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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!library.ucla.edu!news.bc.net!felix.junction.net!okjunc.junction.net!michael From: michael@okjunc.junction.net (Michael Dillon) Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: GPL (was Re: Linux vs FreeBSD) Date: 24 Dec 1995 09:23:37 GMT Organization: Okanagan Internet Junction, Vernon B.C., Canada Lines: 46 Message-ID: <4bj66p$sdv@felix.junction.net> References: <489kuu$rbo@pelican.cs.ucla.edu> <4b67mo$19l@dyson.iquest.net> <4bbs2d$bet@snowdon.elsevier.co.uk> <DJzAnw.87x@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: okjunc.junction.net Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.advocacy:31909 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:11373 In article <DJzAnw.87x@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>, Viet-Trung Luu <vluu@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca> wrote: >What I'd like to see is a version of Linux that *is* cosmetically >improved. From a technical standpoint, there's not much that's wrong >with Linux, especially when compared to Doze95 or OS/2. However, it >tends to scare many people, since everything isn't as easy as it could >be. A system that's NeXTstep-ish would be very nice... and further, a >company wouldn't necessarily have to make any changes to the kernel >itself and thus could keep its code to itself. The problem here isn't with Linux, it's with X-Windows. It's not just a technical problem either. There are actually some forms of native console graphics programming systems for Linux such as VGAlib abd MGR that could be used to buils a nice GUI. The problem is also that it would be a big job starting almost from scratch and there aren't many people who would ever attempt such a thing. Even Linus did not attempt to create an entire UNIX clone when he started out. A really nice Linux GUI based system needs a lot of design thought put into it but few people have the broad range of experience with different GUI systems to do this well. Have you ever used GEM, GEOS, RiscOS, NeXTstep, OS/2, AUIS, Open Look, NEWS, AmigaOS, Macintosh, Windows, Win95, Motif, Autocad, and other GUI systems? Then once you have the design, you have to do all the foundation coding and still, there are no apps. It's not just enought to port a random array of X, OS/2 and Mac apps to your GUI, they need to be native apps that fit right in. This is a big deal and that's probably why it hasn't been done. However, I do believe that it COULD be done if the entire Free UNIX community could get together and do this as a joint project. Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD are reaching the mature stage where this could very well happen. It seems to me that development on FreeUNIX systems is leaning more and more towrds the SERVER side of things. It would be nice to see a joint project that leaned more towards the WORKSTATION side of things with the goal of developping a FreeUNIX package that could run on top of any free UNIX with a nicely designed and executed GUI and apps that could seriously compete with MS for the average home user. Something nicely object oriented perhaps... -- Michael Dillon Voice: +1-604-546-8022 Memra Software Inc. Fax: +1-604-542-4130 http://www.memra.com E-mail: michael@memra.com