To X or not to X?

[Mike Jipping]

This is a request for OPINIONS -- some assistance in making some windowing
decisions. Put yourself into ADMINISTRATOR mode.

With the release of X11R4 and Sun's Open Windows, I think everyone must be
asking the question -- "when do we take the X windows plunge?" For some,
this is not a be question -- in fact, it's a personal one.  Simply copy
the X11 distribution and use it.  BUT eventually everyone will be using a
flavor of X, and to avoid duplicate personal copies of X sources
everywhere, taking up disk space, and to provide the less initiated users
guidance, I am wondering when and how to go to X system-wide.  Note that
I'm speaking academically here -- it's an issue about what's the
facilities students should be exposed to.

I see three options:
  (1) Go X11R4.  
      While this is MY system of choice, many folks here are dependent on
      SunView applications.  And if they have to play switcheroo with window
      systems, they'll stick with SunView.
  (2) Go OpenWindows, twiddling the right parameters to get only X running.
      This is OK, but now a mix of OpenWindows and X11R4 is required for a
      "workable" environment.  OpenWindows will run SunView and using the
      X11ONLY option, runs acceptably for normal use.  But my bias towards 
      X11R4 comes out: I like "twm" better than the "pswm" and Open Look's
      "olwm".  And now we have to merge R4's programs with OpenWindows...
  (3) Don't go at all.
      Wait for the beings at Sun to say "We now support OpenWIndows as the
      official window system".  As I understand it, this is a long way off --
      not until the complete merge of SunOS and AT&T SVR4.0 (as in SunOS 5.0?) 

Soooo...how about some opinions?  Please send all messages to me, and I'll
summarize. Just for the record:  we're running SPARCstation 1's with 8 to
16 MB of memory each, X11R4 and OpenWindows 1.0.1.

      Mike Jipping                        Internet: jipping at cs.hope.edu
      Hope College                          BITNET: JIPPING at HOPE
      Department of Computer Science         Voice: Hey!