on deprecating startx/xinit [was: spaces in pathnames]

[Adam Jackson]

On Mon, 2008-06-30 at 19:09 +0000, Omari Stephens wrote:
> Adam Jackson wrote:
> ::snip? SNIP!::
> >> It's practically impossible to get this 100% right if you're limited
> >> to the Bourne shell.
> > 
> > Then maybe it's time to stop caring about portability to useless shells.
> > 
> > More broadly, it's probably time to deprecate startx and xinit, strongly
> > recommend the use of a display manager like gdm, and write a minimal
> > replacement in some sensible subset of bash/ksh.
> 
> What would this actually mean?  I have at least one system that I use 
> primarily in the console, but which has X on it for those occasions 
> where I need it.  (For instance, if I need to look at an image, or visit 
> a webpage that doesn't like links2).

What it would mean is: you'd build and install xinit the same way you
always have, by downloading the tarball from ftp.x.org and building it.

And if someone wrote a sensible minimal replacement, you'd use that
instead.

It's still _there_.  We're just not recommending it as part of the base
X platform anymore.

- ajax