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From: Jonathan Gray <jsg@jsg.id.au>
To: Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com>
Cc: Paul Ruizendaal <pnr@planet.nl>, tuhs@tuhs.org
Subject: [TUHS] Re: Early GUI on Linux
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2023 12:17:25 +1100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <Y//5Jatht7p41pW2@largo.jsg.id.au> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20230301175232.GF26409@mcvoy.com>

X10R3 was also included in the 4.3BSD tape

https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=4.3BSD/usr/contrib/X

On Wed, Mar 01, 2023 at 09:52:32AM -0800, Larry McVoy wrote:
> 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 <lm@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@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >>> 
> > >>> On Mon, Feb 27, 2023 at 12:22 PM Paul Ruizendaal via TUHS <tuhs@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.
> 
> -- 
> ---
> Larry McVoy           Retired to fishing          http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat
> 

  reply	other threads:[~2023-03-02  1:17 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 57+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2023-02-25 21:31 [TUHS] " Paul Ruizendaal
2023-02-25 22:49 ` [TUHS] " Dan Cross
2023-02-26  1:27   ` Larry McVoy
2023-02-26  0:39 ` Warner Losh
2023-02-26  1:14   ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2023-02-26 15:50   ` Leah Neukirchen
2023-02-26 16:13     ` Larry McVoy
2023-02-26 16:23       ` Leah Neukirchen
2023-02-26 16:32         ` Warner Losh
2023-02-26 16:39         ` Will Senn
2023-02-26 19:58       ` Dave Horsfall
2023-02-27  0:16         ` Adam Thornton
2023-02-27 10:09       ` Ralph Corderoy
2023-02-26  2:21 ` Jonathan Gray
2023-02-27 17:22   ` Paul Ruizendaal
2023-02-27 18:32     ` Warner Losh
2023-02-26  2:27 ` Will Senn
2023-02-26  2:30 ` Will Senn
2023-02-26  2:40 ` Theodore Ts'o
2023-02-26  3:28   ` Dan Cross
2023-02-26  3:45     ` Warner Losh
2023-02-26  5:24   ` John Cowan
2023-02-26  5:36     ` Steve Nickolas
2023-02-28  3:35     ` Dave Horsfall
2023-02-27 17:22   ` Paul Ruizendaal via TUHS
2023-02-27 17:59     ` Arno Griffioen via TUHS
2023-02-27 18:07     ` Warner Losh
2023-02-27 20:04     ` [TUHS] Generational development [was Re: Re: Early GUI on Linux] arnold
2023-02-27 20:08       ` [TUHS] " Chet Ramey
2023-02-27 20:22         ` arnold
2023-02-27 20:46           ` segaloco via TUHS
2023-02-27 21:04             ` Dan Cross
2023-02-28  7:59             ` arnold
2023-02-28 15:28               ` Clem Cole
     [not found]                 ` <CAP2nic1STmWn5YTrnvFbexwwfYWT=pD28gXpVS1CVSfOOwxx7g@mail.gmail.com>
2023-02-28 15:50                   ` [TUHS] Fwd: " Adam Thornton
2023-02-27 20:50           ` [TUHS] " Chet Ramey
2023-02-27 20:55             ` Bakul Shah
2023-02-27 21:01               ` segaloco via TUHS
2023-02-27 21:15                 ` Chet Ramey
2023-02-27 21:22                   ` Dan Cross
2023-02-27 20:30     ` [TUHS] Re: Early GUI on Linux Dan Cross
2023-02-28  1:10       ` Alexis
2023-02-28  1:27         ` Dan Cross
2023-03-01 16:39       ` Paul Ruizendaal
2023-03-01 16:54         ` Larry McVoy
2023-03-01 17:22           ` Paul Ruizendaal
2023-03-01 17:52             ` Larry McVoy
2023-03-02  1:17               ` Jonathan Gray [this message]
2023-03-02  4:28               ` Larry McVoy
2023-03-02  6:46                 ` [TUHS] X timeline Lars Brinkhoff
2023-03-01 18:59         ` [TUHS] Re: Early GUI on Linux Theodore Ts'o
2023-03-02  7:27         ` arnold
2023-02-28  1:08     ` Jonathan Gray
2023-02-28  1:15       ` Clem Cole
2023-02-27 20:56 ` Will Senn
2023-02-27 22:14   ` Andru Luvisi
2023-02-27 22:31   ` David Arnold

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