[H-GEN] Computing without GUI

[Frank Brand]

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Darrin Mison wrote:
> 
> You could do it with any linux distro which gives you the option of
> installing X - AFAIK.  But I think that installing X and say fvwm
> and just using xterms would be a better idea.
> 
> On Wed, Jan 24, 2001 at 09:01:53PM +1000, Ron wrote:
> > > add a second hard drive to our machine and carry out everyday computing
> > > without a GUI. From looking around I feel that Slackware or FreeBSD are
> > > my best bet,if there are any insuperable obstacles to this idea please
> > > let me know.

It is not even a matter of installing X or not. Most distro's of Linux
(why it has to be FreeBSD is a bit of a mystery, I have nothing against
FreeBSD, NetBSD, UNIX or anything but Linux will do just as well unless
you have a particular need for FreeBSD and Linux is much more
available...eg you can get updates from the newsagent on the APC disks)
yes ...most distros allow you to choose a console login (level 3)or the
automatic X Windows login (level 5) from XDM. You could install X
Windows but use only the command line when you wanted. Another
alternative is to install X Windows and do your command line stuff from
a terminal window.

Just shunning X Windows completely may not necessarily be a great idea
as:-

1. Lots of goodstuff is now available for X Windows and you may want to
use some of it (eg pgaccess is a nice GUI interface for PostgreSQL, how
would you use one of the best graphics packages available - the GIMP -
with out X Windows etc etc etc)

2. The internet is (IMHO) a lot more interesting with graphics and,
while I recognise that some people do use Lynx and love it, Netscape is
available in X. Of course you could always do your GUI stuff in Windows
(and with the current poor state of Netscape v's IE that might be a
reasonable thought) but, althgough I suspect that there are some closet
IE users in the Humbug family, maybe the advocation of this course here
is just a bit too much.

-- 
Frank Brand
E-mail:- fbrand at uq.net.au
Home Page:-http://www.uq.net.au/~zzfbrand

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