[TUHS] Classic Unix workstation GUIs

[Tim Bradshaw]

On 12 Sep 2012, at 11:20, arnold at skeeve.com wrote:

> I believe that the original Sun Windowing system also predated widespread
> use of X Windows.

I used this (I remember it having various names: was it originally Suntools but then later Sunview?) in 1988-89, and my wife will remember earlier history than that (she ran the first Sun in Scotland).

There was some big performance thing that happened to X: X existed by the time I used Suns, but it was just catastrophically slow - I had a 3/50 without the secret extra memory you could get and you really *had* to use Suntools on that because X was just unusable (you could quite easily understand what order things like menus got drawn in by watching).  Then, I think, X11R3 (might have been not that release but a later one) came out, and it was acceptably quick, and everyone changed except for a few holdouts.

--tim