flowtable usable or not

[perryh at pluto.rain.com]

Ian Lepore <freebsd at damnhippie.dyndns.org> wrote:

> On Sat, 2012-03-03 at 09:09 -0800, perryh at pluto.rain.com wrote:
> > H <hm at hm.net.br> wrote:
> > > ... Forever installing FreeBSD Desktop, either KDE or Gnome,
> > > was a nightmare process, or better, to make it appear on screen
> > > was a nightmare.
> > 
> > I have never understood the point of KDE or Gnome, other than
> > (perhaps) as eye candy for the uninitiated.  If I wanted a
> > Windows desktop, I would install Windows.  If I wanted a Mac
> > desktop, I would use a Mac.
>
> I've been getting paid to develop software since 1975 --

Same here (approximately).

> Maybe you long for a return to punch cards and fanfold greenbar
> paper, but I'm not going back there.

I think we've both been around long enough to know that even an
ADM-3 or a 3270 is a step up from "punch cards and fanfold greenbar
paper".  The second step up is screen(1), and AFAIK no one is
advocating a "return" even to that level of functionality, much
less to anything more primitive.

The next improvement is huge, and costly:  high-resolution display
hardware, and the software (X11, xterm, basic window manager) to
handle it.  That provides the capability to use multiple windows --
to see several ptys at the same time instead of being able to see
only one and having to remember what's on the rest.  I think most of
us would agree that, costly as this upgrade is, it is justified for
most desktop systems.

Once we have the high-resolution display capability, it becomes
possible to add graphics-based productivity apps like a PDF viewer,
web browser, word processor, calendar, drawing programs, etc.
I _know_ it is possible to run all that with nothing more than X11
and the same basic window manager, because I do it on a daily basis.
The question remains:  what more does KDE or Gnome bloatware provide,
other than eye candy?

> It's exactly because I don't want a Windows or Mac desktop that
> I use gnome.

Last I saw, Gnome was a way to make an otherwise perfectly good
X-windows desktop look like MacOS X.  Again, what's the point?
What does Gnome give you, that twm or fvwm2 would not?