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GenKreton
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 31, 2003 6:50 pm    Post subject: Between a WM and a DE Reply with quote

I am looking into different options for my gui currently.

KDE and gnome both seem too bloated. I ahve used both in the past, I liked gnome, but still it seemed excessive.

I was a fluxbox user for a long time and then went to kahakai.

Right now I am looking for something possibly between the two options, a happy middle ground.

Two options that have caught my attention are englightenment and window maker.


Does anyone have any preferences, experiences, etc about those two? And is there something else I should look into that would fall into my possiblle domain for my new gui?

Thanks in advanced : )>
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shm
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 31, 2003 6:54 pm    Post subject: Re: Between a WM and a DE Reply with quote

GenKreton wrote:

Right now I am looking for something possibly between the two options, a happy middle ground.


Try xfce4.
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GenKreton
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 31, 2003 7:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm looking at it and it doesn't seem to have great themes but more along the lines of what I am looking for as well.

I'd emerge em all if it didn't take so much time to get, play witht he configs, and test.
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ed0n
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 31, 2003 8:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

xfce rocks if you want a fast and simple de
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shm
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 31, 2003 8:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

You can also run a regular EWMH compliant window manager (like openbox3, kde's kwin, gnome's metacity, or xfce4's xfwm) along with a EWMH compliant panel (like kde's kicker, gnome's gnome-panel, or xfce4's xf4panel)
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Abraxas
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 01, 2003 10:57 pm    Post subject: Window Maker Reply with quote

I use Window Maker and I love it. I have used Gnome, KDE, XFCE4 and Fluxbox in the past but Gnome and KDE are too much for my little laptop and Flux and XFCE just don't have enough features. Window Maker starts up about as quickly as Flux but is closer to a Desktop Environment. It has a nice gui configuration tool and you can find hundreds of themes on freshmeat. I highly recommend it.

Last edited by Abraxas on Sun Nov 02, 2003 1:16 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Stu L Tissimus
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 01, 2003 11:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Truthfully, XFce4 is definitely what you are looking for. It has a lot of themes (any GTK+2 theme you can get) and is very small.

Personally, I use Kahakai with gnome-panel.
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zenz
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 02, 2003 1:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

another vote for xfce4
I used kde, gnome, enlightenment, windows maker, and fluxbox in the past, but ever since i tried xfce, i've been stickin w/ it :)

give it a go
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heavyt
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 02, 2003 3:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I have Xfce4 on my laptop for 3 days now and each day it feels more and more like a fine pair of hand made shoes. :P
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n3x
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 04, 2003 7:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Definitely xfce4 - I was looking for the same thing as you. flux was a little too minimal and there was no way i was going to run KDE or GNOME all the time. So I gave xfce4 a try and I love it. It's fast, simple and easy to configre. xffm is not so good, but everything else is.

And stu's right, all the gtk2 themes work nicely. But I can't seem to get window decs to install. Anyone know how to do that?


Last edited by n3x on Tue Nov 04, 2003 10:38 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Stu L Tissimus
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 04, 2003 7:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

... You are installing XFwm themes and not Metacity themes, right?
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Roguelazer
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 04, 2003 8:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm gonna be different. I reccommend ROX-desktop with Sawfish as the wm. I also use XFCE4, GNOME 2.4, KDE 3.1, WindowMaker and Kahakai. But I reccommend ROX.
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kwiqsilver
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 04, 2003 10:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I use enlightenment. I've been using it since the first release of version 16, and all these years later they're up to...version 16.
I think once I get my new box setup (I started a 200 package emerge on Sunday, so it should be done by Thursday at the latest), I'm going to experiment with new WMs.
Here are my requirements:
skinnable/ themeable, and lots of selection, or ease of creation
configurable (button locations, button actions, borders)
a menu from clicking on the background
multi-desktop capability, with a good snapshot pager
an iconbox
No toolbar, menubar, etc. cluttering up half the screen
No "the desktop is a directory" mentality
No bloated libraries
oh...it has to run fast too

Does anything other than E meet all these?
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GenKreton
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 05, 2003 12:19 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

haha wow my thread made the gwn :-D

Anyways I tried enlightenment 16 and wasn't very pleased. It looked smooth but relying on buggy features. I had a lot of problems changing to some themes I got off of sourceforge even. The built in sounds only decided to work 50% of the time randomly giving errors on a restart of x. And the menu generation left a lot to be desired. Maybe e17 will be better when it actually builds :-\

As for window maker. It wasn't bad at all but did not feel right. At least it was stable.

I'm going to look into metacity, XFwm, and xfce4. They sound promising. I always assumed metacity has to many dependencies but I was obviously wrong.
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GenKreton
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 05, 2003 12:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Does anyone have any opinions or comparisons with FVWm either?
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Phlaegel
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 05, 2003 12:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Roguelazer wrote:
I'm gonna be different. I reccommend ROX-desktop with Sawfish as the wm. I also use XFCE4, GNOME 2.4, KDE 3.1, WindowMaker and Kahakai. But I reccommend ROX.

I'll recommend Rox too, but with Windowmaker.
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kasperhans
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 05, 2003 1:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

try icewm :)
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Abraxas
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 05, 2003 5:44 am    Post subject: Window Maker + ROX = heaven Reply with quote

Phlaegel wrote:
I'll recommend Rox too, but with Windowmaker.


I'll second that! For my tastes there is no better combination. Window Maker took me a while to figure out all the neat stuff you could do but when I did figure it all out I knew I wasn't going to be changing WMs again. I actually had Window Maker installed for a while but I didn't like it that much at the time and used Flux instead. I just kept messing around with Window Maker every once in a while and discovered some very useful features. The dock and the clip makes things so much more efficient for me. I also love how you can configure certain window attributes associated with a specific application, while leaving others unaffected. I use irssi and mplayer without borders or titlebars but leave the titlebar on for things like nedit, so i can tell at a glance whether or not the file I have been working on has been modified or not. I also love "hiding" applications and then attaching them to certain workspaces, then being able to collapse the tiles into the clip when I need the real estate. When I found the keyboard shortcuts I dropped Flux altogether.

As for ROX, what better to pair with my single-click patched Window Maker than a fast single-click file manager. Easy to use and fast, that's all I need for a file manager.
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st. anger
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 05, 2003 6:03 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

GenKreton wrote:
Does anyone have any opinions or comparisons with FVWm either?

a good disussion on fvwm is here:
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=80517&highlight=

I just switched to fvwm and im not looking back. :D
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nightowl2
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 05, 2003 9:54 am    Post subject: WMSPEC patches for WindowMaker Reply with quote

WindowMaker rulez!!

so much so that I have written a lot of code for the project including most of the Xinerama code in current CVS, and improved WMSPEC (not accepted yet).

grab patches at: http://programming.kicks-ass.net/wmaker-current/

maybe someone could update the ebuild; CVS + big bunch of patches;
because there are loads of patches out there.
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Roguelazer
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 05, 2003 11:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I was talking about ROX the desktop, not just the FM. rox.sourceforge.net
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kwiqsilver
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 05, 2003 9:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

A lot of people here have mentioned window maker.
I like its style and the wm dock, but can you change wm buttons or are you stuck with the iconify button being where they put it? And can you make a button that does vertical maximize, not area maximize?
That is my main reason for prefering E: I like a very customized button layout.
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timbo
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 06, 2003 2:59 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hi guy's

I have KDE and Fluxbox on my machine, heard good things about xfce4 so I tried it for about three weeks or so....

I've unmerged it now as it was just too clunky, hated the toolbar and could not get gkrellm to slit itself for some reason. Hated xffm. The only good thing was evolution, mozillafirebird etc looked great when xfce4 had the same theme.

My vote goes for fluxbox, my wifes vote goes for KDE.

Regards
Tim
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GenKreton
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 06, 2003 3:52 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

nobody has mentioned afterstep yet either.
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nightowl2
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 06, 2003 8:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

[quote="kwiqsilver"]A lot of people here have mentioned window maker.
I like its style and the wm dock, but can you change wm buttons or are you stuck with the iconify button being where they put it? And can you make a button that does vertical maximize, not area maximize?
That is my main reason for prefering E: I like a very customized button layout.[/quote]
There are a few patches that add a few or modify the button style.
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