Path: csiph.com!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: John Ames Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc Subject: Re: What Window Manager/Desktop Environment do you use, and why? Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2025 14:29:02 -0700 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 60 Message-ID: <20250623142902.00001ef8@gmail.com> References: <9nikhl-qb2.ln1@otis.foo> <102aft1$1icjg$5@dont-email.me> <102d5t2$298jm$2@dont-email.me> <102ecnj$2l3qp$3@dont-email.me> <20250612083705.000061fc@gmail.com> <102fi1k$2u1dt$4@dont-email.me> <20250612161731.00003f61@gmail.com> <102funf$3149j$4@dont-email.me> <20250620103703.00004ee7@gmail.com> <1035m0l$u0ib$5@dont-email.me> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Injection-Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2025 23:29:07 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="36046d5153c8bd2396995c0ef3c14679"; logging-data="1577911"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX198MMOQqKdI5T8ldkskcuIXJJKFH8v/EKw=" Cancel-Lock: sha1:HXNUZuQQunW51KjVUnPJKhMU9nc= X-Newsreader: Claws Mail 4.3.0 (GTK 3.24.42; x86_64-w64-mingw32) Xref: csiph.com comp.os.linux.misc:69055 On Sat, 21 Jun 2025 07:12:21 -0000 (UTC) Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote: > Interesting, because it was CDE/MOTIF that pioneered the idea of > multiple virtual desktops. Which, if you remember, was commonplace in > the *nix/ Linux world for many years, before Microsoft and Apple > discovered it and tried retrofitting it (badly) onto their own GUIs. Per Wiki "virtual desktops" were independently invented by a couple parties in the mid-'80s and were introduced to the broader *nix world by swm in '89, well before CDE rolled out. Certainly CDE may have helped to popularize it. (No argument about the quality of MS/Apple's implementations, though.) The larger point, however, was that compared to classic MacOS or even Win3.x, CDE was clunky and awkward and made no obvious case for itself. The Trabant comparison was a cheeky way to sum up the whole East Bloc aesthetic of the thing: "Sie m=C3=B6chten eine GUI? Hier ist eine GUI. Nein, es besteht kein Bedarf f=C3=BCr eine bessere GUI." > But SGI were precisely an example of the sort of =E2=80=9Cflashy & > computationally expensive to render=E2=80=9D thing you were criticizing, = were > they not? They did a full animated 3D desktop, with 3D-rendered icons > flying around all over the place, just because they could. As a novelty, yes (3D hardware was their big thing, what can you say.) But I don't think anybody seriously meant that to be more than a proof- of-concept - the normal IRIX desktop environment had nothing to do with it, being a nicely-implemented but entirely conventional WIMP GUI based around a modified mwm: http://toastytech.com/guis/irix.html > > NeXTSTEP was also a fairly valiant attempt, but God help me do I > > hate Miller columns; and the segregation of GUI-land entities from > > underlying *nix ones that drives me up the wall with OSX began at > > NeXT. =20 >=20 > Is that supposed to be different from the idea that functionality > should be available in scriptable/command line tools, with the GUI > mostly just a front end to those tools? Because that is a great way > to organize things. Yes, that's a different thing; perhaps I could've been clearer. What I'm referring to is the way that NeXTSTEP/OSX is just sort of this entirely different thing plopped on top of an underlying *nix system. Sure, BSD-land is *there* and files are more or less files (assuming that the formats are standard,) but there's little commonality between them: GUI-land applications are written in a different language with a different set of APIs and mostly don't interact with BSD-land stuff at all beyond the under-the-hood stuff that implements the XYZ Kit/Cocoa API layer. It's neither fish nor fowl. > And history has proven that *nix approach to be the right way to do > things. I wouldn't agree that it has, at least wrt. integration of a GUI layer into operating-system design. Certainly it *works,* but it could be done much better.