🚀 go-pugleaf

There will probably never be just one default GUI that loads on install and/or
first boot for Linux.  User tastes vary too widly for that.  Linux does however
make it *very* easy to load each user's default GUI.  Once configured startx
looks at certain profile files to determine which GUI to load, and what
settings to use for it.

Also, building the GUI into the kernel is not as simple as it sounds.  Compound
that with the fact that Linux runs on many hardware platforms.  Even though the
same C++ source code compiles and runs on all of them there are differences in
the compiler settings for each platform.

How do you account for the myriad levels of video capability from one machine
to the next?  Xconfigurator accounts for at least a dozen video clock chips,
hundreds of video boards, and unlimited flexibility in configuring all of the
video I/O properties.  Not all hardware can be probed successfully to determine
its optimum settings.  Microsoft accomplishes this with bloated code that takes
up much more drive space and a much larger memory footprint than would be
needed if these things were separate.

Given a known, standard hardware set an effective Linux administrator can leave
out all of the unneeded support from the start.  Even an average Linux user is
capable of removing files which are unrelated to any hardware in their system
or any software running on it.  While some of this is possible under Winxx it
is risky with all of the interdependancies built into the system.

I enjoy the fact that I have a choice of several GUIs for Linux.  Some times I
just want something different.  Nevermind the fact that I'll probably never
tweak any of the open source code.  I have the options available to chose
between several GUIs, command shells, text and graphic editors, web servers,
...  the list goes on.

PnP is nice but there's no substitute to being able to pick apart the system
(even on the most superficial level) when things go wrong.

Island Computer wrote:

> When will there be a truly GUI based version of Linux
>
> I was at a Birthday party over the weekend - a bunch of University Users
> that swear by Microsoft were arguing that maybe if Linux was as easy to use
> and install as NT, then they would perhaps try it out
>
> I can't believe that something like Motif hasn't been adapted, or adopted,
> to be integrated in Linux
>
> Comments ????
>
> PS: I want to print these out and send them to the Local Armstrong State
> here in Savannah so keep it clean
>
> David
>
> --
> Island Computer
> PO Box 86
> 406b/c First Street
> Tybee Island, GA 31328
> USA
>
> Voice  912 786 8555
> Fax     912 786 0999
> sales@islandco.com
> www.islandco.com

--
D. Keith Higgs,                     Collection Maintenance Supervisor
Kelvin Smith Library, 11055 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland Ohio  44106-7151
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Have you rebooted Windows today?    Linux, it's where you want to go!