> > I rarely use X... > > That's either cool or sad. Probably cool. I have computers that are too > small to run much X, but I don't use them for anything user-interactive. > > Is it true though? If so, why? I've always said I /could/ live without > X, but I'd never say I actually want to. I like the pretty colors too > much I guess.
Good question. I don't avoid X out of necessity. My computer's pretty sweet, although I used to have a laptop that didn't work very fast in X, so force of habit may be a motivating factor. In descending order of importance: 1. I prefer the look of the screen and fonts in text mode to anything I can get in X. If you crank up the font sizes in X so they are equal to the text mode stuff, it looks like a little kid's computer or something. 2. No matter how fast X or my computer is, stuff still feels faster in text mode. Cat a tremendously large file in an xterm and time it, then do the same thing in text mode if you want to see the difference. Too much output happens to me a lot because I'm always working in octave and forgetting to put the semicolons in. 3. I hate using the mouse. It feels like it slows me down, even if technically it does the opposite. I don't like keeping track of which window has the focus either, whether I'm in click-to-focus mode or not. 4. Boot time is faster if you don't have to start X up. (I turn the computer off at night because I don't like the sound of the fan, for those uptime buffs in the audience.) That's also why I edit unnecessary slowdowns out of my rc.d files. 5. The programs I really use (vi, latex, mutt, octave, R, gcc) are all text based and sufficiently colorful for my tastes. I just don't see any compelling reason to start X. I don't browse the web very much but I admit that I do start up X if I want to do that. 6. When I start X (and especially KDE or gnome), I get visions of a pig munching my ram. Even if it doesn't make any difference on my machine, I'm philosophically opposed to putting stuff in ram that I don't need to. 7. Text mode makes me feel more geeky and makes untrained observers mistake me for a guru. I do appreciate the usefulness of having several windows open at once, and when I do real programming at work, I generally do use X. At home, though, I remove the shackles of user-friendliness and use the virtual terminals, screen, and bg to multitask as my forefathers did. I need a graphics viewer to complete the set of scripts that gets pictures from my digital camera, names them, and organizes them. Text mode rulz. Thanks to everyone who suggested a program I can use. Grant ____________________ BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
