[Inx] INX is a good idea.

[Peter Garrett]

On Mon, 8 Oct 2012 18:45:31 +0100 (BST)
jose hernandez <jahfrias at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Hi there:
> 
> Rescue linux and distros that work from memory there are many. But distros that want to go back to the original Unix philosophy of the tool kit approach, functioning at the shell level, you are the only one in the world today. If that is your intention you can count on me as a new member. 

> I don't see why you just can't installed Linux to the hard disk, (or at least give that option),  without X and then just put your "menu" in the path. It is much simpler. Then built from there.

Well, originally back in 2007 that was what I started with. But it
isn't that simple, unfortunately. INX relies on a framebuffer that
"works" with mplayer and various other applications, and sadly doing
this with more current distros is not straightforward.

I won't bore you with the details, but rest assured that I have tried
it with more recent versions of Ubuntu. It might be possible with
Debian, but again, at the time I tried that too, and it was harder than
with Ubuntu 7.04 or 8.04. In fact that's why INX ended up having Ubuntu
as a base - at the time, the framebuffer, sound etc. pretty much "just
worked" without X using Ubuntu as a base. This stopped being the case
with, for example, Ubuntu 10.04.

If you lose xlinks2, mplayer video etc. then, yes, most of INX
would work...

> 
> Also, not necessarily everything has to be done only with the shell. There is "dialog" that looks better and can be use with the shell. System administration functions like wireless installation, etc, will be better with some kind of GUI. Its impossible to remember everything with Linux. 

I know about dialog. I disagree that it looks better.  In fact, I think
it pretends to be a "window", which is kind of the opposite of INX
"philosophy", really. I had dialog in the earliest versions. I really
didn't want it in INX. Personally, I thinks it's ugly ;-)

> Are you planning to do everything at the command line?  That's not "kiss" either.

INX is an educational toy - if you already know the command line you
don't really need it, right? It's just for fun,  and to show people what
is possible...

The tutorials in INX are kind of the main point!

> Hope you are shell fans like me. But "bare bone" Linux nowadays without some kind of GUI for installation, setting up admin task ,data entry form, etc,(????).  It is possible to do all kind of application development in Linux without all these huge programs that keep you out of the power of the shell. But everything in life is "up to a point".

Sadly, INX development has pretty much halted. I did most of it, but I
have other stuff I want to do, and I gave a good couple of years to
making it happen. I mean that almost literally - I got up every
morning and worked on INX, often all day and sometimes most of the
night, for two years. The code is out there, on Launchpad, so anyone is
free to use it and do interesting things with it if they wish!

Peter