Date: Mon, 05 Jan 1998 12:23:58 -0700 From: "Russell L. Carter" <rcarter@consys.com> To: "Alfred Perlstein" <perlsta@sunyit.edu> Cc: "David E. Wexelblat" <dwex@DataFocus.com>, "'devel@XFree86.Org'" <devel@XFree86.Org>, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: interested in working on windows port (sorry for cross post) Message-ID: <199801051923.MAA11407@dnstoo.consys.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 05 Jan 1998 12:32:23 EST." <199801051338.NAA02521@fang.cs.sunyit.edu>
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}> Who is your target audience? Why on earth would I set up }> a windows box that is doing nothing but running X? This }> seems extraordinarily useless - if I wanted a dedicated }> X machine, I'd run Linux on it. }> }> The only reason to put X on a Windows PC is interoperability. } }no, that's not my point, being able to ALT-TAB or ctrl-esc out of it to }task switch would be my point, not a lot of people want to install a }300+meg O/S just so they can get X. the reason i came up with the idea is }that I'm at a college dorm, SUNYtech in NY, anyhow my roomates are always }raving on about how unix is cool and easier to write programs on and blah }blah blah... but they are not keen on installing it instead of win95 for }several reasons, the disk space, the ton of configuration that has to be, }and possible incomadible video cards. therefore if there was a fast free X }server out there it would be very useful, ie. double click... MS-word, }alt+tab... X... } }plus imagine how much distribution and press a free and _FAST_ (unlike the }microimages server) would get if it would run under '95. } }-Alfred er, why is this in freebsd-hackers? Since it's here, I'll first note that I spend upwards of 10h a day with exceed managing my FreeBSD display on NT, because I need exmh and unix netscape and a (solid) gcc and... well NT is so goddawful ugly... I'll secondly note that really, hardware is so amazingly cheap that one can eat that cake... for less than 2K USD, you can have TWO (2) fast systems connected up via crossovered 100Mb NICs, each with 64 MB of memory (say), 4+ GB of disk, etc, sharing one large monitor, like I do both at work and at home. One can then have a sane network connection to the world, as an increasingly important benefit. And you get to have an NT box around so your kids can play games. ;-) I'll thirdly note that it has been a long time indeed since X has been slow enough to even care about. I'll fourthly note that if linux is a stretch for these people, then they probably ought to stick with Bill's best windows until they grow more adventurous. So who was that intended audience, again? BTW, there is already a free NT X-server out there, check out the Cygnus pages for a pointer. Cheers, Russell
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