Page 2 - which windowmanager ??

How nice. But why run a GUI on a server/router anyway? You don't usually work on that system and 99.5% of the things you might want to do on it a possible via ssh or some kind of http interface. So what's the point in wasting ressources and possibly risking stability? (OK, it'll run longer than any M$ OS, but X is an insecurity factor.)

Well, the post was asking "which windowmanager" not "should I run a windowmanager on a server?", so I figured I would try to answer the question, instead of argue the basis of it. I think this question didn't just mean servers, anyway.

Yes, usually I don't run X on a server, but sometimes (especially during development work) I like to have multiple terminal windows open, and sometimes I like to run those cool resource tracking widgets, just to see what's happening.

IMHO, X is only an insecurity factor if you don't know what you're doing with it. Also, as i said, before, if you only fire it up when you are actually using it, and turn it off most of the time, then what's the problem? When I use it remotely, I use SSH tunnelling, so it's about as secure as you can get.

So in short, IF you are going to run X on a server (and I'm not saying you should), use a lightweight like Blackbox, and otherwise, on a workstation, Blackbox is great because of its speed.

Personally, I don't have a problem running X on a server once in a while. If your server isn't adequately firewalled enough to make X secure, you have far greater problems than memory use.

Anyway, another way to get multiple terminal windows without booting X is the "screen" command, which uses a simple set of commands to allow you to launch console, destroy, suspend, and switch between them. I use it all the time, it's really handy!

Check it out.

How about using virtual terminals to have more than one shell open? On most distros its alt-Fx where x is an integer between 1-5 or so. Works well for me.

Hmm. Redhat doesn't seem to be set up for this. I use 6.2, 7.1 and 7.2 on different boxes and none of them handle this.

I don't think this would work remotely via SSH, would it?

Does anyone have any idea how to get Redhat to handle this? This would be pretty nifty.

Mandrake does allow this directly from the console, I've used it in the past.

"screen" is kind of cool because you can suspend a session, even between logins and resume from any console. Plus, it's been on every distro/shell I've ever used.

For Linux, often the way to switch virtual terminals is ALT-{right arrow} or ALT-{left arrow}. FreeBSD uses the ALT-Fx method. And no, it doesn't work remotely, but for that, you can just start virtual terminals on your local machine and reconnect, Or use xterminals locally.

And yeah, screen is great. I love starting a compile, and then logging out of my session, to log back in at home later.

The reason I sometimes like X is that a standard terminal on an x86 machine is so ugly... 640 X 480 is a crime against reason, these days. One reason I love Slackware--on install, it prompts you to use the Framebuffer library to set your terminal to higher resolution. A 1024 X 768 terminal almost makes me forget about X .

Indeed. VESA 1280x1024 is better than any X-based terminal.

Btw: SuSE Linux uses the Alt+Fn method. What about other distros?