[X-Unix] Which Window manager/Desktop Environment

[~flipper]

Hello again,

I've been ill this week, it's an ongoing, good-weeks, 
not-so-good-weeks thing, but we take a licking and kepp on tickin' 
... anyways i wanted to respond to some help here.



Stroller wrote:

>It's also worth upgrading Gentoo on a weekly-basis; Gentoo ensures 
>that you'll never have to do a complete reinstall on a system, that 
>you can always upgrade, but at the expense of frequent updates. If 
>you leave it a few weeks the number of updates can be quite daunting.
>
>>I don't have X11 on the Mac now... Apple no longer distributes X11 
>>for Jag, Maybe X11 is on the Installers for jag, i'll check, but, 
>>if not, then what?
>
>1) I think I have a copy of X11 for Jag
>2) Buy Tiger  (I thought you were dumping Jag, anyway? Aren't you 
>buying a new machine for MacOS which will have Tiger pre-installed?)

An old old client is picking up a used or re-conditioned Aluminum 
Powerbook for me. So the gentoo or orher Linux (darwin a longshot) 
will go onto a clean Titanium 667, and I'll take my time about doing 
the Ti-Book, properly. (The Ti Book has been thru the ringer: Damaged 
in a theft attempt, fried internal firewire port, 'lunched' Combo 
drive, on it's third (presently DOA) keyboard) but it runs fine. A 
gig of RAM, so it ought to do a Linux install and run just fine.

The 'new' Powerbook will probably have Panther on it, which i don't 
want to use. (Some oldtimer NeXTSTEP programmers have scared me away 
from it, they see it as a further wedge between schizo Apple's 
'problem' with leaning towards resource forks, hanging onto the HFS+ 
problem, devoting too many resources to 3D icons (etc...) at the 
expense of all the great buried technology, etc). I see it too. The 
Finder should have been put out of it's misery before 10.1, but Apple 
sees it differently.

So, I'll probably load Jag on the Aluminum, at first, and see which 
way Apple goes, around the second rev or so of Tiger.

The bottom line, for me, is, I'm not sure if X11 will be relevant. 
All I want to do with the Ti (once it has a working kernel is avoid 
'gamer' stuff, and tons of hardware drivers. i want it focused on my 
primary projects (SGML?XML, full-bore text editing (something very 
similar to TextPad on a PC, etc). Doesn't sound too ambitious, I 
know, but I'll have the new mac to handle the odd Final Cut Pro, 
Digital Performer/Protools stuff that comes my way.

The install and config will be like going bck to school, so i'm up 
for that. My questions were prompted primarily by two things; My lack 
of experience, and what I perceived to be a pretty 'fragmented' bag 
of various versions of Linux out there. As for mostly running command 
lines, that's fine. I'd probably want one simple browser to do some 
visual verfication of deeply-nested document conversions (it gets 
tricky 'visualizing' based on a straight boatload of '<tag>'s), and 
maybe a Java-based GUI project interface (something that can be a 
small frontend for text-to-.xml, xml-->.map, and the 'build'. Pretty 
trivial, really.


>
>>If I decide (very likely) to forego the Aqua/GUI and start out with 
>>a clean Darwin install, I should look for a rooted x86 install, no?
>
>"x86" means "PC architecture" - Intel & AMD & the like. Your Mac 
>laptop will be a PPC.
>
>>  Or can I go with KDE (which actually has all the XML apps, not 
>>Gnome as i mistakenly 'remembered'), right on top of Darwin?
>
>Theoretically, but I don't think there are actually many people 
>using Darwin in that way. Does fink handle X11 on pure Darwin? What 
>package manager do you propose using otherwise?

Well, in the old days, one would know which software one was after, 
then get the OS an hardware, in that order, sort of, to run it. 
That's pretty much where i am on this.

Because i saw enough xml parsers and whatnot listed in the KDE 
libraries, I want to figure out the underlying, best system from 
there. There's a lot to be said for making incompatible systems 
function well, together. (Had a great buddy whose dad did just that 
for Lockheed Missiles & Air, his whole life-he's retired, and on a 
Mac, now, by the way-) but I'm not 'there' either.

I need security, as in 'total lockdown' ability, and maybe even some 
kind of 'doomsday' auto-self-annihilate sequence as far as files go. 
(With MIL standards if there's no 'time', and something 'heavy' if 
there is time.) That can all happen later. It won't be a web surfer 
or an EverQuest box, let me put it that way.

>
>>And last but not least, the 'distros'. Can i start with a clean 
>>drive, or do i need some basic architecture as a foundation?
>
>A clean drive is fine for a Linux distro.

Good. I appreciate you taking time to respond, and eveybody else that 
put in their own experience and everything. I'll be back - I have a 
feeling - with more 'immdiate' questions. Thanks again.

Brian S
~flipper