[TUHS] Early GUI on Linux

[Warner Losh]

On Sun, Feb 26, 2023, 9:23 AM Leah Neukirchen <leah at vuxu.org> wrote:

> Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> writes:
>
> > On Sun, Feb 26, 2023 at 04:50:34PM +0100, Leah Neukirchen wrote:
> >> Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com> writes:
> >>
> >> > - was there any discussion of alternatives to X?
> >> >>
> >> >
> >> > Discussions yes. But not much more than talk.
> >> >
> >> > There were vgalib apps that ran graphics on the console, but I never
> used
> >> > them.
> >>
> >> Back then I didn't have enough disk space to install X11 and TeX at
> >> the same time, so I mostly worked on the 80x25 console
> >
> > screen(1) was my go to back in the days of limited resources.  Especially
> > screen -r so you could detach, come back the next day and have all your
> > setup right there.
> >
> > Wasn't that fancy but oh so useful.  I'm with Ted in that we just wanted
> > a bunch of terminal windows.
>
> Curiously, I learned about screen only way later, when I used remote
> systems.  But I made getty spawn on 12 ttys, so that worked as well to
> multitask.
>

That's a trick that dates back to the 80s. Different Unixes did that. I
first saw it on the DEC Rainbow running an enhanced Venix (V7) in like 1987
where you had 4 consoles, but no job control.... SCO System V did it in the
late 80s too. I think the pre system V Xenix did too.

Warner


-- 
> Leah Neukirchen  <leah at vuxu.org>  https://leahneukirchen.org
>
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