From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.0 required=5.0 tests=MAILING_LIST_MULTI autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 11955 invoked from network); 1 Mar 2023 17:52:44 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (2600:3c01:e000:146::1) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 1 Mar 2023 17:52:44 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [IPv6:::1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 176E743340; Thu, 2 Mar 2023 03:52:40 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mcvoy.com (mcvoy.com [192.169.23.250]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id CEEFE4333F for ; Thu, 2 Mar 2023 03:52:32 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mcvoy.com (Postfix, from userid 3546) id 34B1835E94C; Wed, 1 Mar 2023 09:52:32 -0800 (PST) Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2023 09:52:32 -0800 From: Larry McVoy To: Paul Ruizendaal Message-ID: <20230301175232.GF26409@mcvoy.com> References: <58626A0B-EF9C-4920-8E20-CE0C4210BA6A@planet.nl> <20230301165446.GB26409@mcvoy.com> <616F16D5-5906-4E30-A421-FE8978CA9E8E@planet.nl> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <616F16D5-5906-4E30-A421-FE8978CA9E8E@planet.nl> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.24 (2015-08-30) Message-ID-Hash: 5CN2RY5CWYRP2P5FWOI26ENJSHCP3H6L X-Message-ID-Hash: 5CN2RY5CWYRP2P5FWOI26ENJSHCP3H6L X-MailFrom: lm@mcvoy.com X-Mailman-Rule-Misses: dmarc-mitigation; no-senders; approved; emergency; loop; banned-address; member-moderation; nonmember-moderation; administrivia; implicit-dest; max-recipients; max-size; news-moderation; no-subject; digests; suspicious-header CC: "tuhs@tuhs.org" X-Mailman-Version: 3.3.6b1 Precedence: list Subject: [TUHS] Re: Early GUI on Linux List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list Archived-At: List-Archive: List-Help: List-Owner: List-Post: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: It was the answer for me, I wanted "sameness" across platforms (which was what Unix was advertising and then the vendors all diverged into their "value add"). I can't believe that 1987 was my first exposure to bringing up X, pretty sure I had done it at UW-Madison for the same reasons. But maybe not, I dunno, it was a long time ago. All I know is that, at the time, X10R3 was the only hope I had of getting the same dev environment no matter what I was working on. Whether I had brought it up or not at UW-Madison, I had been using some version of X for years, at least 5 years and probably more, prior to going out in industry in 1987. And that wasn't my doing, UW-Madison was very much a hackers school, a good one, and they had X-something running on everything, micro vaxen, RTs, Suns, everything. So it wasn't like 1987 happened and I "picked" X over some alternative, it was already the answer well before that, years and years before that. I know I was running it as an undergrad. On Wed, Mar 01, 2023 at 06:22:49PM +0100, Paul Ruizendaal wrote: > That is very quick. X10R3 came out in Feb 1986 (which I understand was the first ???outside' release) and by 1987 it was already the dominant windowing system? Or did you mean that it had won prior to 1991? > > > > On 1 Mar 2023, at 17:54, Larry McVoy 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 wrote: > >>> > >>> On Mon, Feb 27, 2023 at 12:22 PM Paul Ruizendaal via TUHS 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. -- --- Larry McVoy Retired to fishing http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat