[Solved] No busy cursor shows

duyinthee · 2015-06-20 15:30:35

dwm + arch very good but no busy cursor shows during application launch waiting time. Googling all day no solution.

Last edited by duyinthee (2015-06-22 05:13:10)

Head_on_a_Stick · 2015-06-20 19:07:39

How are you setting your cursor?

Which cursor theme are you using?

Trilby · 2015-06-20 19:15:32

huh? I've never had a 'busy' cursor on linux. It may be because I've never experienced linux to be to busy to do what I tell it to, or because I don't use a DE. But if anything is to set a busy cursor, it would have to be either a DE, or a program which specifically sets it while it starts up - though the latter would be a bad behavior as client programs should only set the cursor for their window.

So in short, if you are using dwm, what do you think should set this busy cursor?

duyinthee · 2015-06-21 01:47:51

Firefox takes at least 2 second for the first time launch after system boot up. Cursor should be spinning at that time because I repeat launching firefox many time.

thiagowfx · 2015-06-21 01:56:30

Trilby wrote:

huh? I've never had a 'busy' cursor on linux. It may be because I've never experienced linux to be to busy to do what I tell it to, or because I don't use a DE.

this

--

But yeah, I think Trilby is right. I don't have any busy cursors too while I'm using i3 but on KDE I do. It probably depends on your WM*

*better yet, on your DE; and if you're not using a DE, but a WM...no cursor

duyinthee · 2015-06-21 05:15:20

Ohh .... so is there any way to show a message during application launch busy time on dwm's top bar using xsetroot -name xxxxxxxxxx.

ayekat · 2015-06-21 12:24:03

You would need to patch dwm to do so.
But then again, how is dwm supposed to know when the application has finished "launching"? dwm's application "launching" is pretty bare-bones: fork and exec.

I'll make a wild guess that DEs like GNOME are just setting the cursor appearance for a "busy" system according to the system's CPU usage (I mean - how else would you track applications that have not been launched through the DE's means, but otherwise, e.g. a shell?)

What kind of program are you using that would need a "busy launching" indicator, anyway? If I run a heavy application (and that doesn't happen very often), I see that my CPU usage is going up, and that's enough for me.

Trilby · 2015-06-21 12:26:29

ayekat wrote:

I'll make a wild guess that DEs like GNOME are just setting the cursor appearance for a "busy" system according to the system's CPU usage (I mean - how else would you track applications that have not been launched through the DE's means, but otherwise, e.g. a shell?)

I doubt that is what they do. I suspect the DE also couldn't change the cursor if the heavy app was launched from the command line. But if it is launched from a .desktop file (which it often would be in a DE) then the DE can listen for an event of when what program's main window is displayed.

Ironically, the code to handle all this just makes the whole process slower. This is one of many reasons I don't use a DE. With a DE, you can get indicators when simple processes are taking a long time. Without a DE, you avoid all the cruft that makes simple processes take a long time.

ayekat · 2015-06-21 14:33:01

Trilby wrote:

I doubt that is what they do. I suspect the DE also couldn't change the cursor if the heavy app was launched from the command line. But if it is launched from a .desktop file (which it often would be in a DE) then the DE can listen for an event of when what program's main window is displayed.

Ah, that makes more sense - and would allow not having to poll the CPU usage (and I guess there aren't many people launching things from a command line in a DE).
... been too long since I've used a DE.

EDIT
So if you were to patch dwm, you'd need to add data structures for keeping track of processes that are forked from dwm, and associate each appearing window to the corresponding process in order to determine whether to show a "busy" cursor or a normal one.

May I say that this goes pretty much against the pricincple of dwm of keeping out superfluous features?

... but then again, "superfluous" is subjective, and dwm is made for people patching it to fit their needs, and while having a "busy cursor" in dwm may not seem useful for the big part of dwm users, you are free to patch it whatever way you like, and that's the beauty of a hackable WM

Last edited by ayekat (2015-06-21 14:51:07)

duyinthee · 2015-06-22 05:12:49

Ok, I have changed my mind.
I can't do a lot for a "busy cursor" at the expense of performance.
The reason why I use WM over DE is performance and simplicity.

Arch Linux

#1 2015-06-20 15:30:35

[Solved] No busy cursor shows

#2 2015-06-20 19:07:39

Re: [Solved] No busy cursor shows

#3 2015-06-20 19:15:32

Re: [Solved] No busy cursor shows

#4 2015-06-21 01:47:51

Re: [Solved] No busy cursor shows

#5 2015-06-21 01:56:30

Re: [Solved] No busy cursor shows

#6 2015-06-21 05:15:20

Re: [Solved] No busy cursor shows

#7 2015-06-21 12:24:03

Re: [Solved] No busy cursor shows

#8 2015-06-21 12:26:29

Re: [Solved] No busy cursor shows

#9 2015-06-21 14:33:01

Re: [Solved] No busy cursor shows

#10 2015-06-22 05:12:49

Re: [Solved] No busy cursor shows

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