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#1 2004-04-14 00:04:08

Dusty
Schwag Merchant
From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
Registered: 2004-01-18
Posts: 5,986
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A perfect WM?

punkrockguy318 wrote:

I disagree with no decent WMs.  That's what I love about Linux!  So many WM's to choose from.  XFCE4, KDE, IceWM, fluxbox... and many many more!

Pardon me. yes, XFCE4 and fluxbox are "decent" WMs.... I'm talking about the perfect WM.  They all have flaws that seem to interfere with getting work done. The command line is as productive as any WM (some would say more so), but it has flaws too.

Of course, there is no such thing as perfect software, but when I have firefox for web browsing, jEdit *and* vim for text editing and Arch for configuration and package management, I find that window managers are just a little bit behind what I consider useful.

I'm using fluxbox-devel... pretty happy, but not satisfied with it. smile

*pardon me for hijacking*

I'm sticking with kdm because I need kppp anyway. WVDial keeps disconnecting me and I can't find any other dialers.  Later I'll learn how to customize XDM. wink

Dusty

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#2 2004-04-14 00:38:50

aCoder
Member
From: Medina, OH
Registered: 2004-03-07
Posts: 359
Website

Re: A perfect WM?

I tried building entrance on arch once, but it was taking too long for me, since it requires all the E foundation libs, and there isn't any good docs yet, so I'm going to wait for a release, but if anyone else wants to build it, good luck!


If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience.
  - John Cage

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#3 2004-04-14 14:43:55

Dusty
Schwag Merchant
From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
Registered: 2004-01-18
Posts: 5,986
Website

Re: A perfect WM?

I'd say you'd better start with kde as a window manager:

pacman -S kdebase kdenetwork

edit /etc/inittab

change this

id:3:initdefault:

to

id:5:initdefault:

and the last line to

x:5:respawn:/opt/kde/bin/kdm

Once you get logged in, use kppp to configure a dialup connection.

If you need a dialup connection from console, try wvdial. Only it doesn't seem to work for me. wink

As an aside, this question should probably have been posted in a separate thread, and you might have found the answers by searching first. smile

Dusty

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#4 2004-04-14 23:09:45

BigBadPenguin
Member
From: Toronto, Canada
Registered: 2004-03-03
Posts: 51

Re: A perfect WM?

Dusty wrote:

I'm using fluxbox-devel... pretty happy, but not satisfied with it. smile

Have you tried kahakai? Apart from the headache of the theme format I'm very satisfied with it. Very extensible and very pretty (since before flux did translucent menus).
Anyway, if anyone is sticking with GDM I've made an arch theme that might interest you. It's here (screenshot)

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#5 2004-04-14 23:30:21

Dusty
Schwag Merchant
From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
Registered: 2004-01-18
Posts: 5,986
Website

Re: A perfect WM?

BigBadPenguin wrote:
Dusty wrote:

I'm using fluxbox-devel... pretty happy, but not satisfied with it. smile

Have you tried kahakai? Apart from the headache of the theme format I'm very satisfied with it. Very extensible and very pretty (since before flux did translucent menus).

I've considered it, but I can't find a package. :oops:  I found forum posts where contrasutra had been maintaining it but...

I want to try it are because it supports python scripting (which I'm just learning). Maybe I'll get around to building a package if this post doesn't con a PKGBUILD out of someone... smile

On the other hand, Fluxbox-devel from unstable is almost good enough for me.  I just downloaded it yesterday.

Part of my problem is screen real estate, I think... need a bigger lcd. wink

Dusty

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#6 2004-04-15 00:12:27

BigBadPenguin
Member
From: Toronto, Canada
Registered: 2004-03-03
Posts: 51

Re: A perfect WM?

Dusty wrote:

I've considered it, but I can't find a package. :oops:  I found forum posts where contrasutra had been maintaining it but...

RIght, I forgot about the lack of packages. The problem is, for kahakai to compile on Arch, you need to patch Xft.h, or at least I had to. The fix was to add
#include <ft2build.h>
#include FT_FREETYPE_H

before:
#include <freetype/freetype.h>
but looking at the file, the line #include <freetype/freetype.h>  isn't there anymore, so maybe this has been fixed in xfree 4.4. I think the reason contrasutra hasn't updated his package is because kahakai simply wouldn't build and run on a setup without this patch. Here's the PKGBUILD i used if you still want to give it a try.

pkgname=kahakai
pkgver=0.6.2
pkgrel=1
pkgdesc=""An extremely cool window manager for X based on the (dead?) Waimea Window Manager." Only the new version. ;)"
url=""
depends=(xfree86 boost python swig)
makedepends=()
conflicts=()
replaces=()
backup=()
install=
source=($pkgname-$pkgver.tar.bz2)
md5sums=('84f1501035d1fbab7eb46121a47b0dd8')

build() {
  cd $startdir/src/$pkgname-$pkgver
  ./configure --prefix=/usr
  make || return 1
  make prefix=$startdir/pkg/usr install
}

You have to download the tar.bz from sourceforge first.

I want to try it are because it supports python scripting (which I'm just learning). Maybe I'll get around to building a package if this post doesn't con a PKGBUILD out of someone... smile

quite wink

Part of my problem is screen real estate, I think... need a bigger lcd. wink

I hear you, have the same problem, that's why the 9 screens per desktop are so handy. Hope it works for you!

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#7 2004-04-15 15:48:19

Dusty
Schwag Merchant
From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
Registered: 2004-01-18
Posts: 5,986
Website

Re: A perfect WM?

BigBadPenguin wrote:

Here's the PKGBUILD i used if you still want to give it a try.

Thanks, I think I might try it, though I don't have time to fiddle with patching. I'll try it on X4.4 and if it crashes I'll give up. :-D

Part of my problem is screen real estate, I think... need a bigger lcd. wink

I hear you, have the same problem, that's why the 9 screens per desktop are so handy. Hope it works for you!

Flux already gives me multiple desktops, but it still seems dificult to keep organized. I'm researching various ways of organizing windows and applications. It sucks if I have my editor on one desktop, and my browser on another if I'm editing html and looking up some sort of css code that I don't recall... Then I have to send an e-mail to somebody and that's another desktop. It just doesn't work properly. Yet.

So as not to appear to by hijacking this thread (rasat would ban me, I'm sure... wink) I'm interested in a faster dm, terminal mode type thing too.  I'd be glad to work on it with somebody if they start it and don't do it in C. :-D

Maybe python, eh? chance for me to learn it, plus it seems well suited to a shell manager...

Dusty

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#8 2004-05-31 18:03:22

Dusty
Schwag Merchant
From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
Registered: 2004-01-18
Posts: 5,986
Website

Re: A perfect WM?

fasmaie wrote:

I love Ion!

You can be my friend, fellow weirdo. smile

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