kind of at a crossroads

low · 2008-06-21 00:51:43

I've been using Arch Linux for quite some time, first it was Gentoo but it sucked so I've been with Arch since. Anyway, first I used KDE on Gentoo, it also sucked. Too much stuff without enough functionality and it had crap performance. Then I went to XFCE with Arch, liked it more, but it lacked a lot of features of, say, Gnome which is what I use now. Don't get me wrong, I love Gnome, but I'm kind of getting tired of the interface. I see all the screenshots of some pretty sweet setups using Awesome, FVWM, openbox etc. and I get a little jealous. For example, http://gigamlol.deviantart.com/art/Awes … t-76116638 is very elegant and appealing. My interface is basically a mock winblows setup. I've tinkered with openbox and fluxbox but found setting it up to be too time consuming and kind of a chore.

So I'm asking for suggestions. Here are some things I take into account:

-I'm a fan of moderate eyecandy. I like compiz-fusion, in fact I would hate to be without compiz-fusion, but a compositing manager is a must.
-I'm willing to spend time on configs if there is good documentation and doesn't require learning haskell (I plan on getting around to it eventually... but for now no xmonad unless there is a compelling argument).
-I still think I'll be using Gnome, I like the integration and some stuff like laptop power management just work like they should, although I haven't tried anything else. Again, any compelling arguments?

low

Last edited by low (2008-06-21 01:18:25)

peets · 2008-06-21 01:30:14

compiz-fusion is a window manager itself. So I guess what satisfies your requests is gnome+compiz. There's a wiki article about setting that up if you need.

If you want usability with no configuration, please try wmii. It's a window manager that manages windows in an ergonomic way (at least I find).

I'm the crazy guy who's learning Haskell to get xmonad to behave the way he wants to.

Misfit138 · 2008-06-21 02:47:52

I'm using openbox with pypanel.

Feather-light compared to Xfce, GNOME, KDE, yet as beautiful or minimal as you wish. I highly recommend it.

Berticus · 2008-06-21 11:45:22

You're asking for way too much. You want the GNOME desktop environment and you want it to work with a minimal window manager because it's different and looks cool. Yet you want eye-candy like compiz-fusion. You've got some conflicting paradigms there. I suggest you really think about what you want.

low · 2008-06-21 18:21:20

Berticus wrote:

You're asking for way too much. You want the GNOME desktop environment and you want it to work with a minimal window manager because it's different and looks cool. Yet you want eye-candy like compiz-fusion. You've got some conflicting paradigms there. I suggest you really think about what you want.

I kind of realized that after I re-read my post. I'm thinking about moving away from Gnome and building something of my own. I'm not really sure where to start though since all I've ever used are fully integrated DE's, especially since I need things like laptop power management and wireless networking.

Last edited by low (2008-06-21 18:28:37)

Berticus · 2008-06-21 18:34:23

I'm in a similar boat as you. I plan to go straight to either xmonad or awesome, but won't have any sort of "transition period." I'll probably install both on there, see which one I like best, and then use that one almost exclusively. I've already tried xmonad, and like a lot. Xmonad, awesome are excellent for tiling. Then there are window managers that follow more of a WIMP paradigm, I believe openbox would fit in there, I know blackbox definitely goes in that category and so does fluxbox.

Here's a little guide on window managers (also includes different desktop environments): http://xwinman.org
It's a little behind, but I guess that's what happens when you try to document all window managers and desktop environments available to nix.

Last edited by Berticus (2008-06-21 18:35:25)

tigrmesh · 2008-06-21 18:34:55

For wireless networking, try netcfg2.

fflarex · 2008-06-21 18:43:56

You can still have power management without gnome or kde, look at the wiki pages for cpufreq and pm-utils. The only thing you won't get with these is some kind of display to see how much charge your battery has, however there are other programs you do this with (such as conky or the status bar in awesome). Also, I'd like to add to tigrmesh's suggestion and say that wicd would also be very good, minimal wireless solution, and it would probably be easier to use than netcfg2 if you're used to networkmanager.

Gullible Jones · 2008-06-21 18:50:56

Try OBGnome - Openbox + Gnome. Openbox should even create a session file for that on install. For visual effects you'd be stuck with xcompmgr, but that's actually not so bad; it used to be slow but it's quite fast with the current version of X.

Or you could use compiz plugins - there's an openbox-style menu for Compiz, IIRC, and a bunch of other stuff. Some allow you to go without Gnome's panel. (AWN also can replace the panel, though I don't like it because it requires GL compositing.)

Alternatively, you could use XFCE with Gnome services and apps; you wouldn't have to have the whole of Gnome installed, and XFCE has a composite manager and can actually look pretty good these days. The biggest visual problem with XFCE is probably lack of compatible icons (and seriously ugly fallback icons), and that's (finally) starting to disappear.

I wouldn't recommend E17 at this point. On its own, it's usable, but not very functional, as a lot of stuff is incomplete or getting rewritten. The file manager in particular is unusable right now - it is missing many features, such as cut/copy/paste and drag-and-drop support.

Last edited by Gullible Jones (2008-06-21 18:52:04)

Tenken · 2008-06-21 18:54:20

Maybe LXDE is what your looking for, light weight and easier to configure. You can then add things like netcgf2, xcompmgr, etc. as you find you need them.

skottish · 2008-06-21 19:16:57

Gullible Jones wrote:

I wouldn't recommend E17 at this point. On its own, it's usable, but not very functional, as a lot of stuff is incomplete or getting rewritten. The file manager in particular is unusable right now - it is missing many features, such as cut/copy/paste and drag-and-drop support.

EFM is definitely not real useful, but almost everything else is working perfectly. A lot of modules that "come with" E17 are third party add-ons, and have nothing to do with E17 itself. I've had no problems in a long time. Then again, I only use one module that isn't from E17: TClock.

low · 2008-06-22 02:18:59

I installed openbox for starts, just cause I've done it before and I wanted something I'm more familiar with instead of adjusting to awesome... maybe I'll try both a little later.

A conky, pypanel, visibility combination seems pretty sweet, but I feel bad every time I 'pacman -S' something because it draws a lot of dependencies. Openbox seems to make me want to stay light. Are there any good tutorials for customizing these? I feel like picking through the forums for theme examples might be the best way.

Also, where is a good place to start from a pure openbox desktop? I've installed obconf, got some lcd fonts compiled and am currently compiling firefox-spookyet. I feel like I don't know what to do next since I'm used to having all the basics like automounting a usb drive, or for that matter, a file manager.

Misfit138 · 2008-06-22 02:44:48

low wrote:

I installed openbox for starts, just cause I've done it before and I wanted something I'm more familiar with instead of adjusting to awesome... maybe I'll try both a little later.
A conky, pypanel, visibility combination seems pretty sweet, but I feel bad every time I 'pacman -S' something because it draws a lot of dependencies. Openbox seems to make me want to stay light. Are there any good tutorials for customizing these? I feel like picking through the forums for theme examples might be the best way.
Also, where is a good place to start from a pure openbox desktop? I've installed obconf, got some lcd fonts compiled and am currently compiling firefox-spookyet. I feel like I don't know what to do next since I'm used to having all the basics like automounting a usb drive, or for that matter, a file manager.

Try PCmanfm or thunar for file managers. ROX is even lighter, but I find it clunky.
Also, install tilda for a nice drop-down terminal. Unlike yakuake, it has no KDE/qt dependencies.

low · 2008-06-22 03:13:16

What did you do for session management? Also, is dmenu useful?

Misfit138 · 2008-06-22 03:50:47

Slim and gmrun.
Did you check out the openbox wiki entry? It's quite good.

dunc · 2008-06-24 01:33:22

Misfit138 wrote:

Try PCmanfm or thunar for file managers. ROX is even lighter, but I find it clunky.

Each to his own... I find everything (on Linux) except ROX clunky. Konqueror's okay, I suppose.

low mentioned automounting. One of the things I really like about ROX is that if you double-click a mountpoint (defined in fstab) it tries to mount the device, then when you no longer have any ROX windows looking at that device it asks if you want to unmount it. I find that so much simpler to manage (dare I say KISS? ) than automounting.

But as I said, each to his own. If you want something familiar, PCManFM and Thunar are the way to go. Just don't let Misfit138 put you off ROX until you've tried it.

Berticus · 2008-06-24 02:33:16

Correction: to each his own. Each to his own goes more along the lines of people taking their own things. Like boxers going to their own corners, or the crew members on a ship manning their stations. To each his own, on the other hand, means everybody has their own preference.

Anyway, how is it that you find everything on Linux clunky? I thought xmonad, links2 (without the -g option), vim, xdvi, spice, nutmeg, gcc/g++, and a bunch of other programs were rather well made and not clunky at all. Very slim and does one job very well.

dunc wrote:

low mentioned automounting. One of the things I really like about ROX is that if you double-click a mountpoint (defined in fstab) it tries to mount the device, then when you no longer have any ROX windows looking at that device it asks if you want to unmount it. I find that so much simpler to manage (dare I say KISS? ) than automounting.

To me, that sounds like a lot more automount/auto-unmounting than just using ivman, hal and dbus. Quite frankly, I would find that quite annoying. I'll unmount something when I'm good and ready to unmount it! What I plan to do is just, since I'm going to have the terminal open anyway, type in

$ mount /dev/sde

or whatever, the rules in fstab will take care of the rest. Personally I find that rather easy. When I'm done, all I do is:

$ umount /mnt/usb0

That's pretty close to the KISS paradigm, I think. No extra packages required or anything. Well, I mean you need udev, but that's required no matter which route you take, I should think.

Misfit138 · 2008-06-24 03:22:28

ROX is just one step beyond what I am comfortable with right now, I guess.
I am past the konqueror/nautilus stage, comfortable in the thunar/pcman stage, but looking to the ROX stage as a possible future venture.
I am also past GNOME/KDE/Xfce, in the OpenBox stage, possibly looking to Awesome in the future...but maybe not. LXDE looks interesting since it seems to offer an expedient way of getting an openbox system up and running.

iBertus · 2008-06-24 03:36:49

dunc wrote:

Misfit138 wrote:
Try PCmanfm or thunar for file managers. ROX is even lighter, but I find it clunky.
Each to his own... I find everything (on Linux) except ROX clunky. Konqueror's okay, I suppose.
low mentioned automounting. One of the things I really like about ROX is that if you double-click a mountpoint (defined in fstab) it tries to mount the device, then when you no longer have any ROX windows looking at that device it asks if you want to unmount it. I find that so much simpler to manage (dare I say KISS? ) than automounting.
But as I said, each to his own. If you want something familiar, PCManFM and Thunar are the way to go. Just don't let Misfit138 put you off ROX until you've tried it.

ROX is lighter how? The GUI? When I install ROX it takes 4MB, while pcmanfm only takes 1MB.

syd · 2008-06-24 05:07:30

Rox is faster speed wise i've found. Can't get use to the interface though.
LXDE looks good for a live cd. Archie comes to mind.heh

dunc · 2008-06-24 23:28:23

Berticus wrote:

Correction: to each his own. Each to his own goes more along the lines of people taking their own things. Like boxers going to their own corners, or the crew members on a ship manning their stations. To each his own, on the other hand, means everybody has their own preference.

Quite right. It was 2:00 am here when I posted that. Cut me some slack.

Anyway, how is it that you find everything on Linux clunky? I thought xmonad, links2 (without the -g option), vim, xdvi, spice, nutmeg, gcc/g++, and a bunch of other programs were rather well made and not clunky at all. Very slim and does one job very well.

Again, sloppy posting. I meant every file manager.

To me, that sounds like a lot more automount/auto-unmounting than just using ivman, hal and dbus. Quite frankly, I would find that quite annoying. I'll unmount something when I'm good and ready to unmount it! What I plan to do is just, since I'm going to have the terminal open anyway, type in
$ mount /dev/sde

Which is what happens if you choose not to unmount when ROX asks. It's just the way I like it. "Each", "his", "own", "to". Rearrange as appropriate.

Arch Linux

#1 2008-06-21 00:51:43

kind of at a crossroads

#2 2008-06-21 01:30:14

Re: kind of at a crossroads

#3 2008-06-21 02:47:52

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#4 2008-06-21 11:45:22

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#5 2008-06-21 18:21:20

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#6 2008-06-21 18:34:23

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#7 2008-06-21 18:34:55

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