What kinds of things would you want in the GNU OS?

[Peter da Silva]

In article <350 at torch.UUCP>, richard at torch.UUCP (Richard Nuttall) writes:
> 1) The system will use a widely available UI, which will be bundled
> in with the system. This will consist of (e.g. X, with PEX), as a 
> portability layer, and a UI style on top (MOTIF? but this would 
> probably cost money :-) ).
>    Something like what the NeXT machine came with.

God, I'd hope they either roll their own, use something tight like MGR, or
reverse-engineer NeWS. X is the Fortran of windowing systems. No, it's
worse... it's the Assembly.

[ fast context switching, fast IPC ]

Sounds like a job for Mach.

> 3) The "average" user is not interested in the console, and wants
>    to have a powerfull interface immediately available on boot up
>    ("O.K., so configure the system" I hear you say). If you always
>    have this interface available, the OS can use it to communicate
>    with the user, i.e with popup menus, message boxes, dialog
>    boxes, and configuration panels.

For minimal security the machine should require a login sequence on the
console anyway, just put this stuff in .profile. There's no point having
a fancy windowing system if all you have in it is an xterm window displaying
/etc/issue.

And you can always provide a program to automatically put something fancier
in the :console: line in /etc/inittab.
-- 
Peter da Silva, Xenix Support, Ferranti International Controls Corporation.

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