Thanks. I'll check out fvwm - but don't Linux applications need to be specifically compiled to use a certain GUI? I already ran into the nightmare of dependency hell and KDE-only applications. (Speaking of dependency hell - installing a simple frigging text editor installed over 1GB of libraries!! The text editor sucked too.)
Which editor was that? :lol:
As for the GUI, it's not quite like that. The GUI under linux consists of up to 4 distinct components
- The X Server itself
- Compositor*
- The Window Manager
- Widget sets
The X Server provides the absolute bottom layer of the GUI and provides the basic access to graphics hardware as well as the input event handling stuff. It is pretty much the same everywhere and frankly the differences that do exist tend to be way behind the interface where you aren't likely to find any problems. If you do have any, they are more likely down to driver issues and so on.
The Compositor is an optional feature that replaces X's traditional rendering engine. Usually this is some fancy OpenGL thing that gives real-time transparency and other visual effects. Nice to have but not essential. Despite having ample hardware to run it here, I prefer not to as it increases the power consumption of my machine significantly to have the gfx card running in full performance 3D mode all day long.
The Window Manager is what most people mean when they talk of linux desktops. It provides the basic windowing services and sets the overall look and feel of windows. It also provides the "desktop" functionality, such as menu systems, desktop icons and so on.
Widget sets are the final bit. They provide the gui controls you find within an application window. Like the Amiga, where you have Gadtools, MUI/Zune, ClassAct/Reaction, Triton to name a few, you several of these under Linux. There's GTK and Qt just for starters.
Now, the thing here is, you can have multiple Window Managers and Widget sets installed all at once. If you only want to use one WM, eg fvwm, you can still run any applications written for gnone, KDE, xfce etc. The only proviso is that you have at least the base libraries for the others installed in order to do that. You don't need to install the entire WM packages if you don't intend to use their actual desktop services.
As I said, GUI is only one reason I think desktop Linux sucks.
My thoughts are that it's down to too much choice. You end up having to install base libraries from KDE and gnome at the bare minimum to run most software.
I've had Linux crash on me many times (8 times just in one day!), I've had kernel panics and 6 times the install list got corrupted and I had to reinstall the entire damn OS. I could go on and on. And I thought Windows was bad...
That's very bad. Kernel panics usually very rare and can be indicative of faulty hardware. That said, if you use a dodgy kernel mode driver, it is also possible. In the last 3 years continuous use, my work machine has never kernel panicked. I had X lock up once or twice in that time, but I've always been able to restart the X server.
(...preparing myself to get flamed by the Linux lovers...
)
All suitably complex machines are capable of crashing, no matter what OS you shove on it.
I'm running BeOS on a 866 Mhz PIII with 1 Gb RAM (PC I got free - I still refuse to buy a PC). BeOS can only handle 768 Mb RAM though, so it boots with a RAM limiter.
Have you thought of trying Zeta or Haiku?
