[TUHS] Early GUI on Linux

[Larry McVoy]

On Sat, Feb 25, 2023 at 05:49:36PM -0500, Dan Cross wrote:
> > - were there any window systems popular on early Linux other than X?
> 
> Not really. The context at the time was that a lot of folks (well, me)
> wanted a workstation-like experience, but on a machine we could
> individually afford. That basically meant bringing over most of the
> staples one was used to on a (Sun|DEC|HP|SGI) machine, which almost
> universally implied X as a prerequisite. Folks wanted to be able to
> use their customized shell startup files and so on, but also their
> window manager configurations and the like.

Yep, this exactly.  I was the weird who carried around an X10 tape,
then an X11 tape, and built all that so it ran on (Sun|DEC|HP|SGI).
I despised all those fancy guis that $VENDOR built, I just wanted
to get work done and I wanted to do it as much as possible the
same way on each box.

So when Linux came around, hello X!

--lm