[PLUG] back to basics (some advice sought)

[Quentin Hartman]

On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 4:05 PM, Michael M. Moore
<michael at writemoore.net> wrote:
> removing what's already here as it is, should I reinstall this?  And the
> reason for that is, as I intimated, primarily as learning experience.

I had missed that nuance. Based on your expanded explanation, I think
this would be a great, useful exercise. And to simply answer the
"core" question (again?), no, you do not "need" display manager for
"normal" single-user installs. I ran without a display manager for
years and years, and was never at a disadvantage for it.

But.

Unless you already have multiple computers, and perhaps even if you
do, consider doing your paring and learning in a virtual machine.
VMware server and Virtual Box are free and quite capable
virtualization environments. Vbox would be a better choice if your
experimentation will tend to be "desktop" oriented because it has
better multimedia capabilities than vmware server. Vmware server would
be better if you will be more "server" oriented because it handles
varied network configs a bit more easily and gracefully. If you are
looking for another interesting learning adventure, KVM may also be
good choice, as it is emerging as a contender for the de-facto
virtualization system on Linux going forward.

regardless of which you choose, the odds of you ending up cornered
because you tatered your primary computer are much smaller, which is
always a good thing.

-QH-