[ On Thu, January 7, 1999 at 20:11:25 (-0800), David Brownlee wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: Config without FFS panic: Can't reproduce it.
>
> 	I'd be inclined to run xdm (just for sheer convenience) - I'd
> 	really want to have at least the window manager running on the
> 	SLC

I like to run my window manager on my diskless desktop machine, but it's
not because of the convenience -- quite the opposite in fact.  I end up
writing all kinds of silly custom menu hooks to start X applications on
my real server.

For simple convenience you really do want to run your window manager on
the machine you're going to be using primarily, and that's easiest to do
by running xdm on that server and logging into it directly -- run only
the X11 "server" process on your desktop machine.  This way all the X
applications you start, even xterms, will run on the server and will
simply display on your X11 terminal.  This is where the "power" of X11
really stands out -- you can make a pair of mediocre machines run just
as well, or better, than a single much more powerful system (my sparc-2
server and sparc-1 desktop are easily equal to a good Pentium-100 or
better).  (A P-100 can compile faster than a Sparc-2, but that's partly
the sparc's fault for being a RISC machine -- what I'm talking about is
the perceived performance of a GUI.)

The only time X11 starts to suffer is when the application can't get
directly at the hardware for graphics acceleration, such as for xflame,
xanim, games, gif89a's in netscrape, and so on.  Doing high-end & high-
performance stuff "intelligently" in X11 usually results in custom X
server extensions (SHAPE, X3D-PEX, etc.).

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098      VE3TCP      <gwoods@acm.org>      <robohack!woods>
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