*nix on "classic" systems

[jvdg at sparcpark.net]

Der Mouse wrote:

>> A windowed environment is a GUI, yes?
> 
> Not necessarily.  NetBSD - and presumably others - ships with
> window(1), which provides a text-mode windowing environment.  Nothing
> graphical about it any more than any text "terminal" necessarily is.

Fair enough.

>> What's meant here is that the Chris M has a point: you *do* cheat
>> yourself of some functionality when using a non-windowed environment
>> "these days".
> 
> I'm not sure "cheat" is really an appropriate word, but yes, you lose
> some functionality when you drop windowing.

Just going with the way things were phrased in the original post.

> Sometimes that functionality is irrelevant, or worth losing to get some
> other benefit.  Sometimes it's not.

Exactly my point.

>> However, you also cheat yourself of functionality exactly by using a
>> windows environment.  There are things that are much more efficient
>> if you don't have to wrestle the point-and-click interface.
> 
> Windowing environments don't necessarily mean point-and-click.  In my
> own X-based environment, for example, I can work productively for hours
> - and not just all in the same window, either - without touching the
> mouse.  As you yourself said,
> 
>> Look at *real* power users, even on windowed systems.  They hardly
>> touch the mouse.
> 
> It's not GUI environments that lose the functionality you're talking
> about; it's about a particular subclass of GUI environments that are
> designed - misdesigned, arguably - so as to compel their users to
> switch between keyboard and mouse comparatively frequently (on a
> timescale of seconds to minutes).

As I assumed was meant by the OP.

>> It's all keyboard shortcuts, and it's *way* faster.  The downside is
>> having to master all those cryptic gestures and key combinations.
> 
> Sounds to me as though you're talking about primarily point-and-click
> windowing environments with keyboard "shortcuts" grafted on, rather
> than environments designed from the ground up to be keyboard-driven.
> (That one particularly dominant windowing environment is an especially
> egregious example of this doesn't help....)

Yes, I was going by the *popular* definition of GUI/Windowed environment, not the strict one.

,xtG
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