Killing Clutter With The Antidesktop

Espectr0 writes "Hate window managers? Cannot live without one? Well, you can, kind of. A Freshmeat editorial called 'The Antidesktop' talks about how you can get rid of flashy, bloaty window managers without loosing functionality." It depends on how many tasks you want to keep track of in your head, too.

Comments

loose versus lose

[DuncMan]

sigh... that should read "... without losing functionality". Two very different words.

Re:loose versus lose

[DeadSea]

More and more people seem to be getting this one wrong. It isn't even hard to remember, if you think about it.

• loose - rhymes with moose and goose. "I set the dog loose to run in the woods."
• lose - present tense of lost. Related to loss. Those words only have one 'o', so "lose" has only one as well. "We need to get another goal, I don't want to lose."

Re:loose versus lose

[Espectr0]

Sorry, english is not my primary language. Not to be a troll, but what is the excuse of the editor? :)

Re:loose versus lose

[kelnos]

i have friends that swear that you can spell "lose" (i.e. to misplace or create a lack of something) either "lose" or "loose." it pisses me off to no end.

i maintain that the only reason you can do that is because so many people have made that common(?) mistake it has become allowed due to lack of education ^_~ ... or a lack of will to educate... *sigh*

Re:loose versus lose

[Alien Being]

either "lose" or "loose."

Their spelling rules are as lose as a gose.

Re:loose versus lose

[LoseNotLooseGuy]

Unfortunately, I was called away to an emergency at Kuro5hin. I told ThenOrThanBoy to keep an eye on things in my absence, but frankly I am beginning to doubt his commitment to the Cause.

It's hard to find good minions these days.

Console

[RalphJay]

I think this guy is taking it too far. If you really want to avoid all bloat, you shouldn't run X anyway. Seems to me someone who doesn't like windowmanagers etc. should just run stuff from the console (and definately not Mozilla).

Re:Console

[Blkdeath]

I think this guy is taking it too far. If you really want to avoid all bloat, you shouldn't run X anyway. Seems to me someone who doesn't like windowmanagers etc. should just run stuff from the console (and definately not Mozilla).

I agree. We have screen on the console and things like SVGALib for simplicity. Mozilla is the anti-lean, if you will, for a desktop. It consumes 50MB of RAM as soon as you actually use it for something - which is atleast 17MB more than X.

At home, for some strange reason, I run rxvts instead of Xterms. Now, the reason this is strange is because I run KDE 3, Mozilla, OpenOffice, and VMWare. Colour me quirky. ;)

If I want to use my computer in a lean environment, I'll use something along the lines of TWM, LWM, etc. where I can still have some of the window manager functionality (resizing of windows to optimize my desktop space usage, for example) without all the bloat of desktop wallpapers, flashing/pulsing icons, translucent menus, etc.. In my normal work environment, however, I do appreciate a lot of the glitz so I leave it all enabled.

All a matter of choice, of course, but I don't see the point of going out of your way to make a complex situation in the interests of simplicity.

Re:Console

[cduffy]

It's not just about eliminating bloat; it's also about usability. I've been using ion for quite some time, and love it. I can run my favorite apps (Evolution, Galeon, &c), control *everything* by keyboard... and have absolutely no wasted real estate on the screen, or issues juggling which window is on top of which.

Simply put, don't knock it 'till ya try it.

Re:Console

[Bastian]

I think windowmanager choice is a somewhat different issue from software package choice.

My take on the whole issue is that software (office suites, Mozilla, etc.) is what the computer is actually there for, and this stuff should be the focus of what I am doing when I sit down.

To that end, when I login on my computer, I am not logging in to goof around with Gnome or KDE, I'm logging in to browse the web, check my e-mail, or work on some project.

It's probably of note that I program enough that most of my time interacting with my computer is either done through a web browser or through CLI.

I also want X. As far as I can tell, the CLI jockeys who don't use X aren't using any applications that need X - say, OpenOffice or a web browser. The GUI people who say someone who wants to use X but have it get out of his way, on the other hand, have missed the point.

I like WYSIWYG word processors like OpenOffice, I like browswing webpages with web browsers that are capable of displaying images, and I don't know how in the heck I would maintain my webpage if I didn't have X to run a decent paint program from.

What I don't like is navigating endless menus, using the mouse to manipulate files, and not being able to efficiently switch tasks with only a keystroke. You know that feeling some people express that Windows is more of a roadblock on the path to efficient computer usage, and so is MacOS? I feel the same way about Sawfish.

This is a very different issue from Mozilla wasting resources - that has nothing to do with the interface. Frankly, the Web is a mouse-driven thing, and for that I can handle Mozilla being mouse-driven. Resource wastage is bad, but then again so is resource wastage on most any other decent web browser. Besides, Mozilla is an application, not a desktop environment.

Re:Console

[Blkdeath]

To that end, when I login on my computer, I am not logging in to goof around with Gnome or KDE, I'm logging in to browse the web, check my e-mail, or work on some project.

Granted, but the ability to quickly re-arrange, re-size, create, and destroy windows is invaluable to working efficiently. When I'm running at 1024x768, sometimes I don't want six Xterms opened (which don't fit on the screen all at the same time without hiding portions of atleast two of them), but I can do so very easily without having to futz with command-line options. Ctrl-Alt-T opens a new terminal - I can open them even on my slow(er) laptop at a rate of two per second when my system is under a typical load. I can destroy windows at a rate of about five per second with configurable keyboard shortcuts, too, using WindowMaker or KDE, or even just Ctrl-D within Xterms.

What I don't like is navigating endless menus,

Why navigate menus? I rarely, if ever open my Kmenu - I've got keyboard shortcuts assigned to all tasks (again, under both my primary window managers). Some things have icons on my taskbar because hey, they're pretty. :) Moreover, you can organize the menu any way you'd like. My friend likes to group his applications by task ("Cd burning", "Audio", "Video", "Internet", etc.), as do I, but not to that extreme. More like "Applications", "Multimedia", and a couple of other fairly broad categories. Of course, you could also remove all entries and have only your five most commonly used applications right in the root of your menu if you want to.

using the mouse to manipulate files,

Why would you do that? Midnight Commander within an Xterm is perfect for that. Ctrl-Alt-T{cr}mc{cr} and I'm manipulating files. If I want to see more detail, I maximixe the Xterm and mc shows me wide listings of my directories. If I want to see larger type, I Ctrl-RightClick the Xterm and select "Huge" and give my poor eyes a rest. If I want to shoot the window to the background, I middle-click on the titlebar and it drops allll the way to the bottom of the 'pile'.

and not being able to efficiently switch tasks with only a keystroke.

Ctrl-Esc, scroll to desired task, Cr. Else, Alt-Tab works. Or, if I have tasks focused in alternate desktops, Alt-1 through Alt-0 switches from one to another.

This is a very different issue from Mozilla wasting resources - that has nothing to do with the interface. Frankly, the Web is a mouse-driven thing, and for that I can handle Mozilla being mouse-driven

In the interests of efficiency on a scale of 1-10, Mozilla rates somewhere around 0.5. {smile}

If you want graphical, mouse-driven web browsing even with anti-aliased fonts and JavaScript, backgroundable downloads - use Links.

Re:Console

[eno2001]

Why lean? I'm not trolling, I'm just curious. Why would someone who has a P4 1.x Ghz box with 1 Gig of RAM and 200 Gigs of HD want to run lean? What are you going to do with the other 3/4ths of a gig of RAM and 90% CPU other than run apps? What I usually do if I need extra horsepower is init from runlevel 5 to runlevel 3. Then I run my job from the console.

I do think that X is pretty resource hungry, but look at all of the useful things it can do. Just last night I ran it over a DSL connection using VPN. My upstream is only 128K and using 'lbxproxy' to compress the X data from the client apps, the response was pretty much on par with a VNC session. If anything, I think we need something like a local X proxy so that we can leave apps running for reattachment later. To be honest, I am still frustrated by the fact that I can't remotely reattach to a background job or one that was started in a session that was disconnected. (I think screen might be able to do this, but I'm still unsure) Look at Windows XP... a user can log off and let someone else log in to do other work, then log back in later to pick up where they left off. Damn cool. We need that in *nix. VNC can kind of do it, but with a real X proxy that supported acceleration, ANY app could be run this way. Now THAT would be damn cool. Of course that's just my opinion... and I'm sure you know what people say about opinions.

Re:Console

[Blkdeath]

I tend to have more of a desktop bias since most of my computing is done at home and at work.

"Work" for me tends to be my laptop. Sometimes I sit at the store with it, sometimes I'm at client sites. I use it as my primary machine at home because I can sit on the couch and watch TV and half-ignore the computer, so as a result it's become quite a comfortable desktop environment.

As far as non-lean configuration goes, when I'm on mains power (which is actually the majority of its lifetime) I want to use an environment that's both functional/efficient and easy on the eyes. If I have to look at this thing for upwards of twelve hours out of a day, I want some eye-candy. Since I can do that without functionality or efficiency loss, I consider my situation to be the best of both worlds.

If anybody thinks their desktop of choice 'gets in the way' - disable all the features that you don't like, and re-map the rest of them the way you like it. Since I switched to Linux from OS/2, people will probably tend to find my desktop 'feels' more like OS/2 Warp than a typical Windows or Linux setup. (For the record - OS/2 with Object Desktop installed was a schweet environment to work in! For the lean side of things, FileBar was perfect. Man, I miss that operating system...)

Nice concept

[jos3000]

With so many people around here being attracted by the smooth curves of Mac OS it's nice to see utilitarian ideals being put into practice.

Is it just me?

[FortKnox]

Is it just me, or does that just appear to be like an 'emacs windows manager'?
Basically, a maximized emacs window with all the commands you can use without a mouse, and no bloat.

Also, how does one loosen functionality?? ;-)

Re:Is it just me?

[zrodney]

Basically, a maximized emacs window with all the commands you can use without a mouse, and no bloat.

I think that's the first time I've seen Emacs and no-bloat in the same sentence! ;)

Re:Is it just me?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not quite an emacs window manager. The closest thing I've found the the emacs experience in the window manager arena is Ion It has the frames and minibuffer thing going for it.
My desktop at work is dual-head running several Ion frames, with emacs windows, xterms, and galeon windows. Its really all I need. If Emacs were to gain the ability to run graphical applications in emacs buffers similar to how it can currently run console apps, it would be the perfect window manager for what I (and I think a lot of other people here) want out of a desktop.

X-windows

[CaptainAlbert]

> I get the graphical abilities of X without all the clutter that usually attends it

It would be churlish of me not to mention... :)

X-Windows: ...A mistake carried out to perfection.
X-Windows: ...Dissatisfaction guaranteed.
X-Windows: ...Don't get frustrated without it.
X-Windows: ...Even your dog won't like it.
X-Windows: ...Flaky and built to stay that way.
X-Windows: ...Complex nonsolutions to simple nonproblems.
X-Windows: ...Flawed beyond belief.
X-Windows: ...Form follows malfunction.
X-Windows: ...Garbage at your fingertips.
X-Windows: ...Ignorance is our most important resource.
X-Windows: ...It could be worse, but it'll take time.
X-Windows: ...It could happen to you.
X-Windows: ...Japan's secret weapon.
X-Windows: ...Let it get in *your* way.
X-Windows: ...Live the nightmare.
X-Windows: ...More than enough rope.
X-Windows: ...Never had it, never will.
X-Windows: ...No hardware is safe.
X-Windows: ...Power tools for power fools.
X-Windows: ...Putting new limits on productivity.
X-Windows: ...Simplicity made complex.
X-Windows: ...The cutting edge of obsolescence.
X-Windows: ...The art of incompetence.
X-Windows: ...The defacto substandard.
X-Windows: ...The first fully modular software disaster.
X-Windows: ...The joke that kills.
X-Windows: ...The problem for your problem.
X-Windows: ...There's got to be a better way.
X-Windows: ...Warn your friends about it.
X-Windows: ...You'd better sit down.
X-Windows: ...You'll envy the dead.

Re:X-windows

[JordanH]

The following has been attributed to Dennis Ritchie and Bill Joy, but I seem to remember it being Rob Pike. When someone pointed out that X fills a much needed void:

"I have never seen anything fill up a vacuum so fast and still suck. --- Rob Pike, on X"

Also, Dennis Ritchie was said to have been heard saying:

"Steve Jobs said two years ago that X is brain-damaged and it will be gone in two years. He was half right."

Sounds cool

[IamTheRealMike]

It's a good idea (disclaimer, I read the article a few hours ago). When I first started using vim (emacs now) my friends saw me use it for a few moments when looking over my shoulder. I did a key sequence, I don't recall what it was, and they actually said "whoa" and took a step back :) Advanced emacs usage has the same effect. If you're fast with the keyboard, this kind of thing can push efficiency through the roof.

Re:Sounds cool

[Anonymous Coward]

>> I don't recall what it was, and they actually said "whoa" and took a step back

Maybe you farted?

EvilWM

[sfraggle]

For the less radical EvilWM is a similarly "minimalist" window manager. There are no menus or icons, the only window decoration is a 1 pixel border.

Warning

[bucklesl]

...how many tasks you want to keep track of in your head, too.

Do not chew bubblegum while attempting to use the Antidesktop.
thank you.

Re:Warning

[mccalli]

Do not chew bubblegum while attempting to use the Antidesktop.

Do not taunt Antidesktop...

Cheers,
Ian

I have NO clutter.

[garcia]

I use Enlightenment. I have no icons. I have a menu that comes up on the left mouse click w/my favorite programs.

I use Brushed Metal for my theme. It's clean. I have no graphics in my background (a holdover from my 256 color, 800x600, 8 bit days using a laptop). I have 2 virtual desktops. One's for Mozilla, the other's for whatever else (again a hold over from when I was using dual heads).

I don't need keyboard shortcuts, and I can easily cut and paste back and forth between the web and my other windows.

I like it simple, but "ratpoison" reminds me of Desqview/X (which went away for a reason).

I will keep screen on the console where it belongs and use X like *I* believe it was supposed to be used.

Re:I have NO clutter.

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to do what you do, but enlightenment was unstable and slow. I use sawfish now. It does everything I used enlightenment for, but faster and without crashing.

Re:I have NO clutter.

[SirSlud]

same effect can be achieved with blackbox or icewm .. I could never get sawfish happy on my box, but that was more due to my own laziness than any shortcoming in sawfish.

Re:I have NO clutter.

[peterpi]

(This is not flamebait; I just want to show that you don't need plain black to be fast).

I use Windows 2000. My desktop is a mess of icons. I don't look at them, and I don't click on them either. I just hit Windows-D, type in the first couple of characters for the one I want, and press return.

For example, "i" launches Internet Exploer, "ou" launches Outlook, "ba" launches bash in cygwin, "v" launches vi... you get the picture. This has the advantage that anybody else can still use the computer.

For example, to type an email, I would do the following:

Windows-D
o (return)
CTRL-n
(to)
tab tab
(subject)
tab
(content)
CTRL-enter

... and the email is sent.

Command lines are all good and well, and I love bash to death, but don't knock GUIs if you're just using them wrong.

Re:I have NO clutter.

[Mike Schiraldi]

I should add, in reference to my other reply, that using Alt-Left-click and Alt-Right-click is a giant leap forward in productivity. I always see other people carefully moving the mouse to the three-pixel border of a window so they can resize it, or dragging the mouse all the way up to the top of a window so they can move it. All i have to do is slam the Alt button and grab onto a window anywhere. No aiming for tiny borders or titlebars.

Re:I have NO clutter.

[spitzak]

You just described a command-line interface. With the added feature that the ability to type the command requires you to clutter your desktop with icons that you will not click on. Brilliant.

get a bigger monitor

[cr@ckwhore]

Hmm... reduce desktop clutter? You could try ratpoison, the counter productive approach, or you could get a bigger monitor... worked for millions of users, including myself.

Not for the faint of heart

[BESTouff]

Although I find his setup really geeky and probably will never use it, that's what I like with X (and Linux in general): those who have the balls can really customize what they want to appear how they like it.

This guy must have a good laugh at each GNOME/KDE flamewar ...

Ick

[aengblom]

Not a fan of flashy bloated loose things.

They're on street corners near my home a lot though.

someone had to right?

Lightweight window managers

[sfbanutt]

Another lightweight window manager is called lwm. It can be found at http://www.mit.edu/afs/athena/project/windowmgr/sr c/lwm/lwm.html It has most of the advantages of ratpoison, but allows real windows. I believe there is a debian package for it and I know there's a gentoo ebuild. It's great on an older laptop if you're going to run X.

jim

Great

[ksw2]

Just when I thought I was 1337 with fluxbox, now this. Oh well, back to the drawing board.

If ratpoison is too minimal for you..

[Xzzy]

..try larswm.

It's not the eden of windows managers, but what it DOES offer is the ability to manage every window on your desktop via the keyboard, it maximizes the amount of your desktop you get to use for working, yet still retains the ability to keep the mouse useful. It also offers rudimentary window managing features so those odd applications that refuse to cooperate can still be used (such as gimp).

I use it full time these days, it took me a couple days to get into the rhythm but now, considering using anything else is unthinkable.

I tried ratpoison, liked the philosophy, but it seemed to me it took the keyboard driven GUI philosophy way too far to be useful for an X session.

And for others.......

[IamTheRealMike]

For those who like the "lite" approach, but don't want to go quite this extreme, try FluxBox.

It can do tabbed windows, task switching, virtual desktops, keygrabbing (emacs style keybindings from all over your desktop) and so on. If you run it without a desktop, and if you have the Xscreensaver collection then you can run:

/usr/X11R6/lib/xscreensaver/atlantis -root -texture

and get a beautiful animated dolphin as your "wallpaper". I think that's the command anyway, i'm at work so please correct me if wrong. If you're going to save CPU cycles in one way, you might as well spend them in another :)

Yes Ratpoison

[SomeOtherGuy]

I have been using Ratpoison on of my (small resolution 800x600 with 64 Megs ram) machines for months. Once you get used to having those extra pixels and that extra memory, its hard to go back.

Re:Infuriated With Improper Spelling

[jxs2151]

How many more times do I have to read:

"How many more times to I have to read..."

when the author meant to say:

"How many more times do I have to read..."?

Window Manager without the bloat (PDF based!!!)

[toupsie]

Personally, I am tired of X-Windows and all the Window Managers associated with it. They are clunky hacks based on ancient tech. Fortunately for me, I found a modern, composited windowing system using the Portable Document Format (PDF) for my UNIX system. It sports crisp graphics, anti-aliased fonts, and blends 2D, 3D and multimedia content together with transparency and drop shadows. It even integrates OpenGL converting every window into a texture. As a bonus it supports all those non-Roman languages. Multiple monitor support is seemless -- no more hacking XFree86 files and searching for drivers and solving conflicts. Thank God!

Check out its home page here.

Re:Window Manager without the bloat (PDF based!!!)

[ichimunki]

That's great. Now if you can tell me where to download the source code for that, I'll be quite grateful, as I'm pretty sure the supplied binaries won't run on all the x86 machines in my house. Then, once I do get it compiled on my application server, what are the odds that I can run it as a display server on my thin-clients?

Re:Window Manager without the bloat (PDF based!!!)

[toupsie]

That's great. Now if you can tell me where to download the source code for that, I'll be quite grateful, as I'm pretty sure the supplied binaries won't run on all the x86 machines in my house.

Unfortunately, I don't have the source handy as I tend to use their pre-compiled binaries. I really don't have time to compile their source everytime they update their code so I elect to use the binaries. If I were you, I would contact the author and see if you can get the source for usage on your x86-based UNIX system. It runs like a dream on my old PPC-based UNIX system. Much better than XFree86 and its various Window Managers.

I can't believe I forgot. You can get a copy of Microsoft Office that runs on it if you need that kind of application for your business environment. Which I hear a lot of people do!

time warp

[(trb001)]

You can do fancier split screens to make several applications visible at once:

Anyone else notice how his "screen split" looks amazingly like what Desqview did back in the day for BBS consoles?

Good gravy, we've advanced to the point of reverting to 10 year old technology

--trb

Re:time warp

[hey!]

It's not surprising that it looks retro.

I think part of the stuff that MS got from Apple was the idea of operlapping windows. Originally, Windows only had tiling. This is so taken for granted now it's hard to remember that at one time the idea was new. In fact, the idea is so old that it practically is new.

Overlapping windows get you two different things: (1) the ability to work with multiple documents within an application (early MacOS required you to switch between applications), and the ability to coordinate multiple applications. The problem with this approach is that applications are the wrong way to chunk the user experience. What would really be interesting is something like this with a component architecture. Each document would get an entire screen, but bits of functionality from various sources could be embedded in the document.

In that case, we'd forgo the ability to view multiple documents overlapping each other (which is really not so important if you can tile them) in return for less clutter. But we'd retain the ability to use multiple applications on a document.

xmove

[Ari Rahikkala]

Someone on that thread asked about an X equivalent for screen, one that would allow you to detach an X program from one screen and run it on another. I don't have an account at Sourceforge and don't care to get one right now, so here goes:

I've tried xmove once but never got it to run without segfaulting. Which isn't really a big surprise, since the last release is from 1995. However, if it worked correctly, it would sit between your X server and clients (guzzling some performance and probably making DRI, DGA, XSHM and the like pretty hard to configure). Maybe it would be possible to upgrade xmove to modern X11 revisions, but I'm not up to the task...

OTOH, would it be possible to implement this in X servers and/or Xlib itself? As far as I can see, an X client could just store its state, close its connection to the X server and initiate a connection with another X server to move from one server to another. Doing changes only to servers, it could be implemented with a little stupid redirection even without doing any changes to clients at all, but that would cause a lot of connection overhead...

Re:way OT, but Karma is cheap

[DeadSea]

But what about in the sentence:

"The mime's opinion was a mute point."

Footloose versus footlose

[Ride-My-Rocket]

One is an 80s Kevin Bacon movie; the other is something you don't want to do, unless you enjoy hobbling (different from hobbiting, btw) from one spot to the next.

X's Multiple Personalities, and OS X

[Spencerian]

I love X Window's flexibility in adding window managers. I also hate it because I never, ever get the same convenience and experience in navigating an operating system as I do with Mac OS X and Windows. KDE and GNOME have gone through great changes to make this easier, but they are desktop managers, not window managers. Nowandays the distinction is subtle, but significant when you're trying to pawn off Linux to your mom.

That said, while Mac OS X (my choice) doesn't use X (but can with the XDarwin OSS project), a user can get quite minimalistic even with Apple's OS X interface. For instance, unlike previous versions of the Mac OS, you don't have to show one damned icon, or even the dock, in Mac OS X. To do it:

1) From the Apple menu, choose Dock-->Turn Hiding On. This hides the dock until you move the mouse towards the dock's hidden location.

2) Click on the Finder button in the dock (or click on the desktop) and choose Preferences from the Finder menu. Uncheck the options under "Show these items on the Desktop." That rids you of any hard drive, removable media, or network drive icons.

3) Move any other document icons (the only things that can be left) into a folder in your Home folder, or elsewhere.

4) Change your desktop background to something pleasant.

The only thing left on the desktop now will be the menu bar.

Users who prefer to navigate their applications in a menu-centric style can create an alias (shortcut/symlink) of their Applications and Documents folders and place them in the dock. From there, users can just click on the folder and, ala the Start button or typical window manager menu, navigate through to the item they need.

Uhm.... Okay, But, You're Missing A Few Things...

[Bowie J. Poag]

This is a good editorial. Its always good to see people thinking differently about how to do the things we all do on a daily basis.

However..

The notion of using a text-based backdrop to GUI applications certainly isn't a new idea, and its not without merit -- The only problem is, what the editorial discusses can be replicated in X, and represents a set of personal preferences, not something that would be inherently better than what you or I would make for ourselves.

For example, the layout of my own GUI has been relatively unchanged in the past 10 years, since thats how I like things. A large work area, bordered by a few shells down below, and a single line of information at the top that reflects system conditions. Take AmigaDOS 3.1's desktop, for example. It tells me everything I need to know at any given time using a single slat of text that not only doubles but *triples* as an information display, a File/Edit/View/Options bar, and a grab point for moving the screen up and down to expose screens beneath. Best of all, it conveys the same information a Dock would, but doesn't waste real-estate like a Dock would.

The problem with a Dock is that it it offers very little *useful* information for the real estate it encompasses. It also offers a wealth of information that isn't particularly useful to anyone. Most screenshots of desktops with Docks confirm this -- A comparably large piece of real estate is taken away from other applications for the purposes of eye candy. Big mistake.

Not to dismiss this guy's editorial, however, but he fails to distinguish how his method is any better or any different than simply running an xterm in the root window and simply utilizing pre-existing keyboard shortcuts for his applications.. (*shrug*)

Cheers

Re:Oh wow

[mccalli]

Rather than trying to get away from the desktop we should find ways to make it prettier, faster, more responsive, and more intuitive....

Err....we aren't doing anything. He is. He's found his way of making it faster, more responsive and more intuitive for him. That's one of the advantages of Linux - it can be set up more or less as you choose it to be.

For example, Linux is very heavily used in my house, yet both my desktop and laptop run XP. How is Linux used then? Well, in a co-lo Raq box that handles my web and email (web front-end), and also in a Tivo. Neither interface is 'standard' - the Raq has its own web front-end, and the Tivo's UI is totally geared around its PVR function. You'd expect nothing else.

What works for one may not work for another. With Linux, or more accurately OSs that seperate system management from GUI, everyone can be accomodated.

Cheers,
Ian

Pointless

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the point in yet another window manager - FVWM2 has been around for years, and is only slightly more resource intensive then TWM, yet it's got a lot more functionalilty.

Loads of people have tried to make a better FVWM, and a lot of them even based their window managers on FVWM, but at the end of the day, FVWM is something of a standard for a lightweight window manager. It's perfectly happy running on X on Linux in 16 Mb of RAM, and I personally find it runs happily in 8. It can run in 4 Mb of RAM, but then X is hardly useful in only 4 Mb of RAM.

Simple point - why re-invent the wheel? FVWM2 does what 99% of people who are looking for a simple window manager want, and it is very well known, and customisable. What is the point in yet another lightweight window manager.

Nice idea, but pointless.

Id like to see this guy

[brunes69]

...who "doesnt need a mouse" use Mozilla (or any other graphical web browser) for any length of time without the mouse, and be faster than anyone with one. While the keyboard certainly has its places, browsing the web certainly isn't one of them. There is a reason for all these insane web accessability standards everyone talks about yet no one follows, because navigating the web without a mouse is slow.

Re:Id like to see this guy

[Queuetue]

Try using tabbed navigation, type ahead find, and the search mechanism. I shocked a co-worker yesterday when my mouse fell off the desk and I didn't slow down.

Me too.

[eyeball]

I just made a similar switch after using every combination of desktop/window manager made over the last 10 years.

I run a SunBlade 100 with two heads, and a SunPCi Intel coprocessor card (since I need to dip into our the company exchange server). I use the ion window manager, which gives not only split-screen windowing, but multiple tabs per window. Monitor one is usually debugging output or programming reference material on the left, emacs on the right, console and email at the bottom (a second full-screen workspace gives me Oracle GUI stuff). Monitor two is my windows (Outlook, instant messengers, etc..) Eventually I'm going to integrate some more Afterstep/WindowMaker type applets, but no rush.

Anyway, for you screenshot junkies, check it out:
Screenshot 1
Screenshot 2

I can't say exactly what's caused my frustration with the overlapped windowing metaphor, but whatever it is, it's gone now. I urge people to try it out before dismissing it as a joke.

ion is available here: http://modeemi.cs.tut.fi/~tuomov/ion/

Minimalist??? Keyboard?

[philovivero]

I don't see this "ratpoison" WM as saving much in the way of keystrokes. In the way he uses it, he's got far more keystrokes to do than I do in my stock GNOME2.0 (Mandrake 9) environment. And GNOME2.0's WM is pretty lightweight (Metacity).

For example, I keep three "root" GTerm's on desktop 1 which is bound to "F1" -- yep, a single keypress and I'm on my first desktop. More GTerm's on 2, email & Galeon on 3, etc. I can get from app to app with single keypresses and occasionally an alt-tab if I want to "overload" a given desktop.

The biggest obstacle to eliminating the mouse in GUI land isn't the WM anymore. Metacity finally fixes the keyboard bindings for moving/resizing windows like -- [ahem] -- that other OS has had since 3.11.

What's the biggest obstacle then? The apps. Tell me, in Mozilla, how do you navigate a web page*? How, in Gimp, do you select a rectangular region? How, in Dia, do you create five objects? The theme? You use the mouse. You don't use the keyboard. You can't use the keyboard.

GNOME2.0 is addressing the problems. I'm not sure where and with what document, but every GNOME2.0 app I've seen thus far is so much more keyboard-compliant than any other Linux app I've seen to date, there must be some central document explaining in simple checkbox style what keyboard shortcuts apps must support.

* Yes, I know you CAN navigate a web page in Mozilla using the keyboard, but scroll down seven pages until you see a link you're interested in, press "TAB" and notice how it scrolls all the way back to the top where the first link is. F--king brain-dead. Useless.

i'm trying it out, and it's pretty cool so far

[terrified]

after reading the article a couple days ago, i thought i'd give these ideas a try. I'm a longtime screen user, and it's really changed the way i administrate and use *nix boxes. it's wonderful.

Once i got ratpoison going, i needed some other things to make it truly useful and comfortable:

• This guy's patch for adding dockapps to ratpoison. very nice. patched ratpoison-1.1.1 just fine.
• keylaunch, which allows arbitrary keystrokes to perform arbitrary commands (arbitrarily :)
• ratmenu, which i haven't put into use yet, but allows keyboard-navigable menus on the screen, created dynamically.

this setup definately has some advantages: i'm not obsessing over the right KDE theme and color, there's no clutter at all on the screen, and, as a screen junkie, it just feels right.

there's a lot of bashing these ideas going on (at least right now) in this discussion, but i'd advise you to try it out for a while, particularly if you're a screen-keyboardy kind of person.

I don't know if i'll keep this setup or not. next step for me is to stop using mozilla and play around with phoenix instead. but, with today's earlier story of the cool new stuff coming in KDE3.1 this experiment, though useful, might be short-lived.

For the sake of continuity (and gratuitous attempt at scoring a few karmasnacks), here's my setup:

My $HOME/.ratpoisonrc:

startup_message off
defbargravity sw
exec Esetroot -scale /home/eafarris/.kde/share/wallpapers/Horesh.jpg
e xec keylaunch
exec xscreensaver
exec gnome-terminal --hide-menubar -e="ssh kermit"
exec mozilla
exec wmCalClock -S -24
exec wmMoonClock -lat 39.7 -lon 78.9
exec wmmon
exec wmmemmon
exec wmnd -i etho -m wmnet
select 0

basic stuff, some dock apps, a ssh into another box (with a screen session on it), a pretty background, moz, no biggie.

My $HOME/.keylaunchrc:

# Format:
# key=...KeyName:Command
#
# ... No modifier
# *.. Shift
# .*. Ctrl
# ..* Alt

key=...XF86Back:ratpoison -c prev
key=...XF86Forward:ratpoison -c next
key=...XF86Standby:xscreensaver-command -lock

key=..*F1:ratpoison -c 'select 0'
key=..*F2:ratpoison -c 'select 1'
key=..*F3:ratpoison -c 'select 2'
key=..*F4:ratpoison -c 'select 3'
key=..*F5:ratpoison -c 'select 4'
key=..*F6:ratpoison -c 'select 5'

(i have a Microsoft Internet Keyboard, which has a bunch of extra keys). Right now i'm not remapping very many of these keys, i've only been playing around for two days. but you get the idea. A cool thing about ratpoison is that a command-line can control the wm (all that ratpoison -c stuff), so i get the flexibility and speed and power without the wm having so many "features."

What i have right now feels like gnu screen for X, which is a marvelous thing, right now, for me. My opinion will most likely change in the future, as i have yet to find the setup that's perfect. At least with X i have a choice. But so far, i'm optimistic. Not bad. Not bad at all.

Re:Oh wow

[sir99]

The biggest problem I've seen in the open source world is that the people writing the software write it for themselves.

I don't consider that a problem. That's what makes OSS so good, to me. Obviously it's not so good for people who don't work the way I do. It seems to me that the people expressing my viewpoint are often lambasted as being elitists, but I think that's rarely the case.

I'm not one of those people who wants Linux to stay "1337," by keeping all the current non-users away. Instead, I simply find it irrelevant whether people use it or not. If they do, and it works for them, good. If it doesn't work for them, no loss.

Uncompassionate bastard that I am, I only see secondary benefits to Linux becoming more popular, namely that device and software manufacturers may be more willing to enable their products to be used on Linux. But I distrust non-OSS, and they are unlikely to make their products OSS, so I would probably find that benefit rather limited.

My thoughts along the same lines

[iabervon]

I'm using fvwm, because I actually want multiple things on the screen at once (since I want to watch for changes in one window while doing things in another window, or type notes on the things I'm reading in a different window; having overlapping windows is nice for this). I don't actually use the virtual desktops much (unless I find I want to do something totally different for a while, with an entirely separate set of windows). Fvwm, at least, can be controlled with keys and key combinations not normally used by other programs (rather than "^O"). I use mostly left-windows, shift-left-windows, alt-left-alt, alt-right-alt, shift-left-shift, and shift-right-shift; this leaves free every non-modifier key with every combination of modifiers on the traditional PC keyboard. This makes "left-windows 1" the X equivalent of "^A ^A". Fvwm is also good for mapping random keys and key combinations to scripts; I have the Pause/Break key start, pause, or resume the CD player.

Screen is, in fact, the coolest piece of software ever. I've been logged into my home server continuously since the morning of April 30th, when I installed a new version which wasn't happy with sessions from the old version. I've had sessions going nearly all the time since 1998. My .profile actually contains "screen; exit", so I never do anything on that machine outside of screen. The cool thing he didn't mention is that you can attach the same session multiple times, so that, if you want to see two of the virtual consoles, or even see a virtual console that's being shown on a different computer, you can do that.

I use emacs server mode with a chunk of elisp to make each new buffer invoked from the command line appear in a separate frame. This puts the file name in the title (which appears in fvwm's window list), and I then have icons and window list entries for all of the file I'm currently working on.

Other than windows for programs I'm running (which are generally xterms, emacs, and a web browser), I have a digital clock. I sometimes have a modern art moving background (kind of hyponotic and relaxing, sort of a white-noise generator).

A tip to the fanatic

[CCRancor]

For a truly minimalistic GUI:

alias startx='killall -9 *tty*' ;)

Re:language evolves over time

[Tackhead]

> Great thought, but if you are going to assign a new word to replace "lose", pick one that is not ALREADY IN USE. Loose is a word, and it already has a meaning.

How about "Luse." (Or "luze", to throw a bone to the 1337 crowd?)

As in, "I hereby loose the hounds of BOFH upon those who can't spell, for they luse badly."

It looks weird at first, but compare it with "fused". It even has similar connotations - burned out, no longer workable, etc.

So a loose fuse can't be fused, and is thus useless. A loose fuse is a lusing fuse until you unloosening it. A fused fuse worse that a loose fuse, it's a very lusing fuse. Luse that fused fuse, (you luser!) before something catches fire!

The proposed conjugation:

I luse, he luses, she luses, we luse.
I lused, he lused, she lused, we lused.
I'm erotic, my friend's kinky, those people are perverted.
I'm a BOFH, my friend's a luser, those people are MCSEs. /rimshot.

Now that we've loosed the tight fuses and lused the lusing fuses, can we talk about moose and mice? My sister was once bitten by a moose.

Here's the low-down

[x mani x]

Well, people will chime in and tell you that the Display Postscript / Display PDF display technologies and accompanying API's are a GUI solution for UNIX. While both NeXTStep and MacOS X look great, their windowing systems come with a significant loss in features; in particular, they are not network transparent.

I think most criticisms for X stem from the following reasons:

+ Adding fonts to X is, simply put, an absolute nightmare. Last I checked, it involves copy files to a directory, manually editing a text file, restarting your "font server", and other crap. This is just not acceptable ... but I think there are projects out there trying to resolve this.

+ Back in the old days, writing apps for X was a nightmare. The low level drawing API that comes with X, called XLib, has more to do with drawing primitives like lines than with drawing and managing buttons, text fields, etc. AFAIK, the only decent API available for writing apps was Motif, which was only available commercially (note that many programmers will disagree with me that Motif is "decent" -- in fact, it is apparently a huge pain in the ass ... look at the source of any Motif-using app and you'll see). Although, nowadays with projects like gnome, kde, tcl/tk, perl's gui hooks, etc ... it is almost trivially easy to code complex UI's for X.

+ XFree86 is a nightmare to configure. While Redhat does all kinds of fancy stuff to autodetect your video card/monitor, I tried Debian a few days ago and gasped at how little has changed in configuring XFree86 since 7 years ago. With a nervous laugh, I noticed that same line in xfree86config where you have to input your vertical/horizontal frequency ranges, and it warns you about how it might destroy your monitor. Aahhhh, fond memories of that very same config step that struck the fear of God in me as I installed Slackware for the first time when I was just a little tyke.

Fortunately, most of the above is being worked on. Despite all that I've said, I am an ardent X supporter. Its out of the box network transparency is a massive, let me repeat that, massive feature for anyone but the strict home user who only uses a browser and a chat program or two. Academic, scientist, programmer, administrator, office worker -- millions of professionals rely on X's network transparency every single day. No need to use/buy expensive, bulky, slow VNC clients or proprietary terminal servers. This is precisely why X is not going anywhere anytime soon.

Re:Here's the low-down

[RevAaron]

While both NeXTStep and MacOS X look great, their windowing systems come with a significant loss in features; in particular, they are not network transparent.

Not quite, buster. :)

Apple screwed up with it's Quartz/DisplayPDF display system by not providing display redirection over the network. According to what was said at WWDC conferences, they didn't think it was an important enough feature to go to all the work to implement. While I wish I had it, I tend to agree. Most users don't use it all that often, especially regular desktop Mac users. I know why it can be extremely useful, but most people don't need it, so Apple didn't bother.

However, since the first version NeXTSTEP, which relied on DisplayPostScript. Along with the other OSes in this lineage that used DPS- OpenStep, Rhapsody, and Mac OS X Server (up to 1.2), NeXTSTEP had network transparency. It worked just like it does in X11. On the machine on which the app will be displayed, you can check a box to allow such-and-such a host to connect to your DisplayPostScript server. Telnet to the machine. Run the app with "/Apps/RenderMan.app/RenderMan -NSHost 192.168.0.1"

This switch changed to "-NXHost" with OpenStep 4.0 and later. With it, you could run a full NeXTSTEP/OpenStep/Mac OS X Server 1.2 session on a Windows machine running OpenStep for Windows- Dock, Workspace.app and all.

Also, there was a little GUI app included with NeXTSTEP called "Open Sesame" that automated this, just had to enter in the relevant information and click OK.

Yup, just like that. Because NeXTSTEP used PostScript to display its windows, this feature was pretty straightforward to implement. You don't have to figure out how to encode the data for streaming. Apple could easily do it for OS X, but they decided to dick us in stead.

splitvt

[tweek]

I'm surprised noone mentioned splitvt at all. I use this in combination with screen when I want to group logical windows on one screen(the program) screen.

You can check it out here.

It only has three keybindings and includes a ^O for command mode that allows you to resize the windows.

Re:Oh wow

[D_Gr8_BoB]

Sure someone can learn ls, mv, cp, rm, really quick. But things like grep, awk, etc. Require a lot more.

Er... if you say so. Personally, I'd think that anyone who can remember
cp <source> <destination>
can remember
grep <pattern> <files>.
Of course awk is going to take longer to learn, since it's a Turing complete programming language, but you can get a lot done with
<some command producing columns of output> |awk '{print $<which row of output>}'
It'll take a while to learn, sure, but it's worth it if you need that functionality.

The only excuses for not learning the command line are laziness or (misplaced) intimidation. Anyone willing to put forth a miniscule amount of effort can learn enough command line to accomplish certain tasks faster than with a GUI.

I'm not saying everyone should use a command line, because certainly GUIs are useful and have their place. But really anyone who considers himself a power user owes it to himself to learn some command line.

BlackBox?

[LoudMusic]

There are plenty of window managers that aren't bloatware. BlackBox is one of my favorites.

Keep your console sessions in a different tty - or even open one full screen and throw it on a different desktop.

This guy is nuts.

Fuck pretty

[Perianwyr Stormcrow]

Pretty's gotta go all the way down to the bottom, below "usable", "fast," and "capable". All of the most serious interface sins I have seen have all been committed in the holy name of prettiness.

I say this as a graphic designer- my job is to *make* the pretty. I don't feel an overriding urge to put the pretty on the desktop- and if I do want it, I don't want it built in. I want to stick my own prettiness on top of everything if I want it, and I want it to be consistent- and dismissible if it gets to be too much.

I am a major fiend for theming and customization, but *I* want to be the one doing it, and I don't want different applications having their own ridiculous ideas of how to "improve" the base appearance of the system.

From Plan 9: 9wm

[sward]

If you folks want a really light-weight window manager, you should look at 9wm. Decorations? What are those? The same goes for most other sort of processing that's outside of what the apps themselves do. I've seen it used (personally, I like Window Maker) with a simple black background. The focused window has a black border, the other windows have white borders. And that's it.

Re:X's Multiple Personalities, and Windows

[mblase]

I wanted the same thing with Windows 2000 at work, but it wouldn't let me. I came close by opening my Display control panel and, under the "Effects" tab, replaced all my desktop icons with the tiny shortcut arrow. (I suppose I could have found an icon file which was completely blank, but I haven't bothered yet.)

All that was left was the text and those tiny icons, which I arranged in a single row and gave a silver background color in the "Appearance" tab. I then set my desktop background image to a screengrab of my code editor.

Now, whenever the boss is coming while I'm busy playing "Bejeweled", I just hit Win-D to hide all open windows, and casual passers-by think I'm terribly busy working on something very difficult.

If you get nothing else from this article...

[Thomas A. Anderson]

At least check out screen. It's amazing software.

Re:way OT, but Karma is cheap

[Brian Kendig]

"The mime's opinion was a mute point."

Well, that goes without saying.

Re:way OT, but Karma is cheap

[susano_otter]

You should do what I do: put your karma where your keyboard is, and use the account you've got. Why are you getting so upset over something you don't even think is worth putting your name against?

Mainframes Session Managers There First

[Mittermeyer]

There is a class of software that as far as I know only exists commercially on IBM mainframes. They are called Session Managers, and allow multiple sessions to multiple VTAM apps to one physical session with an optional centralized security authentication.

Each session can be swapped onto the screen as the primary Current session (sound familiar?), and the other sessions can be switched to at the touch of a button. One extra doodad we have even allows a list to be called up in the middle of ANY app and another session selected straight off that list.

In addition you can have instant messaging between any session manager sessions so authorized, cut-and-pasting between dissimilar apps, broadcast messages that can be targetted at different users on specific apps on different host machines, and all sorts of other spiffy things. Plus, to get really esoteric the Session Manager can be used as middleware (albeit kludgy).

Now mind you this is the well-defined very specific very character-only world of TN3270E as oppossed to X-GUI issues, so this is very much apples-and-microsofts, but the concept is well-defined and in production at mainframe sites all over, so any SCREEN fans ought to check them out.

The two primary products in this category are Multsess and Candle Supersession.