Re: SEUL: Stopping dreams

[Cyberdyn <cyberdyn@seul.org>]

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On 16-Feb-98 Kevin Forge wrote:
- -> I just found a brain dead solution that is so simple it escaped us all.
- -> put 'startx' as the last line of '~/.bashrc'

Then there's the xauth problems mentioned before easily solved when xdm
controls things.

- -> You will then be sent to X as soon as you enter the correct password.
- -> All we need to do is take it a step farther and make a pretty 'GUI
- -> looking' Login screen and we achieve the "benefit" of XDM without
- -> any of the problems.
- -> You can use practically anything as the Login screen and since GPM 
- -> is already running at this point you can actually make SEUsers
- -> feel like they are in Windows.  By the time they figure out this
- -> is a text screen dressed up in GUI cloths they will already be 
- -> veterans and consider this "cute"

This is an interesting idea.  How do you plan to do this? 

- -> "How do we deal with broken X in this setup?"
- -> Simple; you C+A+f1 and log in as a different user ( possibly root )

If we wanted to do this we would run it as a background process.  The Xserver
would grab console and put them into X, Ca-F1 would drop them at the shell
menu, and exiting X would do the same.

Not a bad idea but XDM is still the best way to do it.

- -> It gets simpler when you consider that this '~/.bashrc' would be
- -> set this way for the default user but not for root.  For other
- -> users there could simply be a buton/tab/menu option.  That says
- -> "always start in X ?"

This still introduces an unfriendly way of getting the users X running.  You
must keep in mind, we all must, that most of these users either have no idea
there is anything but a GUI on a computer, or they know about command prompts
but think it's what hackers, programmers, and sysadmin use and therefore tabu
to them.

Putting them at the command prompt or an ncurses menu would intimidate them in
the same way DOS users were intimidated by the GUI when it first came out.


- ---
E-Mail: Cyberdyn@seul.org       Date: 17-Feb-98        Time: 00:38:10
You're dead, Jim.
                -- McCoy, "The Tholian Web", stardate unknown


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