Desktop Or Window Manager

Message

cephlen · Post by **cephlen** » Fri Jan 24, 2003 8:25 pm

I love gnome2. Its very well done, clean, profesional, and well integrated. Easy to configure. They have a ways to go yet, but its getting there.

Metacity, on the other hand, is horrible. Sawfish & Waimea are my choices for a WM in the gnome-session. My fears are that support for other WM's will be gone in future versions.

Being able to drag n drop onto the desktop is a real time saver. Some use it as a launcher, I use it as a work folder.

jlowell · Post by **jlowell** » Mon Jan 27, 2003 2:31 am

Arthur Vandelay,

Beside gkrellm, what other system monitors can you attach to fluxbox?

jlowell

Arthur Vandelay · Post by **Arthur Vandelay** » Mon Jan 27, 2003 7:48 pm

To jlowell,

There is a collection of dock apps that were written for the WindowMaker WM that can be inserted into the fluxbox slit (dock).

Try this site www.bensinclair.com/dockapp/

The best collection I have seen yet.

That's all I know that will work with fluxbox.

PS If you decide on gkrellm, I'd advise not using gkrellm2 and use gkrellm instead. gkrellm2 was too slow and bloated for my taste.

lghman · Post by **lghman** » Mon Jan 27, 2003 8:03 pm

Forget all that slow loading Gnome and Kde stuff, Fluxbox all the way. Fluxbox, gkrellm, and a few eterms and off we go! I want my desktop ready in 5 seconds flat.......
lol

--sonik

Bluesman · Post by **Bluesman** » Tue Jan 28, 2003 2:09 am

Fluxbox, gkrellm, a bunch of aterms, and that's all that I need to keep me happy

.
Though Fluxbox on XDirectFB... pure joy. If I could only use something else than vesa, but I guess that's out of the question.

jlowell · Post by **jlowell** » Tue Jan 28, 2003 5:49 am

Arthur Vandelay,

Thanks for the site reference. Very interesting!

You know, this whole world of source based Linux is brand new to me. To date its been SuSE and Red Hat. I'm in process of converting one of my machines from an experimental box into a web server for my business. I planned to employ Red Hat 8.0's server install selections. There are two other computers on the network, one principally for storage, the other a very high performance main system.

I installed Gentoo successfully recently on the experimental computer but there were problems with the boot process in connection with file system details that I should have caught at kernel time but didn't. Truthfully, I'd rather install cleanly and go from there than do the clean-up later. So I'm going to do it again, and again if necessary, until I get it right, this time on one of the drives on my main system rather than on an experimental box. Once there, things like fluxbox and gkrellm become important. I have a lot to learn, but the trimmed-down-to-essentials concept you seem to prefer appeals to me. Rather than going with a desktop next time, it'll be Fluxbox, system monitors and terminals. What do you like in the terminal area?

jlowell

dufnutz · Post by **dufnutz** » Tue Jan 28, 2003 12:50 pm

jlowell wrote:Arthur Vandelay,

What do you like in the terminal area?

jlowell

a lot of people, including myself prefer either Eterm or aterm both are configurable and both look good

DuF · Post by **DuF** » Tue Jan 28, 2003 1:21 pm

only fluxbox with some essentials dockapps and sometimes I use idesk too !

krusty_ar · Post by **krusty_ar** » Wed Jan 29, 2003 1:08 am

[flamebait] I reslly can't believe that nobody has wondered why there's not a CLI option!!! [/flamebait]

ebrostig · Post by **ebrostig** » Wed Jan 29, 2003 1:34 am

Desktop and KDE all the way.

I have been using X-windows since the 80's and run all kinds of window managers.

The problem with a window manager is that it simply is not good enough for my use.

From memory, thiese are the wm's I have tried over the past 15 or so years:
- Motif WM
- twm
- fwvm
- enlightenment (From the first version available and up to E17)
- fluxbox (and other -box'es)
- Sawfish
- metacity
- Afterstep
- Window Maker
- XFCE
- ICEwm
- Oroborus
And quite a few others that I have long forgotten.

Nothing beats a complete desktop system when it comes to productivity. And I'm not talking about running xmms, gkrellm for fun and a browser and a chat client, but doing real work using several huge applications.

The seemless integration between various desktop applications and the ease of confguring comapred to a window manager which is often very minimalistic in what it does. It just doesn't cut it for me.

I really don;t understand why people complain about Gnome and KDE to be huge and slow. In my experience they are more than fast enough. I have to mention that I rarly log in and out, the applications i use, gets started when I log in and I never exit them unless I'm going to a) log out or b) reboot with a new kernel

And even in a busy workday as I have, I can easily wait for an application to load, it's only loaded once, right?

Erik

shm · Post by **shm** » Wed Jan 29, 2003 7:22 am

Mindstab wrote:Window manager: enlightenment
until e17 comes out
then... "desktop shell"

This is gonna sound like a troll, but I dont mean it to be, but is e17 *ever* gonna come out? It's been a number of years since development of it started. I know mandrake isn't working on it much anymore.. is rasterman still?

shm · Post by **shm** » Wed Jan 29, 2003 7:22 am

Mindstab wrote:Window manager: enlightenment
until e17 comes out
then... "desktop shell"

This is gonna sound like a troll, but I dont mean it to be, but is e17 *ever* gonna come out? It's been a number of years since development of it started. I know mandrake isn't working on it much anymore.. is rasterman still?

Mindstab · Post by **Mindstab** » Mon Feb 03, 2003 1:36 am

shm: No problem
I know it well myself
Its been ages, and from the mailing lists, it almost looks like its gone backwards since the summer

but, hte devel mailing list seems decently active and rasterman is deep into it. So there is hope, that one day,far off in a bright glorious future, we will have e17

Curious · Post by **Curious** » Mon Feb 03, 2003 2:00 am

Irony... I was one of the iDesk developers, and yet I use Gnome2 + Metacity.

But I do have a Waimea config lying around, and I use it from time to time. Both are nice - I'm a swinging voter.

-- Curious

xtsephane68 · Post by **xtsephane68** » Fri May 12, 2006 1:37 am

jlowell wrote:I'd be interested in knowing what percentage of Gentoo users prefer Window Managers and what percentage full scale Desktops.

I hate those slow stupid things that do a lot of crap like window,
what i need is virtual desktopa bunch of windows and a few hotkeys.

When i use gnome i immediatly turn down sounds/automount, assiting technologies ..
i rarely touch nautilus ..

FVWM or enlightment or anything with a pager ..
something light ...

Gnome dev are plainly stupid, their nice gnome-terminal is 100 time slower than a good old xterm ...
morever it tries to communicate with the gnome factory ...

I use XMMS which beat down all the totem-like crap ..

Good programs are always indpendant of any big plateform ...

I would use Vesa console mode if postcript vievers where better in that mode,

I use computers for latex and emacs ... i m not a programmer.

For sure people with others need may love those heavy machines.

runningwithscissors · Post by **runningwithscissors** » Fri May 12, 2006 5:16 am

I have gentoo installed on an athlon64 3500+ with 2GB of memory. Decent specs to run KDE. So I do. But without all the transparent compositing stuff, as it slows down the responsiveness of the dektop. Also I use the stripped down basic KDE packages that Portage makes available. I don't have use for all KDE packages. I also use a fairly healthy number of GTK apps.

On my OpenBSD installation, I use Xfce.

PaveQ · Post by **PaveQ** » Fri May 12, 2006 5:51 am

Good job for bumping this old topic up.

at240 · Post by **at240** » Fri May 12, 2006 4:36 pm

PaveQ wrote:Good job for bumping this old topic up.

Note, too, that one of the posters from the original part of the thread says

shm wrote:This is gonna sound like a troll, but I dont mean it to be, but is e17 *ever* gonna come out?

Plus ca change...

Desktop Or Window Manager

What's Your Preference:

I know

Re: Desktop Or Window Manager