22 Jun
2013
22 Jun
'13
6:40 p.m.
On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 03:22:55AM +0100, Liam Proven wrote:
On 20 June 2013 12:16, Alexander Schreiber <als at
thangorodrim.de> wrote:
Well, I _did_ try to use a MacBook as a laptop at work once. I gave it
back in disgust after two months because I couldn't get _work_ done with
the darn thing. Returned to my Thinkpad running Linux and work got done
again ;-)
On Sat, Jun 15, 2013 at 02:23:44AM +0100, Liam
Proven wrote:
I am sure it is very useful /if you need it./ However, I submit that
the majority of personal computer users do not need it.
Consider: the most popular desktop Unix by an order of magnitude (or
2) is Mac OS X. It's outsold all other commercial Unix variants put
together.
No X.11 and no networkable GUI.
I don't need a network-transparent GUI. I'm sure it's a great thing,
but in some 20y of using systems with X.11 available, I've /never/
needed that.
I use that regularly. It is an incredibly useful detail of the way the
X Window system is designed. So you can, e.g. run the process on the
machine where the big pile of data lives and have it displayed on your
workstation. Or run the process on the workstation inside the corporate
security perimeter, but have the display on your laptop in the hotel,
with the connection piped back through ssh. Consider: the most popular Linux by a similar
proportion, with many
hundreds of millions of users is Android. Its GUI is based on OpenGL
on the framebuffer, with no networkable GUI.
But Android solves a different problem: a mobile phone/tablet OS, not
a workstation OS.
Kind regards,
Alex.
--
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison