Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

On 25/02/2021 16:54, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:

On Thu, 25 Feb 2021 at 10:07, J Martin Rushton <martinrushton56@btinternet.com mailto:martinrushton56@btinternet.com> wrote:

On 25/02/2021 14:49, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
 >
 >
 > On Thu, 25 Feb 2021 at 09:13, J Martin Rushton via CentOS
 > <centos@centos.org <mailto:centos@centos.org>
<mailto:centos@centos.org <mailto:centos@centos.org>>> wrote:
 >
 >
 >
 >     On 25/02/2021 13:37, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
 >
 >     I was recently looking at Raymond's book "The Art of UNIX
Programming"
 >     from 2003.  He, along with contributors Thompson (inventor of
UNIX),
 >     Kernigham (C and AWK), Korn and others of that callibre, espouse
 >     creating "little tools" that do one job reliably and well.  The
 >     likes of
 >     Gnome or systemd certainly would never fit into this
philosophy.  I
 >     really think we have lost a lot of maintainability and ease of
 >     management over the last 20 years as applications are
stretched to do
 >     ever more.
 >
 >
 > Maybe but everytime someone says "I think these are too complex"
they
 > then turn around and say "but I really need this to do this one more
 > thing." Also the complexity of tools is generational. The oldschool
 > 1970's Unix people were screaming that the 1980's software was too
 > complex because various flags had been added to central commands.
The
 > 1980's people complained that even early Linux was too complex
because
 > it had so much more software that depended on each other. And so
forth.
 >
 > In the X11 world, there were as many people saying FVWM was way too
 > complex when twm was all you needed and it was making software
too hard
 > to build. BUT could you get twm to work on our new monitor which
has a
 > different view screen feature that made the fonts look like crap.
 >
 > The counter argument I heard from a 1970's Unix era person was
"Software
 > gets more complicated over time as we find that more problems
need to be
 > solved. You either keep up with it, or get out of software." He was
 > working in software until his death a short while ago in his 80's.
 >
 >     --
 >     J Martin Rushton MBCS
 >     _______________________________________________
 >     CentOS mailing list
 > CentOS@centos.org <mailto:CentOS@centos.org>
<mailto:CentOS@centos.org <mailto:CentOS@centos.org>>
 > https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
<https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos>
 >     <https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
<https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos>>
 >
 >
 >
 > --
 > Stephen J Smoogen.
 >
The irony being that moving to UNIX I had it drummed into me that the
one tool-one job ethos was a great advance upon the rigidly defined and
integrated monolith of VMS.  Oh, and that was in the 1990s.
-- 
J Martin Rushton MBCS

And everyone I worked with told me that Unix was a poor reinvention of TSX-11 where you could get real work done. But since VMS came out over a decade after Unix, I can't say Unix is an advance over VMS.

In any case this is devolving into the 4 Yorkshiremen skit so I am done here.

-- Stephen J Smoogen.

Oi! Lay off Yorkshiremen. It'll only be envy that you weren't born one. :-)