Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD

[Wojciech Puchar]

> I spent years using Linux before I truly appreciated the key difference between a "desktop environment" and a "graphical environment". Probably because everyone had to have a desktop environment.
>
> I define graphical environment as simply X11 and a window manager.

good that you as first one defined things. I am too a user of "graphical 
environment" as per your definition, using Xorg and fvwm2 with heavily 
modified config.

> That's all you need to run Firefox, Gimp, etc. Because x11 is the underlying base, any toolkit (gtk, qt, whatever) will work just fine. A developer can pick the toolkit they're most comfortable with and it will work on anyone's system.

There are few exceptions for badly written programs, mostly QT based that 
gets eg. terrible performance or leave lots of dangling processes after 
you exit. But these are exceptions not rule.

> IMHO, a graphical environment is useful for running applications like Firefox and Gimp.
> I never run either of these on a server so I would never want to install 
> even a graphical environment on my servers.

Well i actually installed it on a few. If i have connected monitor and i 
am present there and just want to view a webpage or do something requiring
X11 - why not?

>
> I have no use at all for desktop environments. They're often bloated, buggy, and provide no real value to me.

Even if there would be "desktop enviroment" that starts in less than a 
second, reacts on everything below single video frame time and used close 
to zero CPU time i would not use one, as there is no benefit.

IMHO the only "benefit" is wasted lots of screen space for taskbars, 
menubars, windows frames and titles etc...