Creating User Interfaces with dialog and xdialog

Another slight problem with yad is that you can only use it on machines that have a desktop environment installed. But, many Linux, Unix, and Unix-like servers are set up with a full text-mode environment and don’t have to use graphical desktops. Another slight problem with yad is that even on desktop-type operating systems, it’s not always available for installation. However, if yad isn’t available and you still need a GUI solution, you might be able to use xdialog, which is more universally available. Let’s begin with a look at dialog, which can be used on text-mode machines.

The dialog Basics

dialog used to be installed by default on all Linux systems, but it no longer is. However, it’s available for installation for pretty much every Linux distro. So, you can install it with your distro’s normal package manager. On most Unix and Unix-like systems, such as OpenIndiana and FreeBSD...