Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
Hi, I was wondering about the possibility of FreeBSD to provide an official supported graphical environment. UNIX (so FreeBSD) never had standard graphical environment or graphical environment at all. Xorg is standard in FreeBSD and most unices for graphics hardware support. There are thousands and more programs available that uses Xorg, including tens of graphical environments, and everyone is free to select any of them if needed. Or none of them if not needed. Is it that bad to allow people control their computer and willingly choose what to use? ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
This idea would precisely serve the purpose of removing this need and eliminate redundancy of toolkits, when it comes to essential utilities that FreeBSD would want to provide, like devices automounting, partitioning (taking advantage of the system features) and so on... but it's just an idea, of course. is anything of this really FreeBSD specific? ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
regard GUI as a third-party bonus. This is according to *your* use cases though. There are many of us who do not put X - or any graphical environment - on our FreeBSD servers. and there are many of us that do not put any graphical environment while using Xorg, making actually productive one. ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
want to develop GUI applications on FreeBSD, supporting features as panel integration, reliable messageboxes and other trivial things, on other operating systems, that are apparently unavailable on UNIX without pulling in significant portions of lots of environments. this make sense. but it is not FreeBSD specific at all. ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
Replying more to the Wayland comments, yes.. FreeBSD/NetBSD/OpenBSD need to implement the Wayland `protocol` because xorg-server development is slowly being killed over time, but that's the main reason i already frozen package tree, so i will be able to use Xorg in 5 years or more. Wayland is the step that destroyed main adventage of X11 protocol - network transparency. And yes i use it heavily. Actually i don't see any real future for wayland and linux. Linux is already pushed out by *BSD on the professional side, and by Windows, Mac OS X,smartphones, android, etc... on avarage user size, with real linux users being less than 0.1% of all. Android is linux based but mostly kernel side. Of course you may see much higher stats as a lot of people have linux installed altogether with windows or Mac OS X, they normally use the latter, but want to be proud of being linux user. Linux now is mostly hype. Still it's very loud about it but that's only media reality. ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
From a programmer's point of view, GUI is a protocol, a graphical language. It's true. But users don't care. Users don't care how their graphical commands are being implemented. Such users don't use FreeBSD, or at least doesn't have admin rights. ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
actually come out of it). I then faced the problem that there are lots of GUI toolkits, lots of scenarios to take into account, lots of desktop You cannot change it. There are lots of GUI toolking and none are really consistent. None are part of FreeBSD and none will. If you want to write GUI programs like this you just have to select single one. Or better - spend you time on more productive things that making another graphic toy. Even drinking beer is more productive. ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
To be succinct: this is not OSX/Windows. True Unix and Unix clones can be decoupled from a desktop environment enough that forcing everyone to have one choice for desktop user experience doesn't make sense, and the fact that there isn't a common GUI development toolkit (GTK, QT, etc) encourages fragmentation of effort further (I think it's called the Bazaar model of development :P). That's all true. But do anyone understand why there is still so much pressure for every open source OS and specifically *BSD on default desktop environment or similar ideas? Such a pressure exist for 20 years at least, and - between other results - started demise of linux as trusty high performance system. Why people still not learned from faults and keep harming good open source projects that way? ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
make a GUI application for FreeBSD? You are asking yourself what desktop environment will work for sure on FreeBSD? There you have it, Blah DE works just well and is perfectly documented. use any X toolking you want (well almost, i recommend avoiding Qt) and use it properly without assuming any desktop environment running and your program will work just fine. What's a problem? No standard for toolbar widgets? Really it's completely unimportant thing for anyone treating computer as something more than a toy. ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
Can you perhaps read the whole thread and organise your thoughts into just one email? Chris On 18 Sep 2012 09:09, Wojciech Puchar woj...@wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl wrote: To be succinct: this is not OSX/Windows. True Unix and Unix clones can be decoupled from a desktop environment enough that forcing everyone to have one choice for desktop user experience doesn't make sense, and the fact that there isn't a common GUI development toolkit (GTK, QT, etc) encourages fragmentation of effort further (I think it's called the Bazaar model of development :P). That's all true. But do anyone understand why there is still so much pressure for every open source OS and specifically *BSD on default desktop environment or similar ideas? Such a pressure exist for 20 years at least, and - between other results - started demise of linux as trusty high performance system. Why people still not learned from faults and keep harming good open source projects that way? __**_ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/**mailman/listinfo/freebsd-**hackershttp://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscribe@** freebsd.org freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
I spent years using Linux before I truly appreciated the key difference between a desktop environment and a graphical environment. Probably because everyone had to have a desktop environment. I define graphical environment as simply X11 and a window manager. good that you as first one defined things. I am too a user of graphical environment as per your definition, using Xorg and fvwm2 with heavily modified config. That's all you need to run Firefox, Gimp, etc. Because x11 is the underlying base, any toolkit (gtk, qt, whatever) will work just fine. A developer can pick the toolkit they're most comfortable with and it will work on anyone's system. There are few exceptions for badly written programs, mostly QT based that gets eg. terrible performance or leave lots of dangling processes after you exit. But these are exceptions not rule. IMHO, a graphical environment is useful for running applications like Firefox and Gimp. I never run either of these on a server so I would never want to install even a graphical environment on my servers. Well i actually installed it on a few. If i have connected monitor and i am present there and just want to view a webpage or do something requiring X11 - why not? I have no use at all for desktop environments. They're often bloated, buggy, and provide no real value to me. Even if there would be desktop enviroment that starts in less than a second, reacts on everything below single video frame time and used close to zero CPU time i would not use one, as there is no benefit. IMHO the only benefit is wasted lots of screen space for taskbars, menubars, windows frames and titles etc... ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2012 09:54:41 +0200 (CEST) From: Wojciech Puchar woj...@wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl Actually i don't see any real future for wayland and linux. Linux is already pushed out by *BSD on the professional side, and by Are you mad? Have you looked at top500 lately? As of June 2012, 462 out of 500 systems are linux based. Anton ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
desktop environment or similar ideas? Tell you what: When you have at least 75% of the user population of FreeBSD agreeing on which window manager we should offer as the default, we can talk about this. so if 76% would decide that FreeBSD should have KDE included in system - it means that it should? ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
Hi, On Tue, 18 Sep 2012 10:39:43 +0200 (CEST) Wojciech Puchar woj...@wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl wrote: desktop environment or similar ideas? Tell you what: When you have at least 75% of the user population of FreeBSD agreeing on which window manager we should offer as the default, we can talk about this. so if 76% would decide that FreeBSD should have KDE included in system - it means that it should? and let the project wonder one year later that all users moved to Windows as the better KDE? Erich ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
In message alpine.bsf.2.00.1209181004510.44...@wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl, Wojci ech Puchar writes: That's all true. But do anyone understand why there is still so much pressure for every open source OS and specifically *BSD on default desktop environment or similar ideas? Tell you what: When you have at least 75% of the user population of FreeBSD agreeing on which window manager we should offer as the default, we can talk about this. Until such a consensus exists, this discussion is just a waste of time. -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 p...@freebsd.org | TCP/IP since RFC 956 FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence. ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
In message alpine.bsf.2.00.1209181039140.44...@wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl, Wojci ech Puchar writes: desktop environment or similar ideas? Tell you what: When you have at least 75% of the user population of FreeBSD agreeing on which window manager we should offer as the default, we can talk about this. so if 76% would decide that FreeBSD should have KDE included in system - it means that it should? Just to clarify: when I write offer by default I do not mean cram down peoples throat. -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 p...@freebsd.org | TCP/IP since RFC 956 FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence. ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
On 18 Sep 2012 09:41, Wojciech Puchar woj...@wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl wrote: desktop environment or similar ideas? Tell you what: When you have at least 75% of the user population of FreeBSD agreeing on which window manager we should offer as the default, we can talk about this. so if 76% would decide that FreeBSD should have KDE included in system - it means that it should? No. Read the thread properly. Chris ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
Am 17.09.2012 21:52, schrieb Lorenzo Cogotti: Even the userbase/time spent developing ratio matters. What also matters is the interest that a system shows in something, I think it's obvious that FreeBSD can't get much attention as a desktop system if no effort is put into it. It is not a bad thing being tied to the server concept, but I just think FreeBSD would also be an excellent desktop system with a little effort. There is Debian/kFreeBSD - Debian on a FreeBSD kernel. Not sure how useful it is, and it probably lacks FreeBSD's userland, but well, just a point. ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
In message blu0-smtp510b16745b704c714268e2d5...@phx.gbl, Lorenzo Cogotti writ es: Hi, I was wondering about the possibility of FreeBSD to provide an official supported graphical environment. We already do: It's called X11 :-) -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 p...@freebsd.org | TCP/IP since RFC 956 FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence. ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 10:35 AM, Lorenzo Cogotti miciam...@hotmail.it wrote: Hi, I was wondering about the possibility of FreeBSD to provide an official supported graphical environment. Currently FreeBSD doesn't provide any standard desktop environment, this means that, in a way much similar to Linux, a developer cannot know in advance which GUI will be available on the system. This leads to another problem, again much similar to Linux, tools are usually provided in a text based fashion only, because that's the only sure and reliable way a tool can work in a relatively dependency free and independent way. As another effect, many utilities and graphical tools are provided for a toolkit, but not for another, needlessly duplicating efforts and applications, achieving barely half the result. Though, in a different way than Linux, FreeBSD doesn't get much support from developers in this regard, mainly because development focuses over Linux rather than FreeBSD, which remains known only as a good and reliable server platform, many technologies remain relatively unknown and doesn't get attention from developers, like devd vs udev, and other solutions that FreeBSD provides since a very long time. The idea would be choosing a default desktop environment and providing it as the official supported way to develop GUI applications on FreeBSD, thus tools provided on FreeBSD would be able to get official GUIs and supported graphical tools in a standard and non-redundant fashion, like a GUI for tools like pkgng, geli(8), gpart(8). This choice would also be motivated by the fact that often technologies move toward Linux support, like GNOME3, dbus and consolekit, without taking into account BSD. In this regard CDE[1] is could be an interesting choice, since it was a diffuse and reliable UNIX environment, and it is lightweight, relatively Linux-like dependencies free solution, which could be updated to today standards and extended to support FreeBSD features. CDE was just recently released with open source license[2] and some effort is being made to support FreeBSD. Of course CDE isn't the only possibility, the idea is desktop environment agnostic, also I don't mean that FreeBSD shouldn't work with other environments, which could still be installed and used as long as they support the platform properly. I don't mean forcing a graphical environment over installed FreeBSD systems either, which could be unwanted for server installations. [1] http://sourceforge.net/p/cdesktopenv/wiki/Home/ [2] https://sourceforge.net/p/cdesktopenv/code/ci/978aff3dc9c7d009423a3d7fd0624d12f9df0734/tree/cde/COPYING?format=raw I see this as an interesting opportunity to let FreeBSD gain more visibility in the desktop field, would this idea be useful and worth implementing? Thanks, -- Lorenzo Cogotti ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org I definitely agree with this. Sun has a book, UNIX Essentials featuring the Solaris..., and GUI takes a big part in the book. A default GUI is essential to a modern UNIX. FreeBSD can no longer regard GUI as a third-party bonus. -- Zhihao Yuan, nickname lichray The best way to predict the future is to invent it. ___ 4BSD -- http://4bsd.biz/ ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 10:42 AM, Poul-Henning Kamp p...@phk.freebsd.dk wrote: In message blu0-smtp510b16745b704c714268e2d5...@phx.gbl, Lorenzo Cogotti writ es: Hi, I was wondering about the possibility of FreeBSD to provide an official supported graphical environment. We already do: It's called X11 :-) How about Wikipedia graphical environment before u say this? -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 p...@freebsd.org | TCP/IP since RFC 956 FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence. ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org -- Zhihao Yuan, nickname lichray The best way to predict the future is to invent it. ___ 4BSD -- http://4bsd.biz/ ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
Il 17/09/2012 17:42, Poul-Henning Kamp ha scritto: In message blu0-smtp510b16745b704c714268e2d5...@phx.gbl, Lorenzo Cogotti writ es: Hi, I was wondering about the possibility of FreeBSD to provide an official supported graphical environment. We already do: It's called X11 :-) (sending back to mailing list due to a mistake replying personally, I apologize) That's surely more of a standard than Linux can provide, considering Wayland :-) I meant something more abstract that could provide a default desktop feel and the possibility of writing more complex GUI interfaces in less time, so that, for example, I could create a GUI tool while being consistent with the rest of the environment. Right now this can't be achieved (in an easy way) without taking into account Qt, GTK+, X and an enormous number of other toolkits available. In message blu0-smtp86e4bbd140d6911f5297b1d5...@phx.gbl, Lorenzo Cogotti writ es: Right now this can't be achieved (in an easy way) without taking into account Qt, GTK+, X and an enormous number of other toolkits available. Do what everybody else does: Pick the toolkit you prefer to work in and move on... This idea would precisely serve the purpose of removing this need and eliminate redundancy of toolkits, when it comes to essential utilities that FreeBSD would want to provide, like devices automounting, partitioning (taking advantage of the system features) and so on... but it's just an idea, of course. -- Lorenzo Cogotti ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 5:00 PM, Zhihao Yuan lich...@gmail.com wrote: I definitely agree with this. Sun has a book, UNIX Essentials featuring the Solaris..., and GUI takes a big part in the book. A default GUI is essential to a modern UNIX. FreeBSD can no longer regard GUI as a third-party bonus. This is according to *your* use cases though. There are many of us who do not put X - or any graphical environment - on our FreeBSD servers. If FreeBSD did not regard a GUI as an optional 3rd party component, that would mean bringing Xorg, and a specified default WM into base - potentially even dbus and hald as well. IMO that would be a waste of time and resources, as both Xorg and most WM have rapid development changes - just look at how many issues are brought up on x11@ when there are new upgrades of Xorg available. As well as this, Xorg versions would have to remain relatively stable during minor releases, meaning if you DO want X11, then you are being hamstrung by requiring it in base. Status quo for me please. Cheers Tom ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
In message CAGsORuAnDs_E=l747+tp95nxjxdonnsqfvfco+xd2hjsj-u...@mail.gmail.com , Zhihao Yuan writes: On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 10:42 AM, Poul-Henning Kamp p...@phk.freebsd.dk wrote: In message blu0-smtp510b16745b704c714268e2d5...@phx.gbl, Lorenzo Cogotti writ es: Hi, I was wondering about the possibility of FreeBSD to provide an official supported graphical environment. We already do: It's called X11 :-) How about Wikipedia graphical environment before u say this? How about you try to install ports/x11-vm/twm, turn your CPU speed down to 20 MHz and get a good feel for how a graphical environment felt 25 years ago, before you make a fool of yourself ? :-) There is no way that FreeBSD is going to annoint a canonical window manager (look that up too!), we've been down that road before and the landscape is ugly and filled with bikesheds. My suggest was 100% serious: Assume X11 _is_ the graphical environment, pick a toolkit which is written to work with any window manager, which all good toolkits are, and move on. -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 p...@freebsd.org | TCP/IP since RFC 956 FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence. ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 11:20 AM, Poul-Henning Kamp p...@freebsd.org wrote: In message CAGsORuAnDs_E=l747+tp95nxjxdonnsqfvfco+xd2hjsj-u...@mail.gmail.com , Zhihao Yuan writes: On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 10:42 AM, Poul-Henning Kamp p...@phk.freebsd.dk wrote: In message blu0-smtp510b16745b704c714268e2d5...@phx.gbl, Lorenzo Cogotti writ es: Hi, I was wondering about the possibility of FreeBSD to provide an official supported graphical environment. We already do: It's called X11 :-) How about Wikipedia graphical environment before u say this? How about you try to install ports/x11-vm/twm, turn your CPU speed down to 20 MHz and get a good feel for how a graphical environment felt 25 years ago, before you make a fool of yourself ? :-) There is no way that FreeBSD is going to annoint a canonical window manager (look that up too!), we've been down that road before and the landscape is ugly and filled with bikesheds. My suggest was 100% serious: Assume X11 _is_ the graphical environment, pick a toolkit which is written to work with any window manager, which all good toolkits are, and move on. You can assume, but you can't deny that X11 is not GUI at all, and twm is not a modern GUI either. -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 p...@freebsd.org | TCP/IP since RFC 956 FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence. -- Zhihao Yuan, nickname lichray The best way to predict the future is to invent it. ___ 4BSD -- http://4bsd.biz/ ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
On 09/17/12 11:14, Lorenzo Cogotti wrote: Il 17/09/2012 17:42, Poul-Henning Kamp ha scritto: In message blu0-smtp510b16745b704c714268e2d5...@phx.gbl, Lorenzo Cogotti writ es: Hi, I was wondering about the possibility of FreeBSD to provide an official supported graphical environment. We already do: It's called X11 :-) (sending back to mailing list due to a mistake replying personally, I apologize) That's surely more of a standard than Linux can provide, considering Wayland :-) I meant something more abstract that could provide a default desktop feel and the possibility of writing more complex GUI interfaces in less time, so that, for example, I could create a GUI tool while being consistent with the rest of the environment. Right now this can't be achieved (in an easy way) without taking into account Qt, GTK+, X and an enormous number of other toolkits available. In message blu0-smtp86e4bbd140d6911f5297b1d5...@phx.gbl, Lorenzo Cogotti writ es: Right now this can't be achieved (in an easy way) without taking into account Qt, GTK+, X and an enormous number of other toolkits available. Do what everybody else does: Pick the toolkit you prefer to work in and move on... This idea would precisely serve the purpose of removing this need and eliminate redundancy of toolkits, when it comes to essential utilities that FreeBSD would want to provide, like devices automounting, partitioning (taking advantage of the system features) and so on... but it's just an idea, of course. I think most FreeBSD developers don't care to do this. If you want this to happen, you should create your own product. Call it Cogotti-BSD-Grafix, or whatever you like. Then you take the code base of FreeBSD, and work very hard to create a stable graphics environment, package it, and put up your own website advocating it. If you pick software with the right licenses, you could even sell your product. Or if you don't want to do this, find someone else who will. For all I know, maybe someone has already done this. ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
In message cagsorub4yd8rknlrwmctx16idohwjkd1rnyarb98nwn+pwv...@mail.gmail.com , Zhihao Yuan writes: On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 11:20 AM, Poul-Henning Kamp p...@freebsd.org wrote: My suggest was 100% serious: Assume X11 _is_ the graphical environment, pick a toolkit which is written to work with any window manager, which all good toolkits are, and move on. You can assume, but you can't deny that X11 is not GUI at all, and twm is not a modern GUI either. You are confusing window manager and graphical user interface, one is layered on the other, your homework is to figure out which. -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 p...@freebsd.org | TCP/IP since RFC 956 FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence. ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 11:14 AM, Lars Engels lars.eng...@0x20.net wrote: On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 11:00:21AM -0500, Zhihao Yuan wrote: On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 10:35 AM, Lorenzo Cogotti miciam...@hotmail.it wrote: Hi, I was wondering about the possibility of FreeBSD to provide an official supported graphical environment. Currently FreeBSD doesn't provide any standard desktop environment, this means that, in a way much similar to Linux, a developer cannot know in advance which GUI will be available on the system. This leads to another problem, again much similar to Linux, tools are usually provided in a text based fashion only, because that's the only sure and reliable way a tool can work in a relatively dependency free and independent way. As another effect, many utilities and graphical tools are provided for a toolkit, but not for another, needlessly duplicating efforts and applications, achieving barely half the result. Though, in a different way than Linux, FreeBSD doesn't get much support from developers in this regard, mainly because development focuses over Linux rather than FreeBSD, which remains known only as a good and reliable server platform, many technologies remain relatively unknown and doesn't get attention from developers, like devd vs udev, and other solutions that FreeBSD provides since a very long time. The idea would be choosing a default desktop environment and providing it as the official supported way to develop GUI applications on FreeBSD, thus tools provided on FreeBSD would be able to get official GUIs and supported graphical tools in a standard and non-redundant fashion, like a GUI for tools like pkgng, geli(8), gpart(8). This choice would also be motivated by the fact that often technologies move toward Linux support, like GNOME3, dbus and consolekit, without taking into account BSD. In this regard CDE[1] is could be an interesting choice, since it was a diffuse and reliable UNIX environment, and it is lightweight, relatively Linux-like dependencies free solution, which could be updated to today standards and extended to support FreeBSD features. CDE was just recently released with open source license[2] and some effort is being made to support FreeBSD. Of course CDE isn't the only possibility, the idea is desktop environment agnostic, also I don't mean that FreeBSD shouldn't work with other environments, which could still be installed and used as long as they support the platform properly. I don't mean forcing a graphical environment over installed FreeBSD systems either, which could be unwanted for server installations. [1] http://sourceforge.net/p/cdesktopenv/wiki/Home/ [2] https://sourceforge.net/p/cdesktopenv/code/ci/978aff3dc9c7d009423a3d7fd0624d12f9df0734/tree/cde/COPYING?format=raw I see this as an interesting opportunity to let FreeBSD gain more visibility in the desktop field, would this idea be useful and worth implementing? Thanks, -- Lorenzo Cogotti ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org I definitely agree with this. Sun has a book, UNIX Essentials featuring the Solaris..., and GUI takes a big part in the book. A default GUI is essential to a modern UNIX. FreeBSD can no longer regard GUI as a third-party bonus. If you want a default GUI, install PC-BSD. It provides several graphical management tools for FreeBSD. I hope you *really* used PC-BSD. I don't think an OS installing programs under /Programs can be a GUI-replacement to FreeBSD. -- Zhihao Yuan, nickname lichray The best way to predict the future is to invent it. ___ 4BSD -- http://4bsd.biz/ ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 11:28 AM, Poul-Henning Kamp p...@freebsd.org wrote: In message cagsorub4yd8rknlrwmctx16idohwjkd1rnyarb98nwn+pwv...@mail.gmail.com , Zhihao Yuan writes: On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 11:20 AM, Poul-Henning Kamp p...@freebsd.org wrote: My suggest was 100% serious: Assume X11 _is_ the graphical environment, pick a toolkit which is written to work with any window manager, which all good toolkits are, and move on. You can assume, but you can't deny that X11 is not GUI at all, and twm is not a modern GUI either. You are confusing window manager and graphical user interface, one is layered on the other, your homework is to figure out which. GUI is a concept. People can use WM or DE as their GUIs. X11 is not usable from a user's point of view, so it's out of the question. So far, your statement Assume X11 _is_ the graphical environment is already nonsense. And then, a modern GUI should take care of Wifi, automount, and many things can't be done with a single WM. That's why I said twm is not a modern GUI. So far, any questions? -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 p...@freebsd.org | TCP/IP since RFC 956 FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence. -- Zhihao Yuan, nickname lichray The best way to predict the future is to invent it. ___ 4BSD -- http://4bsd.biz/ ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 11:00:21AM -0500, Zhihao Yuan wrote: On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 10:35 AM, Lorenzo Cogotti miciam...@hotmail.it wrote: Hi, I was wondering about the possibility of FreeBSD to provide an official supported graphical environment. Currently FreeBSD doesn't provide any standard desktop environment, this means that, in a way much similar to Linux, a developer cannot know in advance which GUI will be available on the system. This leads to another problem, again much similar to Linux, tools are usually provided in a text based fashion only, because that's the only sure and reliable way a tool can work in a relatively dependency free and independent way. As another effect, many utilities and graphical tools are provided for a toolkit, but not for another, needlessly duplicating efforts and applications, achieving barely half the result. Though, in a different way than Linux, FreeBSD doesn't get much support from developers in this regard, mainly because development focuses over Linux rather than FreeBSD, which remains known only as a good and reliable server platform, many technologies remain relatively unknown and doesn't get attention from developers, like devd vs udev, and other solutions that FreeBSD provides since a very long time. The idea would be choosing a default desktop environment and providing it as the official supported way to develop GUI applications on FreeBSD, thus tools provided on FreeBSD would be able to get official GUIs and supported graphical tools in a standard and non-redundant fashion, like a GUI for tools like pkgng, geli(8), gpart(8). This choice would also be motivated by the fact that often technologies move toward Linux support, like GNOME3, dbus and consolekit, without taking into account BSD. In this regard CDE[1] is could be an interesting choice, since it was a diffuse and reliable UNIX environment, and it is lightweight, relatively Linux-like dependencies free solution, which could be updated to today standards and extended to support FreeBSD features. CDE was just recently released with open source license[2] and some effort is being made to support FreeBSD. Of course CDE isn't the only possibility, the idea is desktop environment agnostic, also I don't mean that FreeBSD shouldn't work with other environments, which could still be installed and used as long as they support the platform properly. I don't mean forcing a graphical environment over installed FreeBSD systems either, which could be unwanted for server installations. [1] http://sourceforge.net/p/cdesktopenv/wiki/Home/ [2] https://sourceforge.net/p/cdesktopenv/code/ci/978aff3dc9c7d009423a3d7fd0624d12f9df0734/tree/cde/COPYING?format=raw I see this as an interesting opportunity to let FreeBSD gain more visibility in the desktop field, would this idea be useful and worth implementing? Thanks, -- Lorenzo Cogotti ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org I definitely agree with this. Sun has a book, UNIX Essentials featuring the Solaris..., and GUI takes a big part in the book. A default GUI is essential to a modern UNIX. FreeBSD can no longer regard GUI as a third-party bonus. If you want a default GUI, install PC-BSD. It provides several graphical management tools for FreeBSD. pgprNYLJ8gMzZ.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
Il 17/09/2012 18:20, Tom Evans ha scritto: On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 5:00 PM, Zhihao Yuan lich...@gmail.com wrote: I definitely agree with this. Sun has a book, UNIX Essentials featuring the Solaris..., and GUI takes a big part in the book. A default GUI is essential to a modern UNIX. FreeBSD can no longer regard GUI as a third-party bonus. This is according to *your* use cases though. There are many of us who do not put X - or any graphical environment - on our FreeBSD servers. If FreeBSD did not regard a GUI as an optional 3rd party component, that would mean bringing Xorg, and a specified default WM into base - potentially even dbus and hald as well. IMO that would be a waste of time and resources, as both Xorg and most WM have rapid development changes - just look at how many issues are brought up on x11@ when there are new upgrades of Xorg available. As well as this, Xorg versions would have to remain relatively stable during minor releases, meaning if you DO want X11, then you are being hamstrung by requiring it in base. Status quo for me please. Cheers Tom ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org I don't have in mind of pulling X in the default FreeBSD installation, I'd rather keep that requirement away. Although I don't understand what's the problem with having X stable between releases and having an official, supported FreeBSD GUI environment, so that when a developer tries to figure out which API he/she needs to deal with on this system, documentation and examples are immediately available, as long as he/she follows the guidelines, it will work perfectly with FreeBSD and integrate with the default GUI. I don't see this as forcing a default GUI and making FreeBSD a graphical OS, I see this as estabilishing a standard for developers who want to develop GUI applications on FreeBSD, supporting features as panel integration, reliable messageboxes and other trivial things, on other operating systems, that are apparently unavailable on UNIX without pulling in significant portions of lots of environments. X server is a good standard for low level GUIs, like a single window (and even with that you'll have a hard time adding fullscreen support, copy to clipboard support and other apparently trivial tasks), but try to implement some advanced application with it, it just isn't enough to keep development time affordable, so let's say we want to provide an official GUI for a BSD tool, what will it use, GTK+, Qt, pure X server? If FreeBSD states CDE is the official supported desktop, any BSD application will use it, if KDE4 is chosen, then a KDE GUI is provided and so on, no ambiguity, consistency and no additional dependency is involved, just a clear standard. I can't see how this could bother FreeBSD philosophy or servers in any way. The only objective is introducing a standard for GUI application development that FreeBSD projects could rely on to deliver not only text based applications, but also desktop applications, and a FreeBSD specific automounter could be a good example. -- Lorenzo Cogotti ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 8:35 AM, Lorenzo Cogotti miciam...@hotmail.it wrote: Hi, ... Replying more to the Wayland comments, yes.. FreeBSD/NetBSD/OpenBSD need to implement the Wayland `protocol` because xorg-server development is slowly being killed over time, but unfortunately that work is not slotted by anyone directly affiliated with the project AFAIK. The project is also beta though, and as many know the new hotness in Linux generally has a short lifespan unless it's truly well thought out, so I think waiting and seeing what happens (but observing with interest and participating in discussions are necessary) would be a better use of resources instead of immediately immersing FreeBSD into Linux-style development churn. Thanks, -Garrett ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
On Mon, 17 Sep 2012 11:40:33 -0500 Zhihao Yuan lich...@gmail.com wrote: GUI is a concept. People can use WM or DE as their GUIs. X11 is not usable from a user's point of view, so it's out of the question. So far, your statement Assume X11 _is_ the graphical environment is already nonsense. As someone who's used X without a WM or DE, I have to disagree. I think PHK is dead on - X11 is a collection of protocols for working in a bit mapped display + pointer (aka graphical) environment. As compared to a character-mapped display + keyboard (aka command line) environment. And then, a modern GUI should take care of Wifi, automount, and many things can't be done with a single WM. You seem to be using GUI in a different manner than I'm used to. Graphic User Interfaces don't *do* things, they provide a graphical communications path (the Interface in GUI) between the user and tools. Asking for a GUI that takes care of Wifi and automount and other such things makes no more sense than asking for a mouse that does those things. Those things are done by *tools*. You can have tools with GUIs that do those things - a desktop manager, or a window manager (and if you think a single WM can't do all those things, you are looking at wimpy WMs), or a taskbar manager, or even a web-based systems manager. Until you two can agree on what the terms mean, you're going to be talking past each other. But PHK seems to be using the common definitions. Or maybe you should start over, and describe the behavior of the program you think FreeBSD should adopt, rather than trying to name it. mike -- Mike Meyer m...@mired.org http://www.mired.org/ Independent Software developer/SCM consultant, email for more information. O ascii ribbon campaign - stop html mail - www.asciiribbon.org ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
What are you trying to achieve? Are you trying to write a set of utilities for FreeBSD that are GUI in nature? And you'd like to know which toolkit is blessed for a consistent, integrated feel and development environment? Adrian ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
From a programmer's point of view, GUI is a protocol, a graphical language. It's true. But users don't care. Users don't care how their graphical commands are being implemented. Well, let's make it more straightforward. I hope people can agree with this: a default, officially supported modern desktop environment is essential to FreeBSD. On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 12:06 PM, Mike Meyer m...@mired.org wrote: On Mon, 17 Sep 2012 11:40:33 -0500 Zhihao Yuan lich...@gmail.com wrote: GUI is a concept. People can use WM or DE as their GUIs. X11 is not usable from a user's point of view, so it's out of the question. So far, your statement Assume X11 _is_ the graphical environment is already nonsense. As someone who's used X without a WM or DE, I have to disagree. I think PHK is dead on - X11 is a collection of protocols for working in a bit mapped display + pointer (aka graphical) environment. As compared to a character-mapped display + keyboard (aka command line) environment. And then, a modern GUI should take care of Wifi, automount, and many things can't be done with a single WM. You seem to be using GUI in a different manner than I'm used to. Graphic User Interfaces don't *do* things, they provide a graphical communications path (the Interface in GUI) between the user and tools. Asking for a GUI that takes care of Wifi and automount and other such things makes no more sense than asking for a mouse that does those things. Those things are done by *tools*. You can have tools with GUIs that do those things - a desktop manager, or a window manager (and if you think a single WM can't do all those things, you are looking at wimpy WMs), or a taskbar manager, or even a web-based systems manager. Until you two can agree on what the terms mean, you're going to be talking past each other. But PHK seems to be using the common definitions. Or maybe you should start over, and describe the behavior of the program you think FreeBSD should adopt, rather than trying to name it. mike -- Mike Meyer m...@mired.org http://www.mired.org/ Independent Software developer/SCM consultant, email for more information. O ascii ribbon campaign - stop html mail - www.asciiribbon.org ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org -- Zhihao Yuan, nickname lichray The best way to predict the future is to invent it. ___ 4BSD -- http://4bsd.biz/ ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
Il 17/09/2012 19:26, Adrian Chadd ha scritto: What are you trying to achieve? Are you trying to write a set of utilities for FreeBSD that are GUI in nature? And you'd like to know which toolkit is blessed for a consistent, integrated feel and development environment? Adrian Right now I was interested in creating a desktop oriented automounter, in order to experiment with devd (I don't know if something useful will actually come out of it). I then faced the problem that there are lots of GUI toolkits, lots of scenarios to take into account, lots of desktop environments available, basically the problem is the same that Linux has with its non existing userland. I think every developer willing to create an utility could feel overwhelmed by this task, since it's either facing a terrible work to integrate well with any desktop environment, or selecting one of them leaving the others alone. Not to mention that integrating with any desktop environment would mean delivering a solution that could be unable to fully take advantage of any desktop. Given the fact that FreeBSD will never be supported in a spontaneous way by the major open source desktop projects, I thought FreeBSD could simply select one of them, blessing it if you will. The purpose is simplifying the job of anyone willing to support FreeBSD as a desktop. There could be resources, examples, documentation and guidelines at their disposal. This would make the effort of supporting FreeBSD less significant, as well as allowing better integration and consistent feel of the offered utilities. Anything more than that depends on how much effort the FreeBSD project wants to put into this, delivering a default desktop installation, providing a customized version of the environment, and so on... A FreeBSD project (like geli or gpart) could even go as far as providing an official GUI utility next to the text based utility, without hoping for the specific desktop project to provide it (like devd integration). -- Lorenzo Cogotti ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 10:51 AM, Lorenzo Cogotti miciam...@hotmail.it wrote: Il 17/09/2012 19:26, Adrian Chadd ha scritto: What are you trying to achieve? Right now I was interested in creating a desktop oriented automounter, in order to experiment with devd (I don't know if something useful will actually come out of it). I then faced the problem that there are lots of GUI toolkits, lots of scenarios to take into account, lots of desktop environments available, basically the problem is the same that Linux has with its non existing userland. Have you seen this: http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=29895 -- Freddie Cash fjwc...@gmail.com ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 1:05 PM, Poul-Henning Kamp p...@phk.freebsd.dk wrote: In message CAGsORuBqiodwt_EmVqB+fO=tgOVeZOERopSE2y=mla8jp6z...@mail.gmail.com , Zhihao Yuan writes: Well, let's make it more straightforward. I hope people can agree with this: a default, officially supported modern desktop environment is essential to FreeBSD. No, it is not. It would certainly be nice to have as an option, but I would hate to have to deal with it, when I squeeze FreeBSD into embedded systems which have neither graphics outputs nor keyboard or mouse inputs. Default does not mean you have to install it. Default means when you are looking for a DE, bsdinstall, handbook, official site, all of them answers *DE. -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 p...@freebsd.org | TCP/IP since RFC 956 FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence. -- Zhihao Yuan, nickname lichray The best way to predict the future is to invent it. ___ 4BSD -- http://4bsd.biz/ ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
In message CAGsORuBqiodwt_EmVqB+fO=tgOVeZOERopSE2y=mla8jp6z...@mail.gmail.com , Zhihao Yuan writes: Well, let's make it more straightforward. I hope people can agree with this: a default, officially supported modern desktop environment is essential to FreeBSD. No, it is not. It would certainly be nice to have as an option, but I would hate to have to deal with it, when I squeeze FreeBSD into embedded systems which have neither graphics outputs nor keyboard or mouse inputs. -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 p...@freebsd.org | TCP/IP since RFC 956 FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence. ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
On 17 Sep 2012 17:22, Tom Evans tevans...@googlemail.com wrote: On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 5:00 PM, Zhihao Yuan lich...@gmail.com wrote: I definitely agree with this. Sun has a book, UNIX Essentials featuring the Solaris..., and GUI takes a big part in the book. A default GUI is essential to a modern UNIX. FreeBSD can no longer regard GUI as a third-party bonus. This is according to *your* use cases though. There are many of us who do not put X - or any graphical environment - on our FreeBSD servers. If FreeBSD did not regard a GUI as an optional 3rd party component, that would mean bringing Xorg, and a specified default WM into base - potentially even dbus and hald as well. IMO that would be a waste of time and resources, as both Xorg and most WM have rapid development changes - just look at how many issues are brought up on x11@ when there are new upgrades of Xorg available. As well as this, Xorg versions would have to remain relatively stable during minor releases, meaning if you DO want X11, then you are being hamstrung by requiring it in base. Status quo for me please. Time and time again, this comes up. Being official does not mean it should be in base. Chris ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
I spent years using Linux before I truly appreciated the key difference between a desktop environment and a graphical environment. Probably because everyone had to have a desktop environment. I define graphical environment as simply X11 and a window manager. That's all you need to run Firefox, Gimp, etc. Because x11 is the underlying base, any toolkit (gtk, qt, whatever) will work just fine. A developer can pick the toolkit they're most comfortable with and it will work on anyone's system. In contrast, a desktop environment builds an entirely separate layer on top primarily to allow the desktop applications to communicate with one another. Things like network monitoring and message notifications are usually included. This is also where developers suddenly need to choose. Do you write code for KDE, Gnome, or another? Users will only run one desktop environment so choosing one will alienate the others. IMHO, a graphical environment is useful for running applications like Firefox and Gimp. I never run either of these on a server so I would never want to install even a graphical environment on my servers. I have no use at all for desktop environments. They're often bloated, buggy, and provide no real value to me. I would much rather install x11 and dwm. this: a default, officially supported modern desktop environment is essential to FreeBSD. I completely disagree. X11 + WM is more than adequate for my needs. And I don't need either of these on the servers whee I rely on FreeBSD. Andy On Sep 17, 2012, at 1:53 PM, Zhihao Yuan lich...@gmail.com wrote: From a programmer's point of view, GUI is a protocol, a graphical language. It's true. But users don't care. Users don't care how their graphical commands are being implemented. Well, let's make it more straightforward. I hope people can agree with this: a default, officially supported modern desktop environment is essential to FreeBSD. On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 12:06 PM, Mike Meyer m...@mired.org wrote: On Mon, 17 Sep 2012 11:40:33 -0500 Zhihao Yuan lich...@gmail.com wrote: GUI is a concept. People can use WM or DE as their GUIs. X11 is not usable from a user's point of view, so it's out of the question. So far, your statement Assume X11 _is_ the graphical environment is already nonsense. As someone who's used X without a WM or DE, I have to disagree. I think PHK is dead on - X11 is a collection of protocols for working in a bit mapped display + pointer (aka graphical) environment. As compared to a character-mapped display + keyboard (aka command line) environment. And then, a modern GUI should take care of Wifi, automount, and many things can't be done with a single WM. You seem to be using GUI in a different manner than I'm used to. Graphic User Interfaces don't *do* things, they provide a graphical communications path (the Interface in GUI) between the user and tools. Asking for a GUI that takes care of Wifi and automount and other such things makes no more sense than asking for a mouse that does those things. Those things are done by *tools*. You can have tools with GUIs that do those things - a desktop manager, or a window manager (and if you think a single WM can't do all those things, you are looking at wimpy WMs), or a taskbar manager, or even a web-based systems manager. Until you two can agree on what the terms mean, you're going to be talking past each other. But PHK seems to be using the common definitions. Or maybe you should start over, and describe the behavior of the program you think FreeBSD should adopt, rather than trying to name it. mike -- Mike Meyer m...@mired.org http://www.mired.org/ Independent Software developer/SCM consultant, email for more information. O ascii ribbon campaign - stop html mail - www.asciiribbon.org ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org -- Zhihao Yuan, nickname lichray The best way to predict the future is to invent it. ___ 4BSD -- http://4bsd.biz/ ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 11:09 AM, Zhihao Yuan lich...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 1:05 PM, Poul-Henning Kamp p...@phk.freebsd.dk wrote: In message CAGsORuBqiodwt_EmVqB+fO=tgOVeZOERopSE2y=mla8jp6z...@mail.gmail.com , Zhihao Yuan writes: Well, let's make it more straightforward. I hope people can agree with this: a default, officially supported modern desktop environment is essential to FreeBSD. No, it is not. It would certainly be nice to have as an option, but I would hate to have to deal with it, when I squeeze FreeBSD into embedded systems which have neither graphics outputs nor keyboard or mouse inputs. Default does not mean you have to install it. Default means when you are looking for a DE, bsdinstall, handbook, official site, all of them answers *DE. *gathers breath for really tangential/OT rant* joking Sounds like we have someone volunteering to write a chapter in the handbook and do some X11 development to make Gnome, KDE, XFCE, LXDE, Fluxbox, [...], or etc work better on FreeBSD! /joking To be succinct: this is not OSX/Windows. True Unix and Unix clones can be decoupled from a desktop environment enough that forcing everyone to have one choice for desktop user experience doesn't make sense, and the fact that there isn't a common GUI development toolkit (GTK, QT, etc) encourages fragmentation of effort further (I think it's called the Bazaar model of development :P). It honestly sounds like what you're looking for is a custom FreeBSD-based distribution (and PCBSD is one of those options) as FreeBSD is a generic project. Even the Linux kernel//GNU/Linux OS doesn't have a single adopted DE as its flagship DE. With all of the choices I listed above (and more), getting everyone to agree on working with one DE is like herding cats, in part because end-users/developers have different requirements, opinions, work styles, etc. It makes more sense to provide hooks into several DEs (like Linux, PCBSD, etc has done) to accomplish various tasks in a GUI-ish manner (setting up networking, wireless, etc) and upstream those changes if and when one has the chance to do so. Finally, one should then become a devoted testing resource/advocate FreeBSD OS integration in the future if one has interest in continuing to use said DE on FreeBSD. Thanks, -Garrett ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
Il 17/09/2012 20:32, Garrett Cooper ha scritto: *gathers breath for really tangential/OT rant* joking Sounds like we have someone volunteering to write a chapter in the handbook and do some X11 development to make Gnome, KDE, XFCE, LXDE, Fluxbox, [...], or etc work better on FreeBSD! /joking If I proposed it, is because I'm willing to offer my help implementing my idea if it gets attention :-) To be succinct: this is not OSX/Windows. True Unix and Unix clones can be decoupled from a desktop environment enough that forcing everyone to have one choice for desktop user experience doesn't make sense, and the fact that there isn't a common GUI development toolkit (GTK, QT, etc) encourages fragmentation of effort further (I think it's called the Bazaar model of development :P). As I tried to make clear, I *don't want* to limit user's freedom in any way, nor getting away UNIX philosophy in any way from FreeBSD, nor trying to remove servers or other desktop environments solutions in any way. Solaris and other UNIces had CDE as their default environment, this was not preventing a perfectly written toolkit that used X server to run there, it wasn't preventing users from tearing away the GUI part and using it without it. My only objective is estabilishing a standard, just saying you want to make a GUI application for FreeBSD? You are asking yourself what desktop environment will work for sure on FreeBSD? There you have it, Blah DE works just well and is perfectly documented. [...] Even the Linux kernel//GNU/Linux OS doesn't have a single adopted DE as its flagship DE. Do we really have to look at Linux searching for good standards? They had OSS for audio, then replaced it with ALSA, now they're using pulseaudio as the default sound server while pretending that ALSA is still the standard (which is half-backward compatible with OSS anyway), while they're still deciding what's better for their init system... ah, they're also trying to replace X with Wayland :-) With all of the choices I listed above (and more), getting everyone to agree on working with one DE is like herding cats, in part because end-users/developers have different requirements, opinions, work styles, etc. I don't mean that everyone should use exactly that, just ensuring a supported and well documented desktop environment to work with, nothing more, one might always decide to use another one (and to create FreeBSD utilities for another DE). It makes more sense to provide hooks into several DEs (like Linux, PCBSD, etc has done) to accomplish various tasks in a GUI-ish manner (setting up networking, wireless, etc) and upstream those changes if and when one has the chance to do so. But that's not going to eliminate the tremendous work to support every desktop environment well, nor will give developers a chance to provide official GUIs themselves, without delegating other developers and providing 4 different GUIs for every desktop environment. Finally, one should then become a devoted testing resource/advocate FreeBSD OS integration in the future if one has interest in continuing to use said DE on FreeBSD. Yes, that's probably true Thanks, -Garrett Basically my point of view is: - You're using FreeBSD as a server? Fine, nothing will change, just leave the GUI alone. - You're using FreeBSD with a minimal graphical environment, no desktop, no nothing? Nice, you can just keep using that, with the traditional text based utilities to manage your system, which are always provided since FreeBSD works just great as a server and UNIX separates GUI from your system. - You're using FreeBSD with your favourite desktop environment and you don't like the official FreeBSD environment? Nice, nothing will change, as long as the developers will do a good job supporting FreeBSD, using UNIX standard programming and that environment works with X, you can keep using it. - You want to use FreeBSD official environment? Good, you'll get official utilities for FreeBSD and you are ensured a certain amount of support and stability from your system, since that's the official environment. - You are a developer wanting to build some FreeBSD desktop utilities? Unless you want to specifically target your utility to a desktop environment, you have documentation, guidelines and support for the official desktop environment. You are also able to interact with the rest of the desktop (for example creating a GUI configuration editor, a taskbar icon or simply stream a sound). You can also communicate with other official desktop utilities, since (official utilities) are all targeted for this environment, you can, for example, create a partitioning tool and other utilities can communicate with it nicely (because it is well documented and easy to find out). So I can't see how bad this is, it simply looks as a nice to have standard to me, exactly like POSIX, even if UNIX has the bazaar philosophy, you still offer POSIX compatibility and X server as sane
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
Am 17.09.2012 17:35, schrieb Lorenzo Cogotti: Hi, I was wondering about the possibility of FreeBSD to provide an official supported graphical environment. Currently FreeBSD doesn't provide any standard desktop environment, this means that, in a way much similar to Linux, a developer cannot know in advance which GUI will be available on the system. This leads to another problem, again much similar to Linux, tools are usually provided in a text based fashion only, because that's the only sure and reliable way a tool can work in a relatively dependency free and independent way. As another effect, many utilities and graphical tools are provided for a toolkit, but not for another, needlessly duplicating efforts and applications, achieving barely half the result. What is the particular problem? All major toolkits ultimately talk X11, and most applications that I have seen will work in any desktop environment. I for one prefer a reasonable text-tool to a half-baked playful GUI that leaves half of the questions unanswered because the author has no faint clue as to how to properly present a complex technical situation. The idea would be choosing a default desktop environment and providing it as the official supported way to develop GUI applications on FreeBSD, thus tools provided on FreeBSD would be able to get official GUIs and supported graphical tools in a standard and non-redundant fashion, like a GUI for tools like pkgng, geli(8), gpart(8). This choice would also be motivated by the fact that often technologies move toward Linux support, like GNOME3, dbus and consolekit, without taking into account BSD. As though someone cared. End users could not care less, they just want their stuff to work and get the job done. You don't get developers just because you follow an obsolete standard. If you want to make sure that the tools that you'd like to see not move toward[s] Linux support, then (a) make sure they are aware there's more than their favourite Linux distro, (b) help them out. Regarding Linux dependencies, there are few and far between, and most features do not rely on particular kernel support -- and where they do, abstracting that, or providing FreeBSD support, is far more useful than trying to make someone follow a desktop that died a decade ago. Popularity matters in open source. Particularly with desktops. -- Matthias Andree ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
| Hi, | I was wondering about the possibility of FreeBSD to provide an official | supported graphical environment. What i really miss compared to 4.* and 5.3 (and compared to NetBSD and OpenBSD) is that there is a single package with a known name that can be downloaded and unpacked and you have a X11 environment to go. I have not searched the archives for the when and why of the decision to drop it. But its absence really hurts me. --steffen ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
Am 17.09.2012 19:51, schrieb Lorenzo Cogotti: Il 17/09/2012 19:26, Adrian Chadd ha scritto: What are you trying to achieve? Are you trying to write a set of utilities for FreeBSD that are GUI in nature? And you'd like to know which toolkit is blessed for a consistent, integrated feel and development environment? Adrian Right now I was interested in creating a desktop oriented automounter, in order to experiment with devd (I don't know if something useful will actually come out of it). I then faced the problem that there are lots of GUI toolkits, lots of scenarios to take into account, lots of desktop environments available, basically the problem is the same that Linux has with its non existing userland. Meaning that you have not separated the issues that matter: (A) the actual automounting stuff, with details such as user permissions, (B) from the graphical presentation, (C) from the integration into desktops. These are segregated concerns! The XDG and freedesktop stuff, like it or not, managed to get some arrangements made that are followed by GNOME and KDE, for instance. Oh, and yes, someone has to make choices and decisions here. If you want to continue letting people choose freely, this will not ever change. A FreeBSD project (like geli or gpart) could even go as far as providing an official GUI utility next to the text based utility, without hoping for the specific desktop project to provide it (like devd integration). Who cares - the stuff you name is required so early in the boot process that you will create a nice hen-and-egg problem around which file system you have the gazillion of GUI files in. And possibly providing a working abstraction that just has a sane API is far more useful than any of your talk about graphics and desktops. -- Matthias Andree ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
Il 17/09/2012 21:13, Matthias Andree ha scritto: What is the particular problem? All major toolkits ultimately talk X11, and most applications that I have seen will work in any desktop environment. Working with any desktop environments is different than working well, taking full advantage of the desktop environment. I could use GTK on KDE, but could I easily stream a sound using phonon? Could I easily integrate that application with the KDE control center? What if somebody else wrote a very useful utility for FreeBSD that manages something, but it's targeted over KDE? I'm talking about desktop integration and ease to code, not about showing a window in both KDE and GNOME. I for one prefer a reasonable text-tool to a half-baked playful GUI that leaves half of the questions unanswered because the author has no faint clue as to how to properly present a complex technical situation. Fine, that's a choice, I doubt text based utilities will ever fade away. Despite this, a user that likes a GUI more than a text utility can't have it, because having a GUI on FreeBSD is almost a sin :-) I think having an official and documented desktop could show that FreeBSD has nothing against GUIs (which doesn't automatically imply it hates text based utilities) and could ease programming for developers. As though someone cared. End users could not care less, they just want their stuff to work and get the job done. You don't get developers just because you follow an obsolete standard. Which obsolete standard? On UNIX there is no standard, that's why I'd like one :-) If you want to make sure that the tools that you'd like to see not move toward[s] Linux support, then (a) make sure they are aware there's more than their favourite Linux distro, (b) help them out. There are no tool I'd like to have on FreeBSD, I am just sharing an idea that I think could improve FreeBSD, I could be wrong of course. I think having a standard could help more in the future rather than right now. Regarding Linux dependencies, there are few and far between, and most features do not rely on particular kernel support -- and where they do, abstracting that, or providing FreeBSD support, is far more useful than trying to make someone follow a desktop that died a decade ago. CDE was an example, as I said the idea is desktop agnostic, if you find KDE4 more suitable for the task, so be it, Xfce would also work, just pick one. Linux dependencies are increasing day by day, udev being one, consolekit being dismissed in favour of systemd, which is also Linux only, wayland will also need to be implemented on FreeBSD (if it will ever work), and so on. Having just one supported desktop would serve exactly to the purpose of porting the utilities to FreeBSD, since, once done, other developers can see how it was implemented and how it works, and eventually port them to their desktop environments with a fraction of the effort that would be needed otherwise. Popularity matters in open source. Particularly with desktops. Even the userbase/time spent developing ratio matters. What also matters is the interest that a system shows in something, I think it's obvious that FreeBSD can't get much attention as a desktop system if no effort is put into it. It is not a bad thing being tied to the server concept, but I just think FreeBSD would also be an excellent desktop system with a little effort. -- Lorenzo Cogotti ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
Am 17.09.12 17:42, schrieb Poul-Henning Kamp: In message blu0-smtp510b16745b704c714268e2d5...@phx.gbl, Lorenzo Cogotti writ es: Hi, I was wondering about the possibility of FreeBSD to provide an official supported graphical environment. We already do: It's called X11 :-) and for the fun of it: CDE has been opensourced (though only under the LGPL) and OpenMotif will follow shortly, also under the LGPL (and no longer that strange OpenMotif license). ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
Mike Meyer m...@mired.org http://www.mired.org/ mwm? Why! It's my preferred WM, part of x11-toolkits/open-motif. Talk about coincidences! ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 12:01 PM, Lorenzo Cogotti miciam...@hotmail.it wrote: Il 17/09/2012 20:32, Garrett Cooper ha scritto: *gathers breath for really tangential/OT rant* joking Sounds like we have someone volunteering to write a chapter in the handbook and do some X11 development to make Gnome, KDE, XFCE, LXDE, Fluxbox, [...], or etc work better on FreeBSD! /joking If I proposed it, is because I'm willing to offer my help implementing my idea if it gets attention :-) To be succinct: this is not OSX/Windows. True Unix and Unix clones can be decoupled from a desktop environment enough that forcing everyone to have one choice for desktop user experience doesn't make sense, and the fact that there isn't a common GUI development toolkit (GTK, QT, etc) encourages fragmentation of effort further (I think it's called the Bazaar model of development :P). As I tried to make clear, I *don't want* to limit user's freedom in any way, nor getting away UNIX philosophy in any way from FreeBSD, nor trying to remove servers or other desktop environments solutions in any way. Solaris and other UNIces had CDE as their default environment, this was not preventing a perfectly written toolkit that used X server to run there, it wasn't preventing users from tearing away the GUI part and using it without it. My only objective is estabilishing a standard, just saying you want to make a GUI application for FreeBSD? You are asking yourself what desktop environment will work for sure on FreeBSD? There you have it, Blah DE works just well and is perfectly documented. ... To cut things short because this is really turning into a bikeshed: go talk to the folks at PCBSD. They are interested in using providing a graphically oriented version of FreeBSD and have multiple DEs distributed with their custom FreeBSD distribution. See if you can work with them to achieve your goals and then upstream the result to the upstream maintainers, or create a subproject that can be used in ports and/or elsewhere, then work with the PCBSD/FreeBSD devs to integrate your work into ports. I'm also sure that if you have something that hasn't been developed yet that's useful you will get more than a handful of Linux-oriented devs who will be interested in assisting you in making the application/applet available in more than one OS. Thanks, -Garrett PS It's not that I don't care about the effort (I run straight FreeBSD with fluxbox/X11 on my workstation at $work and my Netbook), but unless people put their money where their mouth is, this will just turn into another it would be nice to have FreeBSD do X-Y-Z threads that have not actually resulted in anything actually changing :(... ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 12:50 PM, Steffen Daode sdao...@gmail.com wrote: | Hi, | I was wondering about the possibility of FreeBSD to provide an official | supported graphical environment. What i really miss compared to 4.* and 5.3 (and compared to NetBSD and OpenBSD) is that there is a single package with a known name that can be downloaded and unpacked and you have a X11 environment to go. I have not searched the archives for the when and why of the decision to drop it. But its absence really hurts me. Rant and rave to the Xorg developers. With the release of Xorg 7 they broke it up into a bazillion separate packages, each with their own development cycle, releases, packaging, etc. Xorg releases are now nothing more than a snapshot of the various sub-packages that's slightly bug/beta tested together. There's really no difference between Xorg development and Linux distro development. :( There's really nothing that FreeBSD devs can do about this unless they want to fork Xorg completely. -- Freddie Cash fjwc...@gmail.com ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
Lorenzo Cogotti miciam...@hotmail.it wrote: Il 17/09/2012 20:32, Garrett Cooper ha scritto: *gathers breath for really tangential/OT rant* joking Sounds like we have someone volunteering to write a chapter in the handbook and do some X11 development to make Gnome, KDE, XFCE, LXDE, Fluxbox, [...], or etc work better on FreeBSD! /joking If I proposed it, is because I'm willing to offer my help implementing my idea if it gets attention :-) You requested that this work be done. Then you did it again in several places, the first one being here: My only objective is estabilishing a standard, just saying you want to make a GUI application for FreeBSD? You are asking yourself what desktop environment will work for sure on FreeBSD? There you have it, Blah DE works just well and is perfectly documented. Without someone actually *doing the work* of making sure that SunDEW or whatever works well and is perfectly documented, then declaring Our preferred DE is SunDEW is pointless. Being willing to help is all well and good, but until there's someone taking point that you can help, it won't do any good. Personally, I don't think FreeBSD needs this. It'd be nice to have, but it's not critical, since most FreeeBSD systems run without an X server at all, and many of what's left just need enough support to run a terminal emulator, clock and browser. - You want to use FreeBSD official environment? Good, you'll get official utilities for FreeBSD and you are ensured a certain amount of support and stability from your system, since that's the official environment. And who's going to write these? Just declaring a standard won't make them magically appear, and won't make developers who prefer something else suddenly start writing for the standard. - You are a developer wanting to build some FreeBSD desktop utilities? Unless you want to specifically target your utility to a desktop environment, you have documentation, guidelines and support for the official desktop environment. You are also able to interact with the rest of the desktop (for example creating a GUI configuration editor, a taskbar icon or simply stream a sound). You can also communicate with other official desktop utilities, since (official utilities) are all targeted for this environment, you can, for example, create a partitioning tool and other utilities can communicate with it nicely (because it is well documented and easy to find out). As above. So I can't see how bad this is, it simply looks as a nice to have standard to me, exactly like POSIX, even if UNIX has the bazaar philosophy, you still offer POSIX compatibility and X server as sane defaults. It's not a bad thing. It's just pointless until there's someone willing to do the work to make it happen. Since it's always going to be in ports (because it will require X or similar), the previously suggested path of working with the PCBSD people (who actually want to support a desktop environment) to develop it and then get it integrated into ports is a good one. -- Sent from my Android tablet with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my swyping. ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
Il 17/09/2012 22:55, Mike Meyer ha scritto: You requested that this work be done. Then you did it again in several places, the first one being here: [...] Maybe I did (as you might notice my English is not very good :) ), but I thought it was clear that I'd like to cooperate in this. Without someone actually *doing the work* of making sure that SunDEW or whatever works well and is perfectly documented, then declaring Our preferred DE is SunDEW is pointless. [...] Yes, there must be some work done of course, it requires some effort.. - You want to use FreeBSD official environment? Good, you'll get official utilities for FreeBSD and you are ensured a certain amount of support and stability from your system, since that's the official environment. And who's going to write these? Just declaring a standard won't make them magically appear, and won't make developers who prefer something else suddenly start writing for the standard. It's standard for FreeBSD, so I guess that work should be done by the documentation team or by some developer. That's why I wanted to discuss it in the mailing list, because it can't be an isolated effort. The major benefit would be for FreeBSD to start supporting desktop environments by providing GUI implementations of their tools, rather than text only ones, of course third party devs could use whatever they want (though they could be encouraged by the documentation to use that one for their FreeBSD projects). It's not a bad thing. It's just pointless until there's someone willing to do the work to make it happen. Since it's always going to be in ports (because it will require X or similar), the previously suggested path of working with the PCBSD people (who actually want to support a desktop environment) to develop it and then get it integrated into ports is a good one. Well, the idea was making FreeBSD more friendly over desktop installations, I was hesitant into using PCBSD for this because I just like FreeBSD ports system and package management much more, as I like the fact that it's closer to UNIX (in my opinion). I cannot say I expected a good welcoming of this suggestion, but I thought it was worth discussing it anyway :) Thanks for sharing your opinions on this. -- Lorenzo Cogotti ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
RE: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
-Original Message- From: owner-freebsd-hack...@freebsd.org [mailto:owner-freebsd-hack...@freebsd.org] On Behalf Of Zhihao Yuan Sent: Monday, September 17, 2012 1:54 PM To: Mike Meyer Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD Well, let's make it more straightforward. I hope people can agree with this: a default, officially supported modern desktop environment is essential to FreeBSD. This has already been answered. If you want a FreeBSD with a default graphical desktop environment, install PC-BSD. Otherwise FreeBSD is not really for the install complete running workstation out of the box crowd, Its more the let me customize my system to exactly the way I want it crowd, which has been a detriment to getting the silly linux fanboys to drop their script Kiddy style lifestyles of just accepting whatever their linux distro provides. Therefore you will never see a default graphical option outside of the basics of X11. Besides, the options you mentioned are not part of the graphical window managers, they are plugins and other utilities that happen to run parallel and have GUI tie-ins. Most of them really are nothing more than console programs with a graphical config screen. ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
RE: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
-Original Message- From: owner-freebsd-hack...@freebsd.org [mailto:owner-freebsd-hack...@freebsd.org] On Behalf Of Steffen Daode Nurpmeso Sent: Monday, September 17, 2012 3:51 PM To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD | Hi, | I was wondering about the possibility of FreeBSD to provide an official | supported graphical environment. What i really miss compared to 4.* and 5.3 (and compared to NetBSD and OpenBSD) is that there is a single package with a known name that can be downloaded and unpacked and you have a X11 environment to go. I have not searched the archives for the when and why of the decision to drop it. But its absence really hurts me. --steffen ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org /usr/ports/x11/gnome2 /usr/ports/x11/kde/ Etc. I haven't looked but im sure theres equiv for packages too. ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
On 17 September 2012 10:53, Zhihao Yuan lich...@gmail.com wrote: From a programmer's point of view, GUI is a protocol, a graphical language. It's true. But users don't care. Users don't care how their graphical commands are being implemented. Well, let's make it more straightforward. I hope people can agree with this: a default, officially supported modern desktop environment is essential to FreeBSD. Hi, Ignoring the ridiculous levels this particular little trip has taken - I suggest speaking to the PCBSD peeps and choose a toolkit that's common with what they're either using or going to use. Then, go ahead and do it. Create some inertia and pull others into doing it. Adrian ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
And then, a modern GUI should take care of Wifi, automount, No thanks, seperate issues. and many things can't be done with a single WM. That's why I said twm is not a modern GUI. So far, any questions? TWM is not a modern window manager, but is small light, comes with X11. I'm happy we each can choose window managers to replace it, or not, according to local host /or per user criteria. Someone mentioned some boxes want no X11: To extend that list: (servers, firewalls, real time small embedded, minimised for security, machines on low speed serial connections, SLIP maybe etc), + maybe some blind people, using eg 40 char single line output devices (I've never seen one but heard of 'em), half blind people, perhaps using ([VESA?] or twm with giant fonts (cos anything newer than twm maybe (guessing) might not tempt them so much). Cheers, Julian -- Julian Stacey, BSD Unix Linux C Sys Eng Consultant, Munich http://berklix.com Reply below not above, like a play script. Indent old text with . Send plain text. Not: HTML, multipart/alternative, base64, quoted-printable. ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD
Hi, On Mon, 17 Sep 2012 17:35:40 +0200 Lorenzo Cogotti miciam...@hotmail.it wrote: I was wondering about the possibility of FreeBSD to provide an official supported graphical environment. for taking resources away from FreeBSD itself? I do not see the need for this as long there is a single item open on the dodo list. There will one question stay open. Why provide a default GUI when there are so many out there which are all based on X? The user can install whatever is liked. Give the users the freedom to decide. Erich ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
