Return to BSD News archive
Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!bunyip.cc.uq.oz.au!munnari.oz.au!quagga.ru.ac.za!Braae!g89r4222 From: csgr@cs.ru.ac.za (Geoff Rehmet) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc Subject: Re: Something WILD and crazy...8) Date: 30 Sep 1994 19:31:42 GMT Organization: Rhodes University Computing Services Lines: 42 Message-ID: <36hp2u$drr@quagga.ru.ac.za> References: <36hkq5$8ru@jetsam.ee.pdx.edu> Reply-To: csgr@cs.ru.ac.za NNTP-Posting-Host: braae.ru.ac.za X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 #4 (NOV) In <36hkq5$8ru@jetsam.ee.pdx.edu> mcura@ee.pdx.edu (Melissa L. Cura) writes: >I was wondering if there would be, in anyone's envisioning of the next two >years for free UN*X in general, if there would ever be a FREE implementation >of a completely graphical operating system (completely object-oriented and >everything). I guess it would kind of be like a free NeXTSTEP or something! >Has anyone out there even thought of anything like this? Where are the >*BSD developers going after the complete and working migration of 4.4BSD-lite? >What dark paths are the core groups going to travel down once regular old >UN*X actually becomes BORING??? Will the core groups ever achieve a completely >graphical API? I can't claim to speak for the FreeBSD core team as a whole on this, but here are a few of my opinions: I would not like to see FreeBSD become totally graphical. This forgets that a lot of computing applications have nothing to do with graphics, and don't need graphics. People who are running BSD boxes as routers, mail hubs, nntp servers, and a load of other things couln't give a hoot about graphics. (Someone built a router-floppy, which contains everything needed to bring a system up as a router, using FreeBSD.) It's also my opinion that graphics API's should stay out of the kernel. (People are entitled to disagree with me here.) The people working on FreeBSD, NetBSD and Linux will concentrate on the OS, while we have XFree86 taking care of things like graphical environments. (And the XFree86 team does a damn good job of it.) For the average workstation sitting on the end-user's desk, yes, graphical user interfaces are the way to go. For the server that sits in the corner, chugging away while nobody sees it, graphics don't help much (OK, you can still display graphics remotely -- but this is still something that is already taken care of). Just my 0.02 worth. Geoff. -- Geoff Rehmet, Computer Science Department, Rhodes University, South Africa FreeBSD core team: csgr@freebsd.org | ____ _ o /\ csgr@cs.ru.ac.za, geoff@neptune.ru.ac.za |___ _-\_<, / /\/\ finger rehmet@cs.ru.ac.za for PGP public key | (*)/'(*) /\/ / \ \