Re: What programs do you make sure are installed on a new Linux

On Wed, 17 Jul 2024 08:13:26 +0100, Richard Kettlewell wrote:

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
>

On Tue, 16 Jul 2024 21:09:52 +0100, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
>

Windows executables either use the CUI (console) or GUI subsystem, and
this is represented by a field in the PE file header, rather than
being a behavior of the application after it starts.

>
Which is a pretty dumb way of doing it, don’t you think?

 
It’s not necessarily how I’d have done it, but in the big picture, it
doesn’t seem very different from any other way that an application
declares its dependencies and the system arranges for them to be
satisfied.

It is the reason you need two different versions of the Python interpreter
on Windows. Or of any other language interpreter that wants to offer the
option of running with a GUI or without.

But it was all a part of the 1990s trend of building the GUI
inextricably into the OS kernel. A trend which *nix-type systems never
succumbed to.

 
AFAIK the only graphical component of Windows that was ever in the
kernel was GDI, which is a low-level drawing AP and isn’t relevant here.

It is the reason why the use of a GUI has to be declared within the
executable, before it can even start executing. So that the part of the
kernel that is responsible for launching executables can decide whether to
set up the process to use a GUI or not.