiny starter configuration for FreeBSD Message-ID: <00cb01c162ca$4faf7820$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <007001c162c5$c4792e80$0a00000a@atkielski.com>
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>-----Original Message----- >From: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG >[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of Anthony >Atkielski >Sent: Thursday, November 01, 2001 3:10 AM >To: FreeBSD Questions >Subject: Re: Re[2]: Tiny starter configuration for FreeBSD > > >Ted writes: > >> There IS NO UNIX UI!!! > >UI = user interface. All operating systems have a UI. In the case >of UNIX, the >default UI is the system console, a simple alphanumeric display with keyboard >entry of command lines. > no, this isn't right. Under UNIX the console is a console driver, and a login process. When you login, the login process is replaced by your chosen shell, which is the UI. This shell can, of course, be a graphical X desktop. You can set it up so that upon login no alphanumeric shell process is ever run and your thrown right into the X desktop. You don't even have to compile a UNIX kernel with a console driver in it if you don't want to. If you don't then the only access to it would, of course, be over the network or over a serial port. I don't know if FreeBSD has been checked for proper operation without a console driver, but there's plenty of embedded UNIX's that operate this way. You can also replace the console login with an X server if you like so that when the system starts your "default" console UI is a graphical login screen. >> Your talking about the UNIX UI as though it's something >> defined and generally accepted. > >It is. See above. > No, it's not. FreeBSD defaults to the ASCII login because it tends to be used as a server more and why incur the overhead of X on a server. But, all Solaris versions I've installed all came up with a default of a graphical login to a graphical console. > >> Windows is an operating system that has ONE available UI. > >Actually, it has at least two: the GUI and the command-line interface, the >former being the default (and thus the native) interface. > The command-line Windows UI is not used by 99.999% of all Windows programs out there, it's equivalent to the service login on a UNIX system that's booted into maintenance mode. It's not intended for ordinary users to use anymore, and few to none user programs make use of it. > >> Since UNIX has no "defined" UI, it's impossible for >> Windows to have a superior UI ... > >When I installed UNIX, it came up with a command-line interface. >Looks pretty >defined to me. It still does that every time it boots. > For starters FreeBSD is not UNIX because it hasn't paid the fee to TOG to be able to use the trademark. Don't assume that FreeBSD is a reference standard for those UNIXs that are legally defined as UNIX. But in any case FreeBSD's install is different than most other UNIX on the market and does not turn on the GUI by default. If you had gone into the XF86 configuration option you could have selected your preferred UNIX desktop. I don't remember if sysinstall does put the command in the startup file to start the graphical login prompt if you do this, but I thought that it did. Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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