[TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like

tfb at tfeb.org tfb at tfeb.org
Thu Mar 16 00:37:08 AEST 2017


On 15 Mar 2017, at 13:12, Nick Downing <downing.nick at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hmm well that DOES sound a bit patronizing

Sorry, it was not meant to be.  All I was trying to say was that X in fact works extremely well for the environments it is designed for (in which I now work), and for people who need to use graphical tools in those environments, and ripping out the network transparency (which seems to be what a bunch of people want to do) would be this geological step backwards in those environments: a GUI which is local to one machine is just a hugely limiting thing.  The whole reason I originally started using X was not that it was faster than Suntools (because it was catastrophically slower) but the network transparency.

I think the bloat argument is also one of those things which has been overtaken by events: X is bloated in the sense that Common Lisp is bloated: they were both a serious pain in the 1990s, but compared to anything with the word 'enterprise' in its name they now look like these svelte lightweight things which start in a tiny fraction of a second.

But I don't want to get into a fight about this and it's probably off-topic anyway (and again, sorry if I seemed patronising that was not my intention at all: probably should not send email with a cold).

--tim


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