Ugly Huge BSD Monster

[Randi Harper]

On Tuesday, September 2, 2003, at 06:13 AM, Vulpes Velox wrote:

> On Mon, 1 Sep 2003 22:07:03 -0400
> Randi Harper <sektie at freebsdgirl.com> wrote:
>> My mom runs FreeBSD. ;)
>
> Cool, I set my sister up with a FreeBSD box and Windowmaker awhile 
> back. It has
> worked out well for her.

You know, I think if more people would actually look at FreeBSD without 
thinking "eek, BSD, hard!", they'd realize it's actually a lot easier 
to run in the long run than linux is. I've been running FreeBSD for at 
least 3 years, and about a year ago I had to put linux on a laptop to 
run showeq because there was no port. I chose slackware, because I 
figured it had the least amount of crap. I had to upgrade a library in 
slackware, which involved upgrading pretty much the entire system. I 
didn't want to spend the time on that considering it was just to run 
one application, so I installed RedHat. showeq required QT 2.x. 
RedHat's QT 2.x RPM has QT 3.x as a dependancy. This is on a really 
tiny HD on a PII 300 laptop. :)  After that, I realized how good I had 
it. Once you get used to the ease of use of the ports tree, there 
really is no going back. I'm not an anti-linux fanatic at all, but I 
remember the aggravation of that one experience, and I appreciate what 
I've got even more.

>
>> A desktop of it's own? Let's clarify something here. Having something
>> like gnome or KDE doesn't qualify something as being a 'desktop' or
>> not. Surely you can recall the days before gnome and KDE were popular.
>> What did we use then? Window Maker? Enlightenment? KDE was somewhat
>> popular, but it didn't have the momentum it has now. Yes, those are
>> aimed at the Linux people. And for what it's worth, let them have it.
>> gnome and KDE are the toilet paper of the stinky gas station bathroom
>> that is X11, in my opinion.
>>
>> GTK, an integral part of gnome, works fine in FreeBSD. Instead of
>> people just sitting on their butts and whining 'I need a GUI, I need
>> things to click on, I want something that does stuff for me so I can 
>> be
>> a freaking moron but still be able to brag about my uname -a on IRC',
>> wouldn't it make sense to code one? I realize that's easier said than
>> done, but it really isn't that difficult to code with GTK/GLib at all,
>> and in doing so we'd stick with a look and feel that everyone is
>> familiar with and is well supported and integrated into a variety of
>> applications.
>
> GTK is nice. I am begining to look at it a bit, myself.

Just wait until you try to code in it. Gooberssh (check the webpage in 
my .sig) is my first C project that I've even considered showing 
anyone. It's the first time I've coded in C in years (I'm more of a 
php/perl monkey), and of course I decide to make a GTK program. Gtk and 
glib are excellent for coding in, if you don't mind stuff that looks 
like gtk_window_really_long_function_name(arg, arg, arg, arg, arg). The 
API reference online isn't bad at all. Also, O'Reilly was supposed to 
be releasing a new book about Gtk 2.0, but it appears to have been 
canceled or put off. Bummer. I'm using one of the New Riders books, but 
it only covers Gtk 1.2. I don't recommend using any of those GUI things 
like glade though. It just seems to complicate things.

>
>> If there's one thing I've noticed by (mostly) idling on this mailing
>> list, it's that people love to say "we need this", and "it should be
>> this way", or "someone should code this", but no one ever wants to put
>> forth the time to help. It's complete BS. Well, here it is, for what
>> it's worth. I'm willing to put time into this if someone is willing to
>> help. I'd do it on my own, but I've only been doing GTK coding for a
>> few months. My C is mediocre at best, and my understanding of the way
>> X11 handles things is nil. From what I've read, the X11 standard is
>> complete trash, and I'm not delving into that alone. And if no one
>> wants to step forward to help, none of you have anywhere to stand in
>> this discussion.
>
> X11 rulz. I personally like how it handles things and the methodology 
> behind it.
> The lack of a specific way of creating a GUI is really nice.
>
Ugh. Have you SEEN the X11 spec? If you have to write a window manager, 
I've heard it's a bloody nightmare. Read the Unix Haters Handbook. The 
PDF is online somewhere. They have a nice section explaining some of 
it. For me, it's a matter of: I hate it, I know it's ass, but I have as 
of yet to see a decent alternative that supports my video card, so I 
don't complain too loudly when I use it.



Randi Harper

sektie at freebsdgirl.com
http://freebsdgirl.com