[clue-talk] Why X? [long, with provocative questions]

[Matt Gushee]

Joseph A. Nagy, Jr. wrote:

>>>Also, I know that desktops like XFce, Blackbox and FVWM are much more 
>>>lightweight and offer better performance than GNOME or KDE, and they 
>>>still use X - so it would seem the logical conclusion would be to point 
>>>the finger (you decide which finger) at GNOME rather than X.
> 
> 
> I like WindowMaker, myself. I still have GNOME and KDE around, though, as I
> find some of their apps useful (such as KDEs kuser or the
> gnome-sound-recorder).

Heh, heh. Window Maker, yeah. It was my main WM for years. And I can 
remember when it was considered heavy, and maybe too featureful for Real 
Linux Men. Nowadays I'm using ROX desktop w/ OpenBox on one machine, and 
  WindowLab on another.

Yeah, WindowLab. You probably haven't heard of it, but it's pretty cool. 
And quite minimalist: <http://www.nickgravgaard.com/windowlab/>

>>>From the single-user, single-desktop perspective, it probably isn't any 
>>>better. From the multi-user perspective, however, it offers flexibility 
>>>that you don't have with the other architectures.
>  
> But he's asking this from the single-user, single-desktop perspective,
> thereby any arguments about its multiuser capabilities are moot.

That's not entirely true. I had networked environments in mind. And I 
would never argue against the benefits of, say, networked databases 
(except maybe on those days when I wake up in a really foul Luddistic 
mood and rail against all of modern civilization ... yes, I really do 
have days like that). But it doesn't follow that it's beneficial to 
network every aspect of computing.

>>>Stripping the networking part of X kills off a lot of interesting uses 
>>>for Linux - thin clients using XDMCP, for example. While this isn't in 
>>>big usage in homes, it's of interest to corporations who may be 
>>>deploying Linux workstations.
> 
> Moot for this discussion, though. He doesn't want nor need those cool
> networking features.

My argument wasn't really about what I need. I was thinking more about 
what it takes for Linux to become more appealing to mainstream users. 
Granted, not everyone agrees that we should be aiming for that. But it's 
a widely-accepted notion, and I have a feeling Linux may be facing a 
kind of grow-or-die predicament.

> top your box when you have your typical amount of apps running, look at X's
> cpu and mem usage.
> 
> You made some good points, but consistently missed (or ignored) the fact
> that his wife is a single-user, single-desktop environment type of
> person. She probably doesn't care about all the killer things X can do that
> Windows only dreams about doing. I'd love to have X and modern KDE run on
> PII 233 MHz (decent, sorta, vid card) with only 512MB of RAM without being
> able to type ahead two-three sentences in OOo because of system lag

Yeah, you get the idea. Though again, for me personally ... I spend 90% 
of my time in GVim, Firefox, and Thunderbird, and rarely touch any brand 
of orifice suite. As for my wife, well, I made my usual mistake of not 
discussing it all very sensitively in advance ... so there went that 
plan for another 8 months or so.

But there's other people in the world too. Small business people; 
students; poor people here or in Africa who can only afford old 
computers ...

--
Matt Gushee
Englewood, CO, USA