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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!msuinfo!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!MathWorks.Com!yeshua.marcam.com!zip.eecs.umich.edu!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!gumby!andrews-cc!gillham From: gillham@andrews.edu (Andrew Gillham) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc Subject: Re: Something WILD and crazy...8) Date: 30 Sep 1994 19:08:45 GMT Organization: Andrews University Lines: 47 Message-ID: <36hnnt$p02@orion.cc.andrews.edu> References: <36hkq5$8ru@jetsam.ee.pdx.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: edmund.cs.andrews.edu In article <36hkq5$8ru@jetsam.ee.pdx.edu> mcura@ee.pdx.edu (Melissa L. Cura) writes: > >I was wondering if there would be, in anyone's envisioning of the next two >years for free UN*X in general, if there would ever be a FREE implementation >of a completely graphical operating system (completely object-oriented and >everything). I guess it would kind of be like a free NeXTSTEP or something! >Has anyone out there even thought of anything like this? Where are the >*BSD developers going after the complete and working migration of 4.4BSD-lite? >What dark paths are the core groups going to travel down once regular old >UN*X actually becomes BORING??? Will the core groups ever achieve a completely >graphical API? It's going to be called "NetBSD 98". A complete rewrite of NetBSD, merging X11R9 straight into the kernel. NetBSD will boot straight into X, no messy text or commandline interfaces necessary. Actually it'll be implemented by simply slapping a 'NetBSD 98' logo on the screen while the messy boot/startup code churns in the background. We'll just lie to the average user and tell them it's a native GUI OS. Nyuck, Nyuck.. any similarities between NetBSD 98 and Windows 95 are simply coincidental. Actually, a friend of mine and I have talked about a 'native GUI OS' (ala the evil Macintosh, but wih a 'Real OS(tm)') Its an entertaining topic, but I don't know whether it would be worth doing.. A move in that direction could be to do something similar to the SGI boxes, where you're in 'GUI mode' even before the system has come up completely. (well, that's my don't-own-an-sgi observations..) I suppose this could be done by writing a new 'pc0' or 'vt0' console driver that slams your video card into graphics mode, and slaps up some basic "windows" that are actually just virtual consoles. The kernel messages would still go to '/dev/ttyv0' or whatever which would actually be one of these cheapo windows. I imagine you might even be able to use MGR as it is pretty small. (relative to X) Then when you actually start X, the console driver would work similar to how pcvt supports multiple X servers, i.e. your Xserver starts up on a different virtual screen, while this cheapo GUI thingy is still on another VS. Don't know, just running off at the mouth.. :-) Anyway, if somebody wants to BS some more about this kind of thing, e-mail me.. -Andrew -- ========================================================== Andrew Gillham gillham@andrews.edu LAN/WAN/Netware/Unix Analyst gillham@whirlpool.com ==========================================================