i disagree.

Need or no....I don't think need comes into it too much at this point.

Linux is about freedom and choice...

so if someone chooses to have a desktop environment that looks like windows so be it. Just like I choose to run blackbox or someone else chooses to say on the command line

Most certainly!
Open source software is about choice and freedom. But windows users like me who started with Linux a few years ago - before KDE - learned about the multiple window managers running on X. What variety!!!

Isn't it a loss of choice and freedom not to be made aware of this variety? This is Linux for godsake, not MSW

Those who start with Linux nowadays will either learn KDE or GNOME and never know that Enlightenment, WindowMaker, AfterStep, FluxBox,IceWM etc etc exist!!

There is another which looks exactly like Windows XP!

Try that for freedom of choice!

Didn't try anything other than KDE?GNOME?
Great pity!

Call me a pansy or whatever, but I know who the lightweight is when we compare how many linux computers I am in charge of. I like having X for my workstation. It runs great with a hacked copy of gdm so that I can still run SELinux. X does NOT, however, run on any of my servers. It is too bulky and full of too much buggy code (Like sendmail, yuck!)

I personally use blackbox or hackedbox with aterm for the cool transparent window effect. Thats just me. It loads olmost instantly and has a tiny memory footprint. I can run it (using VNC) from Africa over a crappy connections and it is perfectly fine.

Think about it... The computer wouldn't be so attractive to the average joe if it didn't have the pretty GUI and nice bubbly icons to play with. It would be only appealing to geeks like us and then we would lose allot of the creativity due to disinterest and learning curbs. This might cause some flames for me but


if [ GUI ]; then
dumbuser + internet + linux = enlightened user
else
dumbuser + windows = dumberuser
fi

think about it!

I'm joining this thread a little late but I say it's up to YOU.

My poweredge runs no X programs at all. It's all console and is setup to do what I want it to do. It handles all my routing, dhcp, fetchmail, imap, squirrelmail, file serving (smb) among a few other things. Before my last move it had an uptime of over two and a half years. The probability of that happening if X server with any desktop was running would be slim to none. The machine I'm on right now...totally differnt story...Fluxbox, Mozilla, Gaim, XMMS...

Do you need a GUI? Not at all. Most any time spent on my computer at work is spent ssh'd into my linuxbox browsing in lynx and checking email with pine. Is the GUI nice to have on my desktop computer...yes very..especially with playing Enemy Territory :->

Keep the faith!
Seabass

to seabass:
>>su -
>>cat /proc/kcore > /dev/dsp
ROFL

I'm a little mixed on the whole GUI issue, i'm relativly new to linux and ive been having fun on the command line, but i still like the GUI its a nice change esp some of the other varriant of GUI such as blackbox, gnone etc.. anyway one of the thing i like about linux so far, is in the constole its very responsive to what i want it to do even on an old 233 that ive been experting on, anyway u know what i did the min that KDE 3.1 loaded up, i immendatly destroyed the windows theme and went with some more extreme theme just to get the heck away from windows heh

and oh by the way i'm new here, HI!