9 Oct
2011
9 Oct
'11
6:22 p.m.
On 09/10/11 8:24 PM, Dave McGuire wrote:
On 10/09/2011 06:28 PM, Toby Thain wrote:
Thin clients aren't the only place where a network-enabled windowing
system is useful. I have a balls-ass powerful machine on my desktop, and
I use X11's network capabilities daily. Granted it's more people like me
(while wearing my "network administrator" hat) than the average
nontechnical end-user, but still, that doesn't nullify the usefulness of
the capability.
As a sysadmin I've never wanted a GUI tool except, maybe, to consolidate
status graphs, which can be done easily enough without a networked
windowing system. Come to think of it, the web is probably what finally
killed the concept, by implementing it in an unexpected but more
versatile way.
--Toby
...which
is something that, in my opinion, makes the whole world work
better. I feel that the OS X graphics system, while capable of beautiful
rendering, is a huge step backward in functionality. I mean, c'mon, a
non-networked windowing system, post-2000? What is this, Windows? WTF?!
I will stick with X11!
Well you have to admit that the motivating model for a networked window
system - thin clients, approximately, or remote computing services - has
largely evaporated in favour of a model of expensive per-person
workstations with more CPU and GPU than they can ever use. I'm not
arguing that the latter wasteful craziness makes any sense, but it does
make a lot of money for the scum^H^H^H^H Gateses and Dells of the world.
-Dave