Richard Rauch said:

>I favor the older, more original, twm personally.  You don't even have to
>dip into pkgsrc for that one, and it's *everywhere*.  Of course, I'm also
>the type of guy who favors new users learning to use ed and the console
>before moving into X with a mouse-driven editor...

I could never get used to twm. I've been using the same source package for
years.

-rw-r--r--  1 rmk  wheel  796184 Sep 23  1995 /usr5/rmk/fvwm.tar.gz

16 desktops, 32 xterms, and netscape.

>Hm.  If we're picking something to bundle with the base system, they don't
>have to know about it, do they?  (It's not like it takes much to figure
>out a GUI.)

Yeah, but twm is pretty grim. :-)

>That's what I thought.  Is the binary package still out there?

Their site seems to be gone.

>Perhaps part of it is that I tend to feel that what sets NetBSD apart is
>that it doesn't do anything *just* to attract new users (that I know of).
>What it does is done in order to make the system more reliable, secure,
>etc.

But it is good to publicize it as a solid, reliable OS.

>What do these users require?

One guy worked in a development house that does mathematical analysis
software that runs on UNIX, with Solaris x86 as an important platform.

>If those people leaving Solaris are thinking about LINUX, my question is:
>Are they thinking that way because they don't know about NetBSD, or
>because they really want LINUX?

Linux has become the buzzword.

>If the former, simply presenting NetBSD would be a good idea.

Exactly.

>I thought that you only need that if you disable the INSECURE kernel
>option (which is, I think, enabled by default precisely so that X runs).

Seems to depend on the video card.

>I've heard some people assert that turning off that kernel option and
>getting the aperture driver provides some real security benefit.  I've
>heard others assert that aperture literally re-introduces the exact same
>security problems (at least in a theoretical sense) as the INSECURE option
>presents---that XFree86 either needs to rethink its security, or else
>running X is inherantly insecure on your system.

It seems like AGP cards need INSECURE plus the aperture driver.

>Until KDE/GNOME appeared, I tended to think of windowmaker as a large
>package, as I recall.

Yeah, it's larger than fvwm.

>IMHO, if a *single* window manager is going to be favored out of the box,
>it should be the one that ships with X anyway.  (I use it as virtually my
>sole window manager.  The only time when I don't is when I periodically
>login to my sandbox account to play with alternate window managers, or the
>KDE/GNOME desktops.  It isn't as pretty as some of the alternatives, but
>it does virtually everything that I expect and can be given a
>decently-pleasing appearance.)

I was just never able to get warm and fuzzy about twm.
-- 
Rick Kelly  rmk@rmkhome.com  www.rmkhome.com