At 06:35 AM 12/11/01 -0600, Jim Choate wrote: >Dude, there are HUNDREDS of alternate GUI front-ends (the vast majority >are not compatible with X (aka MIT's Athens - there's your clue as to its >popularity). Unfortunately they don't get the technical backing to get a >significant 'bootstrap' percentage in the market up front. In other words, >when X got started back in the 80's there were no other GUI's that were >nearly that advanced. So people used it. By the time the market expanded >the number of alternative GUI's had a much harder time to get into the >market. >
MIT's project *Athena* developed X because they had an equal mix of DEC and [I forget -IBM?] workstations and so developed a device independent display server. That it was subject to code bloat is regrettable but its use is not mandatory.