> "Also, you should consider hooking up a monitor to the Linux rack
> mounted system. You could learn a lot from A GUI desktop, and a GUI
> not only saves a lot of time, its the easy way to do most things.

I have a Belkin box to which the Linux server is connected, so it's not as if I have no monitor attached. What I meant was this: as a programmer, and at some times a C programmer, I know there is a lot of code dealing with displaying graphics, and menus, and waiting for a menu selection, and all this. This is stuff the CPU is doing. Now, on a character-based OS interface, the characters are output to the TTY. That's it! Wait ... I forgot the mouse ... the mouse still works. It seems to me that the OS and subsequently the CPU has a lot more stuff it has to do while running a GUI. Using a text-based interface would relinquish a lot of the processor cycles back to the CPU for other more important tasks ... like file server (SAMBA), Apache, etc. This is the stuff the server is supposed to be there for in the first place.

My concerns may be unfounded ... with machine speeds of today, maybe such things are not an issue. It's just that I am schooled such that I see the server OS issue as being analogous to transportation: I shouldn't have to buy a Mac truck of a server just to service a small office. A smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicle would be better suited ... so long as you don't attempt to pull doublewide mobile homes. And so it is that once the system is running, I see the graphical front end as a completely unnecessary CPU load. Whether it has any effect or not, I like to turn it off.

You most certainly are right, that many tasks are easily accomplished with a GUI. I happen to like Kate ... it keeps a list of previously-opened files such as smb.conf and the like, so I don't have to go hunting for them. But, once everything is working and the server is in a dark place somewhere (that sounds like something from a Stephen King movie), why do you need the GUI?

...Art
http://members.aol.com/ARTGR/