Looking for a new window manager/desktop manager

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moisespedro · Post by **moisespedro** » Tue Feb 11, 2014 8:38 pm

Always have been a XFCE user, played around with the tiling i3 window manager and I got kinda tired of both. I am looking for something new and exciting, anything except for GNOME, KDE and MATE.

Anon-E-moose · Post by **Anon-E-moose** » Tue Feb 11, 2014 9:02 pm

/usr/portage/x11-wm

Code: Select all

aewm       compiz-fusion  fluxbox       lwm                      metadata.xml  plwm       subtle       xmonad
aewm++     ctwm           fvwm          matchbox                 muffin        qtile      treewm       xmonad-contrib
afterstep  cwm            goomwwm       matchbox-common          musca         ratpoison  twm          xpra
amiwm      dwm            herbstluftwm  matchbox-desktop         mutter        sawfish    vtwm
awesome    echinus        i3            matchbox-panel           notion        selectwm   windowlab
blackbox   emerald        icewm         matchbox-window-manager  openbox       sithwm     windowmaker
bspwm      enlightenment  jwm           matwm2                   oroborus      spectrwm   wm2
compiz     evilwm         larswm        metacity                 pekwm         stumpwm    wmii

along with lxde as a DE.

If you google most of the names, you'll find screenshots of them, at least most if not all.

Naib · Post by **Naib** » Tue Feb 11, 2014 9:05 pm

openbox

nuff said

rudregues · Post by **rudregues** » Tue Feb 11, 2014 9:11 pm

Fluxbox as window manager and xfe as file manager.

moisespedro · Post by **moisespedro** » Tue Feb 11, 2014 9:53 pm

Anon-E-moose wrote:/usr/portage/x11-wm

Code: Select all

aewm       compiz-fusion  fluxbox       lwm                      metadata.xml  plwm       subtle       xmonad
aewm++     ctwm           fvwm          matchbox                 muffin        qtile      treewm       xmonad-contrib
afterstep  cwm            goomwwm       matchbox-common          musca         ratpoison  twm          xpra
amiwm      dwm            herbstluftwm  matchbox-desktop         mutter        sawfish    vtwm
awesome    echinus        i3            matchbox-panel           notion        selectwm   windowlab
blackbox   emerald        icewm         matchbox-window-manager  openbox       sithwm     windowmaker
bspwm      enlightenment  jwm           matwm2                   oroborus      spectrwm   wm2
compiz     evilwm         larswm        metacity                 pekwm         stumpwm    wmii

along with lxde as a DE.

If you google most of the names, you'll find screenshots of them, at least most if not all.

Why use a forum, right? Why interact? I want people's opinion.

Anon-E-moose · Post by **Anon-E-moose** » Tue Feb 11, 2014 10:01 pm

moisespedro wrote:Why use a forum, right? Why interact? I want people's opinion.

I could give you my opinion, but would you be happy with it. Try as many as you want to see which you really like.
Or look at the last dozen threads asking the same question.

You haven't given enough criteria for meaningful input.
What don't you like about gnome, kde, mate, xfce or i3?

If you want simplicity and a DE, lxde (openbox based)
If you want gee-whiz looks, awesome.

Openbox and fluxbox aren't DE's but with a few pieces they come close.

moisespedro · Post by **moisespedro** » Tue Feb 11, 2014 10:15 pm

I always disliked KDE, Gnome 3 sucks and I got kinda tired of XFCE and i3 (nothing against them). I am not looking for anything specific, hence my pretty general thread.

Dominique_71 · Post by **Dominique_71** » Wed Feb 12, 2014 11:27 am

fvwm-crystal. It is based on fvwm and provide a very useful and easy to use desktop with nice features like full support for the xdg additional categories in its application menu, configurable desktop icons that support any file manager, controls for several media players including mplayer and alsaplayer, possibility to put in full screen almost any window and to navigate trough them and the desktop, and much more.

sk3l · Post by **sk3l** » Wed Feb 12, 2014 7:49 pm

I'm interested in trying out this new merger between lxde and razor-qt, but I think the project is still a little raw.

xaviermiller · Post by **xaviermiller** » Thu Feb 13, 2014 7:16 am

I tried it from the QT overlay, but could not compile it.

Finally, I tested XFCE4 and the reasons I left it were gone : XFCE can leave without systemd and *KIT, the base ebuild pushes only the required minimum, and there are really useful plugins. Moreover, you don't need upower and other *kit-pushing "yet an other cool unstable layer that rewrite a working system feature" stuff to power off / restart the machine.

So I switched back from razor-qt to XFCE4, mainly because of the battery plugin, which was almost the only one in Portage that work. Other depends on APM (dead) or UPower (that pushes *KIT), or don't work because of recent ACPI changes (battery status is no more in /proc/acpi but in /sys).

i92guboj · Post by **i92guboj** » Thu Feb 13, 2014 10:06 am

XavierMiller wrote: Finally, I tested XFCE4 and the reasons I left it were gone : XFCE can leave without systemd and *KIT, the base ebuild pushes only the required minimum, and there are really useful plugins. Moreover, you don't need upower and other *kit-pushing "yet an other cool unstable layer that rewrite a working system feature" stuff to power off / restart the machine.

So I switched back from razor-qt to XFCE4, mainly because of the battery plugin, which was almost the only one in Portage that work. Other depends on APM (dead) or UPower (that pushes *KIT), or don't work because of recent ACPI changes (battery status is no more in /proc/acpi but in /sys).

Indeed it seems to have gotten very polished in Gentoo lately. In fact, you can run it without xfwm nor xfdesktop nor thunar, which is even nicer. I have modified the session file to use openbox instead of xfwm, and have simply removed xfdesktop (I truly can't understand what icons that live behind a window can be used for, but...). I haven't much against xfwm, except for the fact that it can't even position windows without using an external daemon or tool (following gnome trend here, I guess...). I also edited xflock4 to get alock support, that trivial enough.

That will give you a working session manager, which is not that common, meaning that I can even halt the system without having to hack anything, without a login manager, and without kits or u-things, other than udev.

Other than that, if you don't need panels, I'd suggest either standalone openbox or fvwm as staking wms, and awesome or xmonad (if you don't mind dealing with ghc oddities, that is) as tiling ones.

If you want a full DE and don't want to bother putting the pieces together yourself, then lxde, razorqt, lxde-qt which is the raw fusion of the two former ones, and also these (you'll have to compile them yourself, if that's even possible at all on current Gentoo):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EDE
http://www.trinitydesktop.org/
http://sourceforge.net/p/cdesktopenv/

Dominique_71 · Post by **Dominique_71** » Thu Feb 13, 2014 11:01 pm

Other than that, you try them all and you decide for yourself.