Who uses the GUI anyway ?

[grondilu]

I don't use the GUI anymore.  I use only the headless client.

I think it would be much easier to integrate bitcoin in linux distributions if there was no gui.

And I think it would be good for bitcoin if it could be directly available through package repositories of main linux distributions.

Wouldn't it be great if debian users could just "apt-get install bitcoin" ?

[ByteCoin]

I agree.

It would be nice to move to an architecture where bitcoind does all the p2p, blockchain maintenance, transaction verification stuff. A gui-less wallet manager connects to some bitcoind via TCPIP to send transactions and receive new payments. This would mean that people can still handle bitcoin payments even if they are not allowed or cannot run a p2p client. The gui should just provide a pretty way of communicating information and commands from and to the wallet manager.

ByteCoin

[neptop]

Like Tor, which is also a daemon with a protocol for GUIs and stuff. Defiantly prefer this. Especially for stuff which is meant to sit in background waiting for commands (sending Coins) and keeping data up to date as well as maintaining connections.

[slush]

Wouldn't it be great if debian users could just "apt-get install bitcoin" ?

Bitcoin protocol is not stable yet. It could be problematic when incompatible change happen and thousands people have clients from their 'stable' distribution. This was also reason why Tor was not in repositories for many years.

[grondilu]

It seems that the debian bitcoin team is getting close :

From: Jonas Smedegaard <dr@jones.dk>
To: Matt Taggart <taggart@debian.org>, 578157@bugs.debian.org
Subject: Re: Bug#578157: bitcoin 0.3.17 available
Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2010 11:27:59 +0100

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

Hi Matt,

On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 01:36:07AM -0800, Matt Taggart wrote:
>I was just looking at bitcoin and found this ITP. What do you think of
>Phil's suggestion to just disable the GUI stuff for now?
>
>Also I noticed that upstream released 0.3.17 this week.

I find it an excellent idea.  Sorry for not responding earlier :-(

Also, if any of you would like to join me in maintaining this, I'd be
happy about it.


Regards,

 - Jonas

 --

[teknohog]

One possibility for a separate GUI could be a web interface. That way there is no need to maintain a separate GUI codebase in sync with the daemon features. Many daemons such as CUPS and I2P already use the web browser as their primary interface.

I am not sure if it is the best for mass adoption, though. There could be conceptual problems; for example, if you are not familiar with the idea of "localhost", and you could not tell the difference between a web page out there and a program running on your own machine. Handling your money via the browser also has a lot of potential for security risks.

[grondilu]

One possibility for a separate GUI could be a web interface. That way there is no need to maintain a separate GUI codebase in sync with the daemon features. Many daemons such as CUPS and I2P already use the web browser as their primary interface.

I am not sure if it is the best for mass adoption, though. There could be conceptual problems; for example, if you are not familiar with the idea of "localhost", and you could not tell the difference between a web page out there and a program running on your own machine. Handling your money via the browser also has a lot of potential for security risks.

Seriously, GUI doesn't have to be part of the bitcoin project.  There are many free software project that had only console client during long time.  GUI came after, as a different wrapper project.  And this is the way things should work.  For exemple, GnuPG can be used inside different kinds of MUA.  I'm sure there are many other exemples.

[slush]

Seriously, GUI doesn't have to be part of the bitcoin project.

Do you really want to discourage common users, right? :-)

One of the coolest thing on Bitcoin is that 'it just works'. It is easy to show this to my girlfriend. But I cannot imagine that I'm saying 'look at this cool project, we want to spread this around whole world. But no, there is no default GUI, because we all use command line and we are too lazy to package GUI'. :-)

Disclaimer: I'm server side programmer, I love shell and don't know how to make even 'hello world' gui application. I fully understand your problems, but try to imagine bitcoin as product for end users.

[davout]

Seriously, GUI doesn't have to be part of the bitcoin project.

Do you really want to discourage common users, right? :-)

One of the coolest thing on Bitcoin is that 'it just works'. It is easy to show this to my girlfriend. But I cannot imagine that I'm saying 'look at this cool project, we want to spread this around whole world. But no, there is no default GUI, because we all use command line and we are too lazy to package GUI'. :-)

Disclaimer: I'm server side programmer, I love shell and don't know how to make even 'hello world' gui application. I fully understand your problems, but try to imagine bitcoin as product for end users.

I fully agree with grondilu, as of now bitcoin is absolutely not ready for what you call end users.
And even if it was, I'm pretty sure they'd keep their coins in an online bank, not in a not-so-practical local wallet.

Doesn't mean there shouldn't be any GUI, just means focus should be on getting popular with computer literate people first by getting into popular distros repos and on clearly defining and refining the protocol. Source code is good, source code implementing a clearly defined and documented protocol is much better.