Re: [gentoo-user] Slightly OT: favorite window manager/desktop environ?

[Holly Bostick]

Steve B schreef:
> On 9/1/05, *Matt Garman* <garman@××××××××××.net
> <mailto:garman@××××××××××.net>> wrote:
>
>
> Before this gets into a flame war, let's just operate under the
> assertion that the "best" window manager/desktop environment is
> strictly a matter of personal preference.
>
> So, having said that, what window manager do you use, and why?
>

All right, I'm good and sick of all the answers in this thread being
'how cool is KDE', so, for something completely different:

I use Openbox (3). I was a GNOME user for a long time, and I do have
GNOME installed, and I do use a lot of GNOME/GTK programs (wherever
possible, actually; I very much dislike KDE for a number of reasons).

However, if I felt KDE was bloated (and I do), GNOME wasn't much better
in that regard-- or at least not enough better to satisfy me. Nautilus
is fairly useless for the way I like to manage files. I don't like
desktop icons. In fact, all I really liked about The GNOME Desktop (as
opposed to GNOME applications) was gnome-panel, which is quite cool for
a full-featured panel.

Then one day I happened on a forum thread about OB 3. It's a window
manager. And that's about it.... OK, you get a dock, if you want to use
it. Everything else, you get to configure yourself... but it's a lot
easier than FVWM.

Right-click on the desktop for the main menu--- *your* main menu,
created by you from an xml file. Keybindings and mouse bindings up the
wazoo. Undecorate windows at will. Scroll through your desktops with the
mouse wheel (on the desktop, on the panel, if you use pypanel like me),
or again, set up keybindings to switch desktops as well. Send your
windows to any desktop, and follow them there-- or
don't. With devilspie, do any or all of the above automatically. Use
whatever panel you like.

Or replace GNOME/KDE/ROX's WMs (metacity, kwin, whatever ROX uses) with
Openbox, and use all of OB's features  with your favorite DE.

One week, I might sit down with FVWM and see if it can top OB when you
really start using all OB's features, but I honestly don't see any reason
to put such an intensive study date on my agenda atm. I'm having too
much fun looking through all the stuff I was never able to use before
because my DE got in the way.

OB isn't perfect, and it's by no means as flashy as E (what could be),
but its not ugly like FVWM is out-of-the-box, its easy to start working
with, you can use programs from any DE or WM with it (except maybe
peksystray, which didn't work for me when I tried it some time ago), and
you can set it up so it works with the way you actually work-- not only
in terms of key and mouse bindings, and in terms of the fact that you
can use the helper apps that you find most comfortable to use, rather
than the ones the DE foists on you, but in terms of the helper apps that
become available to you. Not that you can't use devilspie and asbutton
under KDE or GNOME, but who really ever does?

Because all the utility programs your average DE comes with aren't
included, I went looking, and now I've got all kinds of neat stuff that
I never knew about before. Conky is the newest. I like it, not least
because it replaced several dockapps. That was a blessing, as the dock was
getting a bit bulky with all of the cool monitors and the 4 asbuttons
that allow me to launch any one of *108* applications in a 64*256px
space (9 launchers per button, each launcher can launch up to 3 apps
depending on which mouse button is used to click it-- and I don't have
to run Afterstep to use it, which is the best part imo, no offense to AS).

All of that fading and highlighting and other glitz is all very nice,
but I'm more
impressed by functionalities that help me work faster because I set them
up to work with me, rather than learning to work the way they tell me.

But, "'each to his own taste,' said the lady as she kissed the cow," as
my mother used to say (no idea where she got that from).

Holly
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