Arch Linux

flamirande

Member

Registered: 2010-03-22

Posts: 9

Looking for a pager with advanced functionalities

Hello everyone,

I am looking for a pager with which I could put custom icons for the different workspaces.

I have an HTPC that is mainly used for three things: watching movies, playing music and browsing the internet. Therefore, I would like to have four workspaces, one for each of these and another one for administration. Since this is an HTPC, I'd like it to look good and I think it would be neat to have images instead of numbers/squares for the workspaces: a movie reel for the "movies" workspace, a note for "music", etc... I have been looking at pagers on the wiki, but most of the links are broken. I am currently running XFCE, but would install another WM for this. The idea came to me because I could do this on awesome 3, which is installed on my laptop, but my roommates are firmly opposed to a tiling WM on the HTPC.

If anybody can provide suggestions, they will be very welcome.

Cheers,
François

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: Looking for a pager with advanced functionalities

I don't know a thing about pagers, but I have a couple questions / suggestions.

How about <modkey>+1 for movies, <modkey>+2 for music etc.? No icons at all.
Why is a tiling WM a bad thing for an HTPC? How about a dedicated HTPC distro with a custom skin / interface?

flamirande

Member

Registered: 2010-03-22

Posts: 9

Re: Looking for a pager with advanced functionalities

Hi Karol,

Thanks for your reply. The modkey approach is not practical because the HTPC is mostly mouse-operated. There is a keyboard, but it usually sits on a shelf, and beer has been spilled on it, impairing its responsiveness.

My roommates are respectively a Mac and a Windows user and, for some reason, the perspective of no titlebar on windows and of not being able to resize and drag them around terrifies them. They have veto'ed me on the issue.

Finally, I don't think I really need an HTPC distro because it's not really an HTPC. There is no cable/satelitte coming into it; we download or stream all of our entertainment. Therefore, I don't need mythTV or anything like it. I would love to have something like XMBC, but the last time I checked, there was no way to browse the internet with it. If you can recommend a good distro, I'd be happy to have a look at it.

ANOKNUSA

Member

Registered: 2010-10-22

Posts: 2,141

Re: Looking for a pager with advanced functionalities

Howdy-ha- flamirande.  I don't want to be a total prick, as it's not my place; it's yours.  Xfwm or Awesome will get the job done, won't it?  You might be able to wow them if you get a universal remote and set up a proper lirc connection, letting them sit on the couch and have the power at the press of a finger.  I have some friends with XBMC (the real thing--a dedicated, old-school Xbox hacked with BSD for all their media),  and they're more satisfied with the results it provides than how it looks.  Yeah, their Win and Mac PCs (both my friends' and your roomates') give them Facebook and YouTube, but yours gives them music, movies and tv and internet on demand, at a smaller resource cost and with a more versatile core and interface.  If they're so touchy about polish, let them figure it out.  I'm not just saying this as the sorry excuse for a computer geek that I am, but also as a person who's been dealing with many roommates for roughly a decade. I mean I don't know your situation but what do they think, the setup you give 'em is supposed to get them attention?

If these folks can't be satisfied by the fact that your system can provide them with a reliable, versatile, centralized, kick-ass setup that theirs can't, well...

More constructively: If they just won't have it...maybe openbox and tint2?  You've got a low ram and cpu demand there, keeping music from skipping and video from tearing, if you work it out properly.  Openbox has always been my choice for the right balance between polish and minimalism.

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