LInux window manager discussion

[Shudder]

Is it just me or is KDE the worst POS ever? I have nothing but problems in this thing.

But I switched to gnome and currently use sawfish with it.. Enlightenment seems ok, but at 3am it was irritating me with automatically switching to the next desktop when you went to the edge of the screen. Litestep had this, but I could shut it off easily.

At any rate, I like Gnome a lot and I REALLY like it's "File association" setup.. Do the "Open with.." and you can enter it and control what ever extension gets opened by, and it's a heck of a lot easier to deal with than even window's. Kde just screws everything up for some reason.. half the time it won't load xmms.. it's built in media player stutters like a mofo.

I'll probably look into non-gnome ones like Blackbox or other lite/afterstep looking ones. Anyone have comments, tips, or suggestions?

 

[nd]

My first suggestion is for you to learn the correct terminology so people know what you're talking about.

GNOME and KDE are desktop environments, not window managers. KDE uses the kwm window manager, and GNOME used to not "ship" (using the term loosely) with a window manager (but it recently adopted sawfish as the official gnome WM).

Enlightenment is technically a window manager, but comes with a whole lot of non-WM things (straying from the original goal). Blackbox is a Window Manager. How to tell the difference? A window manager manages windows. Your file manager or desktop has little to do with that.

 

[Shudder]

Well, I just figured KDE was a big mess all in itself.

So gnome's the desktop environment, the other things are the WMs..

 

[Kadesh]

I like Blackbox© Get bbkeys, bbpager, and aterm ¥transparency for the rest of us¤ and it's just like Enlightenment with Eterm, you just can't have pixmap themes ¥like Bluesteel¤©

If I had to drop that, I'd probably go back to Enlightenment but I've given up on all DE's© Yeah, even XFce, which looks like crap btw©

To disable edge flip ¥cursor at edge of screen goes to next workspace¤, go to your virtual desktop settings and customize the way you like© You can turn it off or set a delay©

Here's a link to a screenshot ¥with my custom theme, based on "binary"¤© Link© If anyone can tell me how to get rid of that thin white line around the active window, I'd be really thankful© I can't set the color and if I set the size to 0, it defaults to 3©

 

[MGMorden]

Personally I love KDE and hate Gnome. It feels like a big glued together kludge to me. I like windowmaker and fvwm a lot when I'm feeling minimal. But then again that's the beauty of Linux. Just choose the one you like and everyone is happy.

 

[Bremen]

Unfortunately both KDE and GNOME seem to suffer from the same problem imho. They got it into their collective heads that they needed to offer all the features windows does (and then some). Unfortunately one of the features they both seem to add is windows penchant for slowing down even the fastest hardware to a crawl :-(

That said I am also looking into other WMers. I'll have to try BlackBox out.

 

[Shudder]

Bremen: You're pretty damned right.

It's just that right now I feel Gnome is less there than KDE. KDE wants to be windows and then some. I think it runs like garbage personally. KDE's media player can't even do mp3's in full speed on my pathetically slow 850 duron. (xmms has NO problems).

God I loved litestep, so I can totally see myself moving to some step or blackbox WM real soon.. it's just a matter of sitting down and configuring it that sucks But I'm a bit better now and can actually find where executables are so that shouldn't be as big a problem for me.

 

[n0cmonkey]

<< Unfortunately both KDE and GNOME seem to suffer from the same problem imho. They got it into their collective heads that they needed to offer all the features windows does (and then some). Unfortunately one of the features they both seem to add is windows penchant for slowing down even the fastest hardware to a crawl :-(

That said I am also looking into other WMers. I'll have to try BlackBox out. >>



Please do. Blackbox is the best window manager I can find. I have used it for a little under a year (around 2 OpenBSD releases) and IceWM before that. On linux I used KDE because gnome would not work. But that was a while ago. I installed BB because people recommended it and I have not turned back since

 

[smp]

kadesh. That's some nice desktop goin. Enable your PM's, I wanted to ask you about that desktop.

 

[Bremen]

<< Please do. Blackbox is the best window manager I can find. >>


Will do, I'm going to be reinstalling linux as soon as slackware 8.0 comes out (as I learn the system better I find it is periodically adviseable to flush out all the cruft I've left lying around through ignorance :0)

I'll post a review on the forum for ya :0)

 

[n0cmonkey]

<<

<< Please do. Blackbox is the best window manager I can find. >>


Will do, I'm going to be reinstalling linux as soon as slackware 8.0 comes out (as I learn the system better I find it is periodically adviseable to flush out all the cruft I've left lying around through ignorance :0)

I'll post a review on the forum for ya :0) >>



Yeah, I would love to know how slack 8 is. Slack is the only linux I can really get a handle on.

 

[MGMorden]

You can download the slackware-current tree right now if you want. I use it for daily use and it's perfectly stable. Just doens't have a version # attached to it.

 

[Bremen]

I'm mirroring slackware-current myself, however I don't want to start really tackling it until I'm sure they're not going to update something and cuz me any headaches.

 

[n0cmonkey]

<< You can download the slackware-current tree right now if you want. I use it for daily use and it's perfectly stable. Just doens't have a version # attached to it. >>



I dont have an extra machine right now. If I did I would consider it. I have to try and bring my OpenBSD installation on my test machine to -current so I can play with the new packet filter...

 

[erikistired]

windowmaker is nice.

~erik