I realize that a lot of focus is being spent on JDS 3/gnome, and that this is largely a good thing for the end user.
However, I am interested, also, in having a "lightweight" desktop environment, suitable for use by system administrators to access gui tools on machines that are otherwise not normally used as a desktop. (Think of an NFS server somewhere. It is useful to be able to run smc and such tools, without paying the full price of Gnome.) The requirements for such an environment would not be dissimilar to those required for graphical suninstall -- a basic window manager like mwm or dtwm would be adequate. I'd be even happier if we got something like xfce4, which was open source, into such as an environment (but then again, I use xfce4 on my primary desktop). Yes, I know about twm. But to anyone who has not used it before, it is arcane and unfamiliar. (The initial window placement policy is likely to be particularly unnerving to anyone coming from a Windows or Macintosh -- or even recent UNIX desktop -- environment. Has anyone given any thought to providing a "limited" window manager such as xfce4, or fvwm, or somesuch, into OpenSolaris? If not, I'd humbly suggest/recommend/request that we do so. The main reason for this request is, I'd like to see deployments of Open Solaris in environments where RAM is more constrained. For example, there is almost no reason why 128MB RAM is not adequate to run an NFS/NIS server. But it is woefully inadequate as soon as you startup gnome. A very light weight GUI is really called for in such environments. Thanks for thinking about it. -- Garrett D'Amore, Principal Software Engineer Tadpole Computer / Computing Technologies Division, General Dynamics C4 Systems http://www.tadpolecomputer.com/ Phone: 951 325-2134 Fax: 951 325-2191
