May 2011 Screenshots

mythus · 2011-05-04 16:31:45

Greetings,

After playing with GNOME 3 + Gnome Shell for a little while, I decided to do an experiment. I decided to use KDE and see if I could emulate some of the things I liked about GNOME Shell while replacing the things I did not with KDE tools and configs. Son instead of posting a traditional show off my desktop pic, I thought I'd share some of what I managed to do in a day's time. This is using my 5 year old Toshiba Satellite laptop and I still have more configuring I plan to do with it, but already I feel that it is now more complete, mythus-friendly (friendly to me, may not be to all users), and productive than GNOME 3 + Gnome Shell. I also am finding lower system usage. I know that there are many that don't like KDE in the Archisphere, but maybe this would be helpful to someone.

Anyways, here's the screen shots.

The Workspace/Activities View

In this screenshot I am showing my replication of one of the features I loved in GNOME Shell, the awesome use of workspaces. What I did was using the confgurable screen edges, I made the top left corner the hot spot that causes the desktop grid to come into view. The desktop grid is pretty configurable btw - I opted to do a 4 square grid layout. Now KDE doesn't have a creating the workspaces on a whim function, but that's fine, in this view you'll see a plus and minus icon box towards the bottom right. Clicking on that I could create or remove work spaces as desired. Plus I can set a default amount of work spaces, and even set them with their own widget set, wall paper, and even make them their own activities if desired. I have the added ability to drag and drop open windows from one workspace to another in this view.

Open Applications View, ie, Persistent Windows

In this screenshot I am showing another part of the overall GNome Shell Activities view, the showing of the running apps. This is using the persistent windows kwin effect in KDE4. I have it set to a hot key, ALT + ` (the key above tab). I also have it set to show all running apps on all desktops, but this could be configured to do otherwise. I also have the ability to use ALt Tab to switch between open apps as well.

The Dock

In this screenshot I am showing the Dock. In GNOME Shell the dock was only reachable in the Activities view, which I thought was not very useful but eh. In KDE4, I simply set up an empty panel and put in the traditional Task Manager plasmoid. This plasmoid accepts dropping in apps/programs from menu or wherever, keeping them pinned there for use. It also keeps a taskmanager of opened programs (set at per desktop) for yet another way to see what is running and switch between apps. I have this panel set on auto hide. Now, here is a very interesting aspect that gave me an "Oh nice" moment, if something need my urgent attention, ie, Juk decided it couldn't play a corrupted song file, it pops out with that app highlighted, despite what desktop it was on, letting me now that hey, this needs looking at! That, to me is much more useful than the having to go into activities overlay to deal with the dock.

The Notifications Panel

Call me crazy, but one thing I liked about GNOME Shell is that notification stayed out of the way and were not distracting, yet I could go deal with them if desired. So, as seen in this screenshot, I set up a panel along the bottom, set to autohide. I put the systemtray plasmoid in there, with a spacer to keep it to the right. For added functionality, I put the desktop pager set to 1 row in there as well. Now, notifications pop up in the bottom right corner and go away, and not seeing it there constantly allows me to focus on the task at hand, while easily revealing the panel by throwing my cursor to the bottom. To me this is ideal, and hey, I can always change this to make the panel stay visible if desired.

Low Resource Usage

This screenshot simply shows my idea of low resource usage so that it is understood. What I see is as low resource uage may not be considered as such by others. However it looks like to me that I am using at a minimum 5% less CPU usage than Gnome 3 + Gnome Shell. Plus it also appears to me that my apps are opening much quicker than in Gnome 3 + Gnome Shell.

My conclusion in all of this is that Gnome 3 + Gnome Shell is innovative in that it is showing a new way of doing things, yet this new way can be applied to other existing environments... making me wonder.... is Gnome 3 really innovative, or just a fancy preconfigured setup.

Anyways, I understand that this is a different type of screenshot post, but being that this is a post containing screenshots, the screenshot thread is an appropriate place for it. If not, please accept my appologies. I am not worried about showing off my desktop, but perhaps showing something that can be done that might be helpful for those who like some aspects of Gnome 3 + Gnome Shell, but hate other aspects of it as well.

skrite · 2011-05-04 16:44:06

mythus wrote:

The Dock
http://ompldr.org/tOGp4dQ
In this screenshot I am showing the Dock. In GNOME Shell the dock was only reachable in the Activities view, which I thought was not very useful but eh. In KDE4, I simply set up an empty panel and put in the traditional Task Manager plasmoid. This plasmoid accepts dropping in apps/programs from menu or wherever, keeping them pinned there for use. It also keeps a taskmanager of opened programs (set at per desktop) for yet another way to see what is running and switch between apps. I have this panel set on auto hide. Now, here is a very interesting aspect that gave me an "Oh nice" moment, if something need my urgent attention, ie, Juk decided it couldn't play a corrupted song file, it pops out with that app highlighted, despite what desktop it was on, letting me now that hey, this needs looking at! That, to me is much more useful than the having to go into activities overlay to deal with the dock.
The Notifications Panel
http://ompldr.org/tOGp4dw
Call me crazy, but one thing I liked about GNOME Shell is that notification stayed out of the way and were not distracting, yet I could go deal with them if desired. So, as seen in this screenshot, I set up a panel along the bottom, set to autohide. I put the systemtray plasmoid in there, with a spacer to keep it to the right. For added functionality, I put the desktop pager set to 1 row in there as well. Now, notifications pop up in the bottom right corner and go away, and not seeing it there constantly allows me to focus on the task at hand, while easily revealing the panel by throwing my cursor to the bottom. To me this is ideal, and hey, I can always change this to make the panel stay visible if desired.

great stuff here. I liked the look and feel of Gnome 3, but did not start using it because i still like things a bit more lightweight. Very interesting post, like the dock and notifications the best. very clever

Niamh · 2011-05-04 19:06:22

Openbox with a minimalistic setup. I'm still a noobie so I'm pretty much "patching" things up. Desktop is probably the most representative part of it all

eMKey · 2011-05-05 05:35:45

After Debian screwed up my xfce i installed Arch. And it's preety good. I liked it.

Garr · 2011-05-05 05:47:18

mythus wrote:

Greetings,
...

One question Sir
What is that plasma theme?

JokerBoy · 2011-05-05 05:51:53

Garr, plasma-theme-produkt @ AUR.

Procyon · 2011-05-05 06:20:55

top; gnuplot system monitor
ncmpcpp (40,000 Touhou remixes...); screenfetch
wallpaper

kolbycrouch · 2011-05-05 06:57:17

teh wrote:

http://ompldr.org/tOGlnZg
http://ompldr.org/tOGlnaQ
Gentoo (No X).
tmux.

Very nice.

lswest · 2011-05-05 07:26:36

Arachnid92 wrote:

<...>
And for the terminal, use font colour #fecf35, with Droid Sans Mono

Awesome, thanks!

robrene · 2011-05-05 11:24:19

I haven't posted in a long time. Nothing special here, still using the old gnome:

http://ompldr.org/vOGtjNA

mythus · 2011-05-05 11:27:20

Garr, JokerBoy is correct. It is the product plasma theme, though I didn't get it from AUR, I just used the Get New Plasma Theme button lol. Color Scheme is product-light.

Last edited by mythus (2011-05-05 11:27:59)

dwindle · 2011-05-05 16:16:13

chneukirchen wrote:

dwindle wrote:
roxterm (cause urxvt doesn't play well with rio anymore and aterm doesn't like utf8)
What, no 9term? (I have a PKGBUILD of the old libXg one at https://github.com/chneukirchen/pkgbuil … ter/9term)

Haha. I would if it wasn't for how poorly it handles termapps (no fault of its own, really. limited paradigms in the programs themselves). Settled on

Eterm --scrollbar=off --trans --shade 50 --font-fx "none" --buttonbar off --font lime -f "#DDDDDD" -c "#FF00FF" &

as my terminal. Less dependencies than roxterm and no antialiasing.

Procyon wrote:

http://ompldr.org/tOGs3eg
top; gnuplot system monitor
ncmpcpp (40,000 Touhou remixes...); screenfetch
wallpaper

gnuplot is neat.

And Mythus! Great job. I knew gnome3 was fishy XD

Crunch · 2011-05-05 20:07:51

New dual monitors and a fresh install, still need to find a better (preferably) dual screen wallpaper, and work on a new color scheme.

Still using WMFS.

Woofie · 2011-05-05 20:28:10

Crunch wrote:

New dual monitors and a fresh install, still need to find a better (preferably) dual screen wallpaper, and work on a new color scheme.
Still using WMFS.
http://ompldr.org/tOGtraw

Wallpaper please

Crunch · 2011-05-05 20:35:02

Woofie wrote:

Crunch wrote:
New dual monitors and a fresh install, still need to find a better (preferably) dual screen wallpaper, and work on a new color scheme.
Still using WMFS.
http://ompldr.org/tOGtraw
Wallpaper please

I found it earlier today, lol.
http://deaviantwatcher.deviantart.com/a … -204614393

sujoy · 2011-05-05 21:33:30

sam87 wrote:

after hating and wondering why on earth anyone would use a font this small...i've fallen in love with it..sigh
http://ompldr.org/vOGptcw

link to wallpaper please

MickST · 2011-05-05 23:57:24

robrene wrote:

I haven't posted in a long time. Nothing special here, still using the old gnome.

Could you tell us what GTK and Metacity themes are you using in the screenshot?

MickST · 2011-05-06 00:02:32

sam87 wrote:

after hating and wondering why on earth anyone would use a font this small...i've fallen in love with it..sigh

What font are you using? Looks nice!

I was a Gnome 2 user until the recent update, and although I don't dislike the new Gnome 3 I always wanted to try something more subtle, more... "raw" (don't really know how to put it in words). Seeing your screenshot I feel it's going to be a great to try new things! Could you tell us what programs are seen in there please?

iRmonkD · 2011-05-06 04:20:37

Hello... I haven't been here for awhile... not much new going on... added a basic right click menu changed fonts and decided to go dark on white theme/terminal... AwesomeWM forever... All borrowed from different people in the community... Thanks guys!

Clean

Dirty

neurolysis · 2011-05-06 06:14:23

iRmonkD wrote:

Hello... I haven't been here for awhile... not much new going on... added a basic right click menu changed fonts and decided to go dark on white theme/terminal... AwesomeWM forever... All borrowed from different people in the community... Thanks guys!
Clean
http://ompldr.org/tOGtxMA
Dirty
http://ompldr.org/tOGtxMQ

Nice!

Could I have a copy of the configs for this? I checked your github, but it seems it was last updated in Jan (maybe out of date)?

Also, is that pcmanfm in the bottom right, or what?

Redostrike · 2011-05-06 09:38:55

Just got back to linux after a while and building my arch:

busy:

"clean":

- Dual monitor setup (duh)
- Openbox
- xterm @ xcompmgr
- bmpanel2

Need to config bmpanel2 more, some menu making for openbox right click menu, conky needs to be there soon, xterm needs some configuration, bash needs to be configed (oh boy alot of things to do).

nitneuq65 · 2011-05-06 13:50:28

karabaja4 wrote:

http://andromeda.kiwilight.com/~dule/upload/shot_may_thumb.png

Nice ! what is the clock ?

sam87 · 2011-05-06 14:49:01

sujoy wrote:

sam87 wrote:
after hating and wondering why on earth anyone would use a font this small...i've fallen in love with it..sigh
http://ompldr.org/vOGptcw

link to wallpaper please

MickST wrote:

sam87 wrote:
after hating and wondering why on earth anyone would use a font this small...i've fallen in love with it..sigh
What font are you using? Looks nice!
I was a Gnome 2 user until the recent update, and although I don't dislike the new Gnome 3 I always wanted to try something more subtle, more... "raw" (don't really know how to put it in words). Seeing your screenshot I feel it's going to be a great to try new things! Could you tell us what programs are seen in there please?

the wallpaper is here: http://ompldr.org/vOGt4Mg
And the apps,ncmpcpp, dzen2+conky-cli(status bar), i think i specified that already on the screenshot, anyway, and I'm using montecarlo as my font, both on the terminal and the status bar.

Merkil · 2011-05-06 16:07:44

Clean :

Busy :

Arch x86_64, Openbox, tint2, urxvt, mplayer, irssi, thunar, xcompmgr

robrene · 2011-05-06 17:29:36

MickST wrote:

robrene wrote:
I haven't posted in a long time. Nothing special here, still using the old gnome.
Could you tell us what GTK and Metacity themes are you using in the screenshot?

GTK theme is elementary from the AUR (https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=34404)
The Metacity theme is Alun Dark (http://hcalves.deviantart.com/art/Alun- … -101191123)

The icon theme is the default gnome icon theme, enriched with some of my own customizations. The pretty clock in the top right corner is done by editing a gconf key, as described here: http://www.bomahy.nl/hylke/blog/pretty-gnome-clock/
That should cover most of it.

Arch Linux

#76 2011-05-04 16:31:45

Re: May 2011 Screenshots

#77 2011-05-04 16:44:06

Re: May 2011 Screenshots

#78 2011-05-04 19:06:22

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#79 2011-05-05 05:35:45

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#80 2011-05-05 05:47:18

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#81 2011-05-05 05:51:53

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#82 2011-05-05 06:20:55

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#83 2011-05-05 06:57:17

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#84 2011-05-05 07:26:36

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#85 2011-05-05 11:24:19

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#86 2011-05-05 11:27:20

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#87 2011-05-05 16:16:13

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#88 2011-05-05 20:07:51

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#89 2011-05-05 20:28:10

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#90 2011-05-05 20:35:02

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#91 2011-05-05 21:33:30

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#92 2011-05-05 23:57:24

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#93 2011-05-06 00:02:32

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#94 2011-05-06 04:20:37

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#95 2011-05-06 06:14:23

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#96 2011-05-06 09:38:55

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#97 2011-05-06 13:50:28

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