The "loop and a half"

[Chris Angelico]

On Mon, Oct 9, 2017 at 8:44 PM, Mikhail V <mikhailwas at gmail.com> wrote:
>> ... The server may not be able to
>> (it's a server, why would anyone install a GUI on it?)
>
> If I ever work on it (locally) why would I want a GUI on it?

(Presuming you mean "wouldn't" here)

> o_O   I'm not sure if I'm getting you.
> You mean probably a server which is never worked on locally?
> If it has a display and a keyb, and I must do something on it, even
> seldom, then certainly I want a GUI on it (not just to see
> a desktop wallpaper ;).

If it's a server that also is used directly at its own console, then
sure! Have a GUI installed. Right now, for instance, I'm typing this
up on my main computer "Sikorsky", who is a full desktop system with
four monitors, two webcams, a keyboard, a mouse, and several dozen
figurines (they aren't USB-connected or anything, but without Alice,
Elsa, Kaylee, and Joy, this just wouldn't be the same). He happens to
be a server, providing various facilities to the local network, but he
is a client too, so he has a GUI. (Though if I remote in to him from
the laptop, I'm *still* going to stick to the terminal, just because
it's easier that way.) But there are plenty of servers that don't. You
can rent yourself a cheap box on Amazon's EC2 for less than a cent per
hour - not much of a box, but enough to do some testing on. It's an
easy and cheap way to try things out. But since that box has something
like half a gig of RAM, you don't want to waste any of it on a GUI;
you want to work with the simplest, lightest-weight user interface you
can. That means the "glass teletype" of the terminal; all the fancy
features are provided by your client, where you run "ssh some-server"
in a local terminal emulator, and the server just has to worry about
running the programs themselves.

ChrisA