[TUHS] Re: Early GUI on Linux

On 1 Mar 2023, at 17:54, Larry McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote: It's worth pointing out that X had won before Linux. I was a contractor in 1987, worked on all sorts of different workstations with all sorts of vendor provided window systems, and the first thing I did was to bring up my trusty X10R3 tape.

On Wed, Mar 01, 2023 at 05:39:48PM +0100, Paul Ruizendaal wrote: > Thank you for highlighting that! > > Several folks had already hinted at such, but your comments make clear that by 1991 the X ecosystem had come out on top in a winner-takes-all dynamic: people wanted X because that had the apps, and the apps were for X because that was the most prevalent. > > This also explains that MGR on Linux was so short-lived: although it provided the terminal multiplexing that was the key use case, it did not have the application ecosystem that was apparently already important enough to motivate people to make X run on Linux very early in its existence. I had always thought of those early X applications as little more than gimmicks, but apparently they were more appreciated than I thought. > > >> On 27 Feb 2023, at 21:30, Dan Cross <crossd(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> >> On Mon, Feb 27, 2023 at 12:22 PM Paul Ruizendaal via TUHS <tuhs(a)tuhs.org> wrote: >>> Thanks all for the insights. Let me attempt a summary. >>> >>> What it boils down to is that X arrived on Linux very early, because what the Linux hackers needed/wanted was a familiar terminal multiplexer. >> >> While that was literally true, I think it was a little more nuanced. >> I'd perhaps put it that people wanted their familiar environments. >> Many people were used to running a lot of xterms on their >> workstations, of course, but there were other X applications people >> used regularly.