[mythtv-users] Myth backend: Console or GUI OS ? Init level 3 or init level 5 ?

[Ian Clark]

On 13 September 2011 17:03, Raymond Wagner <raymond at wagnerrp.com> wrote:
> On 9/13/2011 08:33, Ian Clark wrote:
>> On 12 September 2011 19:34, Raymond Wagner<raymond at wagnerrp.com>  wrote:
>>> >  MythTV is designed to run full screen, so there is little to know use in
>>> >  running a full desktop environment such as KDE or Gnome that you will
>>> >  never see.  That said, MythTV is not a window manager, and should not be
>>> >  run without one.
>> If you're running it as the only GUI on the box you really don't need
>> to bother with a window manager for myth, it's only extra crud waiting
>> to draw window furniture it'll never need.
>>
>> I've run myth and XBMC without a window manager for years.
>
> A window manager doesn't just render window borders, it is used to
> control focus and Z-depth.

It does yes, but it's not the only thing that does, it's sufficient
for a client program to request input focus and get it, and when
running fullscreen windows I'm not too bothered about which one of
them has focus so long as it's the topmost one. (And as these are all
fullscreen apps that don't make any effort to release focus that's
always the case.)

>  There are issues with running multiple X
> clients.  There are issues with running multiple windows on a single
> client.

Such as?

> It is only fortunate happenstance that you have not yet run
> into any issues just running MythTV, much less MythTV and XBMC side by
> side.

Surely It's entirely deterministic? I start mythfrontend, it opens a
full screen window, I start mythwelcome, it opens a full screen window
ontop of mythfrontend (the x server doesn't arbiterially decide the
stacking order, the last opened window get opened on top.), I start
XBMC, it does the same again.

I quit XBMC and focus returns to the last window that has it, ie, mythfrontend.

I quit frontend and the same happens with mythwelcome.

> It just seems senseless to operate without a window manager when
> evilwm on one of my frontends is consuming a whole 720 bytes of physical
> memory, and another 26K of virtual address space.

It just seems pointless to waste time installing and configuring
something I don't have to, for no discernable benefit. (PS, surely
those mem values are 4K and 28K respectivly. ;) )

Don't misunderstand me, running a window manager is probably 'a good
idea' for most people. However there's no real problem not using one,
you won't do any harm. (At the end of the day, it's a TV playing box,
if it gets confused I ssh in an pkill X.)

Cheers,

Ian