Unless you mean that you still use GNOME apps under Xfce, then you shouldn't need GNOME. If you mean GTK+, that's not part of GNOME.

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Nice example with the TI calculators, frieza. I was taking Trig in high school the first year the school decided to make the TI-80 graphing calculator a standard issue for that class, and it wasn't even a month before someone had used their very basic programming language to produce a text-based football game.

And honestly, that's the value of having games, because here was a case of a student who learned something new in order to do something fun, and that's a great motivator. Personally, I got my start in computers by playing games, and I'm certain many of you did so as well.

Also, i think that playing video games develops certain "outside the box" modes of thinking, because nothing can drop you into an alien world with its own operating rules and force you to come up with a solution (with repeated opportunities if you fail) better than a computer game. So yeah, I encourage my daughter to play games, within limits. I'm impressed with her technical savvy at such a young age, so some returns on that investment are already apparent.

But yeah, no games in my Linux environments.

Okay, well, it's possibly an aftershock from seeing Gnome3...but, thanks for the "nudge"...
Most stems from my poor/non-existent knowledge around X11 and how it relates to things like XFCE, Gnome and so on...

Hey, I'm still a noob

Maybe this should be split into a separate thread.

Anyway, X11 has no concept of icons, panels, or even buttons and window frames. All it is is a way for applications to draw stuff. Basically, it lets a program create a rectangle (called a "window", but it's a very different concept then the concept of windows on a desktop). A program can draw in this widnow, recieve events from it, and create child windows (GUI controls such as buttons are typically implemented using child windows). Note that all widnows are children of the root window, which is the size of the whole screen.

A window manager is a program that draws frames around top-level windows (children of the root window), and lets you move and resize them by manipulatign the frame. You can actually use X11 without a window manager, but you will not be able to resize or move the windows, and they will have no borders.

A desktop environment is basically a set of integrated applications, typically including a window manager, panel, file manager, etc.

For example, you can start X without a window manager like this:

It will start X and launch an xterm. Now, from that xterm, you can start a window manager:

and a panel:

and the program that manages the desktop icons:

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Okay, this I understand. So, there was a safety net all along...boy, I feel like this walk-over-bottles-blindfolded...

Thanks!

actually i was thinking more along the lines of the graphing calculator being hacked to allow programs written in the ti calculator's native Z80 assembly as opposed to basic, and this became so popular that TI started designing calculators to natively allow assembly programs without having to be hacked, but yes i had friends who wrote quite a few basic games for their ti calculators

heck one of the first graphical computer games was written in 1952 for an EDSAC computer (think room sized machine), in short, as long as there has been the ability to program computers, someone has had the brilliant idea to program a some sort of game for them, even the multi million dollar room sized machines were at times used by the propeller heads that used them to play games.

the only difference today is computers have become cheaper, smaller, more prolific and easier to program so the games for them have become more complex and more advanced.