Re: Desktop normalization
Marcin Krol wrote:
>
> On Tue, 24 Nov 1998, Greg S. Hayes wrote:
>
> > Desktops are a value added product
>
> Not at all. It's not seventies anymore. Now desktop (widely understood) is
> de facto part of OS.
>
> Marcin Krol
In my opinion, one of the major points of the Unix approach is precisely
that the whole GUI is an *optional* component (just like other major
components, by the way). I can do without or pick the one I like best
and have the right to expect everything else to (sort of) adapt
accordingly (well, this last point is not here yet).
I have often tried to articulate the feeling of the difference between
Windows and Unix, and here follows the reasoning of a convert to the
latter: with Unix, the user (even more so the root user) is in control.
Applications are expected to adapt, not the other way around. In a
sense, it would be best if applications could adapt without the user (or
a configuration program) configuring each of them when a change is made:
it is up to each application to look around when launched, and adapt on
the fly (the user might want different instances of the same application
with different behavior, after all: environment variables affecting
behavior maybe are a kind of attempt at this).
Of course, applications need an API that either abstracts the services
they can rely on or lets them "look around" and find out what's
available. I understand that LSB is definitely concerned with the
former, and I would like to hear comments about the latter.
Davide Bolcioni
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