Is FreeBSD ONLY for servers?

[Gemini]

This goes on, but basically: They're separate camps of people that prefer different things, and the GUI toolkit part is not really the biggest divide. Trying to unite them in a Qtk/GnomeDE - mashup would end in tears, and picking just one throws away too much.

Interestingly, the same issues plagued the products I mentioned earlier. One was a more minimalistic product that acted as a natural extension of existing GUI functionality, the other was a revolutionary feature-rich suite. They came with radically different programming interfaces, resource consumption and flexibility. The camps were very polarized because they played to very different segments of the user base.

While a complete merger of the multiple X/GUI kits, as you noted, may be philosophically impossible, cooperation between them is not. I was very pleased to see my GTK applications under KDE4 pick up at least some of the system preferences, as well as KDE4 including a dedicated sub-panel to tweak it even further.

I think the X community, including FreeBSD, would be better served if certain areas of each project were standardized. Applications from both camps would then be able to inherit a set of common, global preferences. While the engine under the hood might be different, the exterior would be similar. That would quiet some of the complaints.

IMHO, the more the major projects can share, the better. It takes a lot of time and computing cycles to build all of the various toolkits required by apps in the Ports tree. The more that gets consolidated, the easier it'll be for everyone.

 

[Pushrod]

My complaints about incoherence between different toolkits or whathaveyou doesn't stop at the look and feel of them.

On an X system, if I select text in Firefox, and right-click and choose Copy, then paste into another app using right-click paste, it will work as expected. This is how it works on win32. Now, if I just select text in Firefox, and then middle click in another app, that will work too. The only problem is, these two methods are using two different clipboards!

Not only that, but what the hell is with copy-on-select anyways? I sometimes select text on a webpage while I am reading it to keep track of where I was, or because the site colour scheme sucks and I have to. This of course copies it to the clipboard, which I in no way wanted. On Windows, ^C and ^V or right-clicking always works, without failure. Not only that, but copying _formatted_ data between remote desktop sessions works as well. And isn't the whole point of X to be the client/server thing?

Don't get me wrong, I hate Windows too, but I at least know what I am dealing with. I'd rather deal with the enemy I know than 25 enemies that are ever-changing.

 

[Djn]

My complaints about incoherence between different toolkits or whathaveyou doesn't stop at the look and feel of them.

On an X system, if I select text in Firefox, and right-click and choose Copy, then paste into another app using right-click paste, it will work as expected. This is how it works on win32. Now, if I just select text in Firefox, and then middle click in another app, that will work too. The only problem is, these two methods are using two different clipboards!

Not only that, but what the hell is with copy-on-select anyways? I sometimes select text on a webpage while I am reading it to keep track of where I was, or because the site colour scheme sucks and I have to. This of course copies it to the clipboard, which I in no way wanted. On Windows, ^C and ^V or right-clicking always works, without failure. Not only that, but copying _formatted_ data between remote desktop sessions works as well. And isn't the whole point of X to be the client/server thing?

Don't get me wrong, I hate Windows too, but I at least know what I am dealing with. I'd rather deal with the enemy I know than 25 enemies that are ever-changing.

Copy on select is actually one of those things I miss in windows. It's an extremely quick and easy way to move small snippets of text from one window to another, and that it's separated from the other clipboard is a bonus - exactly because it would be too easy to overwrite your (normal-style) copied data otherwise.

Clipboard integration over forwarded X is indeed a bit iffy, but it's also a separate issue.

 

[Djn]

I think the X community, including FreeBSD, would be better served if certain areas of each project were standardized. Applications from both camps would then be able to inherit a set of common, global preferences. While the engine under the hood might be different, the exterior would be similar. That would quiet some of the complaints.

IMHO, the more the major projects can share, the better. It takes a lot of time and computing cycles to build all of the various toolkits required by apps in the Ports tree. The more that gets consolidated, the easier it'll be for everyone.

As you might already know, freedesktop.org is working on exactly these things with reasonable success. Which is why I'm just vaguely annoyed by the doomsayers, instead of worried: Gnome and KDE apps already work fine together and people are working on improving it further, so thinking that this is what's holding OSS desktop adaption back is silly.

And no, I'm not really counting you in the "doomsayer"-group.

 

[syadnom]

PC-BSD is stock freebsd7 packaged and ready for the desktop. Of coarse you can take a stock freebsd7 system and install your favorite desktop environment also, PC-BSD just packs it up nice for you.

freebsd is not just for servers though it is awesome for them..