At 03:14 PM 10/25/02 -0400, Haines Brown wrote:
Please allow a naive question.When I boot, I arrive at a log in prompt. When I log in, I arrive at command prompt for the user. You explained how one might start X without a window manager, and I that might have some utility. But my question is, is there any difference in functionality between running xterm under X and the initial command prompt before starting X? Is there any difference in functionality between xterm and the command prompt before running X? I ask because I'm trying to understand why one would go to the trouble to edit ~/.xinitrc to boot to an xterm. Why not stay in the nice DOS-like world that exists before X if all one wants to do is to issue commands.
If you are running X and have an open xterm, you can run a GUI-based application from the xterm's command line (actually, you can run many, if you use the & tag to detach the processes from the terminal). This method (rather than using the menu-based start that a typical WM will provide) of starting an X-based app can be quite useful, for several reasons -- you get to use command-line switches and arguments (this capability is, at least for a few apps, very handy), you get to see STDERR and STDOUT output as the app runs (if you didn't detach, that is), and perhaps others I'm not thinking of right now.
--
-------------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"--------
Ray Olszewski -- Han Solo
Palo Alto, California, USA [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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