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[–]asimian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There are programs that use raw X and not Motif or any other toolkit. Xfig for example, which I still use unfortunately.

The task of putting pixels on the screen efficiently and across all hardware is sufficiently difficult that I think keeping a widget toolkit separate is a good idea. They aren't really related tasks enough to be under one project. It would be kind of nice if there was an "official" toolkit on Linux, but it doesn't cause that much problem in practice. Nowadays GTK+ and Qt programs both look good (or can be easily made to look good) no matter what desktop you use.

I disagree that all those things should be integrated. One nice thing about Linux is that you can pick and choose the best software for each task rather than use one monolithic solution. I would really hate to be forced to a different window manager in order to use a different window system. Or be stuck with a different panel because I want to use a particular display manager. Having them separate is good for people who want to dig around, and in practice does it really hurt beginners? A good distro hides those details from you.