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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!msuinfo!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!superdec.uni.uiuc.edu!mbandy From: mbandy@superdec.uni.uiuc.edu (Harf) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc Subject: Re: Something WILD and crazy...8) Date: 4 Oct 1994 02:32:36 GMT Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana Lines: 45 Message-ID: <36qes4$l17@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu> References: <36hkq5$8ru@jetsam.ee.pdx.edu> <36hp2u$drr@quagga.ru.ac.za> NNTP-Posting-Host: superdec.uni.uiuc.edu csgr@cs.ru.ac.za (Geoff Rehmet) writes: >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. I agree that FreeBSD itself should not go completely graphical. However, I also believe that it would be interesting and useful to develop an offshoot of FreeBSD that did include these features, so that the average workstation sitting on the end-user's desk CAN have an OOGUI if they want one. -- Matt Bandy (mbandy@superdec.uni.uiuc.edu)