Re: SEUL: Re: Project clarification

[William T Wilson <fluffy@benatar.dunadan.com>]

On Thu, 8 Jan 1998, Aldo Solari [APS] wrote:

> talk&develop 'X-frontends'.  Isn't a better idea to go for a total
> integration of the/a (customizable) windows front end into the kernel 
> (to have a 100% GUI OS) ?.

No, not at all.  We would call it "Windows NT".  The usefulness of such a
system would be limited, at best.  Integrating the graphical interface
into the kernel means you can't customize it (can I swap out FVWM for
FVWM95 for Afterstep for Enlightenment for OLVWM for MWM in WinNT, no I
cannot!), you can't use it in a text based environment, such as over
telnet, it's slow, and it's buggy.  It's a bad solution, and we can
compare the stability and system requirements of Windows NT to those of
Linux to see just what a bad solution it is.

> Doesn't the modular nature of LinUX (say ... RedHat) allow for
> incorporation of all GUI parameters in the kernel without having
> a memory beast ?

No, they don't.  That's what X-Windows is for.  There's nothing magical
about Linux that makes it small and efficient, other than the fact that
it's written to be small and efficient.  Integrating all of X-Windows into
the kernel would pretty much throw that out the window.

You might be interested in GGI.  This project incorporates basic video
drivers into the kernel, but leaves the windowing environment out.  It's
designed basically as a replacement for SVGAlib.