Re: time for a flamewar, or ... what about grdb

[Karl Nelson <kenelson ece ucdavis edu>]

Okay, now you are starting to annoy me.  (Karl dons flame retardant
suit.)
  
Miguel writes:
> Alan writes:
> > Really. Maybe for you personally, but if gnome cant do remote displays
> > then to say the least its going to be an uninteresting footnote in the
> > history of thinclient computing
> 
> Although I love you, you are missing the point.  Yes, I do still run
> every day remote applications.  My desktop is just a terminal of my
> desktop, but people with a single computer rarely do distributed
> computing.  
> 
> Regular people do not do distributed computing.  And those constitute
> most of the users out there.  Not because they dont want to, but
> because they dont care about it.

Hold on here.  Considering the recent announcement of UNIX manufactures 
like HP looking at GNOME, I don't see how the above statement can be
true.  Since virtually all HP-UX boxes, I have ever encountered require 
at least a semi-competent UNIX admin, it seems unlike those types
of machine run in anything other than a distributed environment.  
To say that the people using the machines from Digital, Sun, and 
HP don't care is simply because they don't realize what they have.
As a system admin I can't count the number of times someone has
requested some Windows application to be redirected on to a screen in
some other room, only to be told sorry they couldn't do that.  
Those people who know what distributed computing is care, those who
don't are just blissfully ignorant but benefit all the same.

Consider the focus of even at microsoft (who pioneered the our way is
the only way) is starting to warm to network clients (so long as you
pay through the nose.)

Unless GNOME is infatuated with replicating the flaws of 
Windows for the shear hell of it, network capability ought to
rank a little higher then something we will think about when we
get bored.
 
> > Wrong. I do that all the time
> 
> So all your machines share the same file system?  I very much doubt
> so.  Maybe your home directory.

Every machine in my department shares a file system.  Each machine
is accessible through /net.  Applications in the whole
university (save for dumb PCs) are shared through 
/afs.  Every user has a common /home which by the way is even
mapped to PCs (which is even more fun because the preferences 
of one PC never seen to follow right without blowing the shit
out of everything).  Of course, this doesn't represent
the normal of a home user, but certain of a well run university.

--Karl