This is the mail archive of the
cygwin-xfree@cygwin.com
mailing list for the Cygwin XFree86 project.
Re: [packages] gtk+, glib, imlib
Nicholas Wourms wrote:
Tho I can't quite understand
what this driving desire for a rootless X server is all about? To my
death, I'll never understand why people like the explorer window manager
over the X alternatives. I mean c'mon people, Windows Explorer as a
window manager sucks. Why would you want it to manage your X
applications?
Maybe *you* prefer KDE, OpenStep, whatever over Windows but that doesn't
mean *everybody* does. As a window manager, Windows does perfectly well
for me: I can move my windows around, I can resize them, minimize them
and even maximize them. I like the taskbar (and everybody does since now
every desktop system has it), I like the systray, I like the quicklaunch
bar and the Start menu is as much a mess in Windows than in KDE.
Now, having an alternative would be nice, that's for sure. As my boss is
fond of saying: "two is better than one". If you want to remove Windows
Explorer, go check Shellfront (http://shellfront.org/). But you will
never see Notepad running in an X window. Cygwin works *on top of*
Windows, not the other way around. Cygwin *add* a unix layer to Windows,
it doesn't *replace* Windows. If you really want that, if you really
want your All-X desktop, go install Linux and run your Windows
applications using Wine.
I don't know about most people, but I like the current way
X works, in fact I like the full screen even better.
Why do you think windowing systems took over most software applications?
I like being able to see the content of two applications at the same
time. Like for instance when I follow a tutorial on a web browser on how
to create a map for Quake. Or when I want to use a complex funtion in my
program, I want to be able to see MSDN at the same time I use my code.
Now, if I use vi/emacs/whatever in X, I can't see any of those
broswer/msdn windows at the same time if the application if fullscreen.
What's worse, if the browser/msdn is the active application and I want
to activate a X application, I first have to click on the X button in
the taskbar to activate XWin, then I have to activate the X application
itself. If I can see each X application with its own button in my
taskbar, and when I click on it I have this X app showing *next to*
instead of *on top of* my Visual Studio window, I would be far more happy.
In fact I wish there
was a way to do the opposite of running X in rootless mode. If there were
only a way to get windows binaries to pop up inside X, then I could just
ditch this crummy explorer windows manager and use X full time.
See my comment above about Linux and Wine.
Jehan