Without GUI? and other stuff

M.R · 04-05-2004, 06:35 AM

Hi, i hear a lot of people saying who needs GUI, pffft. Then i ask my self, well if you didn't have gui, then how would you watch movies, browser the net, do image editing, etc? Surely you need GUI to do those sort of stuff?

Also another question. If i install, for example Fedora with X, but withought Gnome or KDE, then what would i see after the reboot (after the installation)? Will i get a X/GUI screen? and if i login what will i see?

And lastly, i have noticed that when ever i use vim to edit a file, for example my.conf it creates a file my.conf~ (or something like that). And its stays there permanently. I know i can just delete it through rm. But can anyone explain to me why it does that? And how i can configure it so that it doesn't do that? Because it takes up quite a bit of space after a while. Thanks

MR

zmieff · 04-05-2004, 06:43 AM

Quote:

And lastly, i have noticed that when ever i use vim to edit a file, for example my.conf it creates a file my.conf~ (or something like that). And its stays there permanently.

i'm not sure, but i think this is the backup of the file.

Talornin · 04-05-2004, 08:18 AM

Yes, the blabla.foo~ is a backup of the file before you made changes to it.

If you do not install any desktops (gnome, kde) og window manager (Openbox, Fluxbox etc) you will just see a screen, proably with no background, just the defaut black and white pattern. Xfree86 comes with a build in, WERY minimalistic, window manager. It sucks big time and is usable for little more than bringing up a terminal so you can work from there.

Edit: typo

Huddlebum · 04-05-2004, 09:29 AM

You can watch movies without a gui easily. Mplayer will display to svga, vidix, or framebuffer with no problem. For web browsing, links works very well, as does lynx or w3m. I don't know of any image editors, but when working in the console, images aren't that important, are they :-)

90% of the time I edit images it is for some sort of gui-related theme anyway... (desktop, custom buttons)

mikshaw · 04-05-2004, 01:28 PM

Quote:

And how i can configure it so that it doesn't do that?

Incude this in ~/.vimrc or /etc/vimrc:
set nobackup

GUI or not is mostly dependent on what you do. If you don't care to see multimedia on the web, or create anything visual, then you can be a CLI zealot all your life ("who needs GUI, pffft" are the words of the fastideous zealot).
GUI is pretty much essential for creating/editing graphics....it really makes no sense to be making dynamic changes to an image if you can't see the changes in real time.
Personally, I prefer a blend of the two....I don't see why anyone would want to use just one or the other when they both have advantages.

M.R · 04-06-2004, 07:14 PM

Thanks for the feedback/help

MR