To GUI, or not to GUI

mr_brightside · 2005-10-30 08:43:23

Here's the dilemma:

The programmer in me is desperate for a completely console-based arch system, using ratpoison or ion3 with gnu screen, and having only a couple of gui exceptions (GIMP, Blender). However, the human being in me ( ) is also desperate for something aesthetically pleasing (see my curren desktop www.skewedframe.com/images/screenshots/davedesktop.png ).

What I want to know is, has anyone managed to combine the productivity stemming from a panel-based keyboard-controlled WM with the aesthetically pleasing nature of a nice font or two and a pretty background?

Bring pretty pictures please

High|ander · 2005-10-30 11:30:09

I have tried the same thing, but the problem was that i use to much gui-apps, so it was noo good

smoon · 2005-10-30 11:36:48

Maybe you're looking for a setup like this or that...

corky · 2005-10-30 12:23:00

smoon wrote:

Maybe you're looking for a setup like this or that...

Not viewable unless your a member :?

smoon · 2005-10-30 13:22:35

corky wrote:

smoon wrote:
Maybe you're looking for a setup like this or that...
Not viewable unless your a member :?

Oops, sorry. Try these instead:
http://nooms.de/up/linuxforen-ion.png
http://nooms.de/up/linuxforen-wmii.jpg

Dusty · 2005-10-30 14:26:03

wmii and ion aren't terribly more eye-candyish than ratpoison.... a little, but not much.

Pekwm might do what you need. It doesn't support tiling, but the "fill available space" command comes close, and you can use autoproperties to make windows open in the same place and never overlap. Its what I use, after spending a long time on ion and then wmi and then wmii.

Of course, we're *all* waiting for E17. Just as soon as my hair turns grey.

Dusty

mr_brightside · 2005-10-30 14:48:20

Nice screenies smoon; I particularly like the wmii one... it looks so minimal yet aesthetically pleasing.

I'm interested to hear you use PekWM Dusty... I think I'll give it a shot, since you're not the first person I've heard singing its praises. The thing is, I want something that's really low on resources at the same time as looking simple yet pleasant. How does PekWM do in terms of memory usage etc? I'm a huge openbox fan, since it looks so elegant, yet consumes <1meg of RAM.

E17.... I dunno man. I tried the CVS version, which isn't too buggy (except when it comes to remembering windows settings and icons :? ), but it's a bit too bulky for me. True, it's incredible what they've done, and so streamlined for what it is, but not as streamlined as a truly lightweight WM like FVWM or openbox.

Edit: I keep looking at that wmii screenshot that you posted smoon, and thinking how sweet it looks... I think I might check out wmii first.... basically all I want is the ability to have a nice background, nice but simple window decorations, and a whole lotta workspace. So maybe wmii will suit me? I'll give it a shot.

Are there any other WMs people would suggest? Like I say, if you've got some decent screenies of minimalistic yet nice-looking desktops, I'd love to see 'em.

Legout · 2005-10-30 14:59:45

http://www.skewedframe.com/images/scree … esktop.png

WOW, which WM are u using?What´s this great applauncher?? And where did u get this icons from??

mr_brightside · 2005-10-30 15:23:55

LOL, I can't believe that of all people, YOU legout are telling me my desktop looks great. Your fvwm efforts blew me away; you know the screens using your tiger background? I thought that was seriously sweet. I was delighted to find that you had posted your wallpapers on the site where the screenies were, as well as the fvwm configuration. Very generous of you, although I couldn't get the fvwm configuration to work; I've never tried customizing it before, since I've only used it for about 10 minutes in the past; I extracted your package for settings from early september, and moved it to ~/.fvwmrc, but to no avail.. having installed fvwm, it didn't pick up on ANY of the settings :'( . What else do I need to do? Also, I wondered what panel you were using (pypanel?), as well as what launcherbar on the right; and what's the right-click menu with all the icons? Is that just part of fvwm? I never realised it could look THAT nice

While I'm asking for things, your torsmorc would be nice too...

ANYWAY, in that screenshot I'm using openbox, with adesklets, which provides the launchbar (=modubar or yab), clock (=asimpleclock) and the mounter seen on the top (= mounter). I made a couple of extra icons for the mounter, since it only comes with the cd icons shown... the icons for my launchbar are the best I saw from various packages on www.kde-look.org ; if you want any/all of them, let me know and I'll host them online. Also, there's a PKGBUILD for 'asimpleclock' in aur, but not for mounter or modubar... if you want my PKGBUILDS for them, let me know. I haven't put them in aur, cos I haven't put md5s and a few other things in them.

If you haven't used adesklets before, try it; it's great. It has greater stability than gdesklets and is much less of a system hog, plus everything's SO easy to configure - you just modify the config.txt in /usr/share/adesklets/[desklet]/ . Easy peasy.

smoon · 2005-10-30 15:30:04

mr_brightside wrote:

(...)
Are there any other WMs people would suggest? Like I say, if you've got some decent screenies of minimalistic yet nice-looking desktops, I'd love to see 'em.

I'm currently using FVWM which can be pretty minimalistic too. And I'm almost sure you can make it behave exactly the way you want if you invest some time in configuring it.
http://nooms.de/up/screenshots/2005-10-22.png
http://nooms.de/up/screenshots/2005-10-19.png
http://nooms.de/up/screenshots/2005-10-12.png

smoon · 2005-10-30 15:32:54

mr_brightside wrote:

(...)
I extracted your package for settings from early september, and moved it to ~/.fvwmrc, but to no avail..
(...)

Try extracting it to $HOME/.fvwm without the rc

mr_brightside · 2005-10-30 16:21:35

lol, smoon to the rescue once again.. thanks man

jellywerker · 2005-10-31 05:14:21

dang, that wmii one is nice, I might need to look into it.

Nattydraddy · 2005-11-02 20:01:15

jellywerker wrote:

dang, that wmii one is nice, I might need to look into it.

For all who want to try stuff like wmII, there is a live-cd with a lot of WMs, but no one that is much bigger than ion or wm(II):

from http://grml.org/faq :

grml is a bootable CD (Live-CD) based on Knoppix and Debian. grml includes a collection of GNU/Linux software especially for users of texttools and system administrators. grml provides automatic hardware detection. You can use grml as a rescue system, for analyzing systems/networks or as a working environment. It is not necessary to install anything to a harddisk. Due to on-the-fly decompression grml includes about 2.1 GiB of software and documentation on the CD.

You can find the readme here:

http://grml.org/files/README-0.5.txt

Not that i want to push you away from Archlinux, but it´s a life-cd, so you can safely play around with stuff like wmII without making you archlinux installation to a mess.

mr_brightside · 2005-11-03 10:18:22

I personally have settled on the not-so-subtle efficiency of ratpoison, but that info is useful nonetheless Nattydraddy; always nice to hear of another decent live cd

rose · 2005-11-03 21:20:21

Here is a nice gui tool for command liners:

http://www.gnomefiles.org/app.php?soft_id=453

Komodo · 2006-01-06 19:36:48

rose, that tool is incredibly cool and useful, many thanks for sharing =o)

Komodo

phrakture · 2006-01-06 19:46:01

rose wrote:

Here is a nice gui tool for command liners:
http://www.gnomefiles.org/app.php?soft_id=453

I've actually tried and liked this alot... it's a very nice little app, I just don't use it really.

Kin · 2006-01-11 15:01:45

mr_brightside wrote:

ANYWAY, in that screenshot I'm using openbox, with adesklets, which provides the launchbar (=modubar or yab), clock (=asimpleclock) and the mounter seen on the top (= mounter). I made a couple of extra icons for the mounter, since it only comes with the cd icons shown... the icons for my launchbar are the best I saw from various packages on www.kde-look.org ; if you want any/all of them, let me know and I'll host them online. Also, there's a PKGBUILD for 'asimpleclock' in aur, but not for mounter or modubar... if you want my PKGBUILDS for them, let me know. I haven't put them in aur, cos I haven't put md5s and a few other things in them.
If you haven't used adesklets before, try it; it's great. It has greater stability than gdesklets and is much less of a system hog, plus everything's SO easy to configure - you just modify the config.txt in /usr/share/adesklets/[desklet]/ . Easy peasy.

Hi, it would be great if you could upload your config files, icons, PKGBUILD somewhere...

thanks

Kin

Komodo · 2006-01-11 16:12:24

Sorry Kin, but my desktop looks like phrakture's now; I've been using ratpoison for months, and despite a recent test of the latest openbox release, I'm back on ratpoison again. I haven't got any of the stuff I used for that desktop anymore, I'm sorry.

Everything is very easy to do, you simply need to set aside time to do it. I edited the wallpaper in GIMP, created the extra mounter icons in Inkscape, and the config files for the desklets are easy to modify.

As for conky, if you go to the conky homepage there are many example RC files for it, and I simply modified slightly one of the ones that was there.

HTH.

Arch Linux

#1 2005-10-30 08:43:23

To GUI, or not to GUI

#2 2005-10-30 11:30:09

Re: To GUI, or not to GUI

#3 2005-10-30 11:36:48

Re: To GUI, or not to GUI

#4 2005-10-30 12:23:00

Re: To GUI, or not to GUI

#5 2005-10-30 13:22:35

Re: To GUI, or not to GUI

#6 2005-10-30 14:26:03

Re: To GUI, or not to GUI

#7 2005-10-30 14:48:20

Re: To GUI, or not to GUI

#8 2005-10-30 14:59:45

Re: To GUI, or not to GUI

#9 2005-10-30 15:23:55

Re: To GUI, or not to GUI

#10 2005-10-30 15:30:04

Re: To GUI, or not to GUI

#11 2005-10-30 15:32:54

Re: To GUI, or not to GUI

#12 2005-10-30 16:21:35

Re: To GUI, or not to GUI

#13 2005-10-31 05:14:21

Re: To GUI, or not to GUI

#14 2005-11-02 20:01:15

Re: To GUI, or not to GUI

#15 2005-11-03 10:18:22

Re: To GUI, or not to GUI

#16 2005-11-03 21:20:21

Re: To GUI, or not to GUI

#17 2006-01-06 19:36:48

Re: To GUI, or not to GUI

#18 2006-01-06 19:46:01

Re: To GUI, or not to GUI

#19 2006-01-11 15:01:45

Re: To GUI, or not to GUI

#20 2006-01-11 16:12:24

Re: To GUI, or not to GUI

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