Agree; and I'm one of the 1% you are referring to. Although I started using ratpoison 4 years ago because my computer was too slow to run KDE or Gnome, I'm still using it for my beefy desktop and my two laptops. TFA talks about muscle memory, but he's referring to *clicking* on some corner for god's sake! Muscle memory means keyboard shortcuts, and ratpoison (and window managers in the same vein like Ion) are completely keyboard-oriented. Whenever I'm forced to use a non-ratpoison machine, I find myself crippled by the convoluted gestures to perform simple tasks.
Ratpoison does not have a "Desktop", no desktop background, no icons to click, nothing. It just shows your apps in fullscreen windows. I find that this suits me perfectly: I use a tabbed browser (firefox), a tabbed terminal (mrxvt), a tabbed IM client (pidgin), amarok, and occassionally open a few other apps. I have them all bound to my numpad giving me 1-key switch to an app (e.g., 1 for firefox, 2 for amarok, etc.). Plus, ratpoison handles 2 LCDs beautifully. It has just about everything that KDE or Gnome does (e.g., shortcut to display time, execute commands, etc.) Moreover, you can write scripts in your favorite language to make the currently executing window manager do stuff, like dcop for KDE. Better still, the codebase is *really* small, and it's quite easy to add some functionality if you want to.
All in all, my 2 cents: WMs like Ratpoison and Ion are the extreme in "cutting to the chase". If you want to look at photos of your florida beach or family, or if you a nice-looking desktop with hundreds of applets showing you things you can see with top or netstat or df, sure, use KDE or Gnome (btw, you can set backgrounds in ratpoison too, but that's not the point). But if you talk about muscle memory or personalization, you should not gloss over these keyboard-oriented window managers.
Check out Michael Crichton's Prey http://www.amazon.com/Prey-Michael-Crichton/dp/006 1015725. Very entertaining; inspired me to actually learn about swarming behavior (flock, spread out, etc.) and programming such things into robots...
I agree (though not with the ADHD bit). I went thru high school about 10 years ago, and there were tons of things we used to do during school -- gym, sports, browsing books you couldn't get anywhere else etc. I seriously think there is nothing much to be lost if only certain whitelisted sites (like wikipedia, maybe) are allowed from school networks.
It's a regressive step if you look at the speed at which it can push things across. These days, the power consumed is as important an issue. Active research is going on in the area of Globally Asynchronous, Locally Synchronous (GALS, it's called;) processors, where each module (like, say, the caches, execution units, reservation stations etc.) run their own clock (and hence its synchronous within the module), and communicate between each other using asynchronous protocols (known as delay insensitive protocols). Such a design greatly reduces the need for clock wiring which would greatly reduce area, reduce clock wiring, save power etc. (at the cost of some processing speed, of course). Google for Globally Asynchronous.. if interested.
Now all the feds need to do is to pay Cheyenne Gentlemen's Club a visit and get a picture profile of the guy who recently blew up $800. Should get a pretty accurate pic especiall if all of the `several' dancers pitch in:)
Almost exactly my setup - ratpoison with numpad bindings to different windows rocks. That, plus the awesome scriptability - if you're a reasonably experienced linux user who can type fast, I dont see why anybody needs bloated window managers like Gnome/KDE.
However, I use gnome-terminal as I like the fonts better than xterm.
Slashdot Mirror
Agree; and I'm one of the 1% you are referring to. Although I started using ratpoison 4 years ago because my computer was too slow to run KDE or Gnome, I'm still using it for my beefy desktop and my two laptops. TFA talks about muscle memory, but he's referring to *clicking* on some corner for god's sake! Muscle memory means keyboard shortcuts, and ratpoison (and window managers in the same vein like Ion) are completely keyboard-oriented. Whenever I'm forced to use a non-ratpoison machine, I find myself crippled by the convoluted gestures to perform simple tasks. Ratpoison does not have a "Desktop", no desktop background, no icons to click, nothing. It just shows your apps in fullscreen windows. I find that this suits me perfectly: I use a tabbed browser (firefox), a tabbed terminal (mrxvt), a tabbed IM client (pidgin), amarok, and occassionally open a few other apps. I have them all bound to my numpad giving me 1-key switch to an app (e.g., 1 for firefox, 2 for amarok, etc.). Plus, ratpoison handles 2 LCDs beautifully. It has just about everything that KDE or Gnome does (e.g., shortcut to display time, execute commands, etc.) Moreover, you can write scripts in your favorite language to make the currently executing window manager do stuff, like dcop for KDE. Better still, the codebase is *really* small, and it's quite easy to add some functionality if you want to. All in all, my 2 cents: WMs like Ratpoison and Ion are the extreme in "cutting to the chase". If you want to look at photos of your florida beach or family, or if you a nice-looking desktop with hundreds of applets showing you things you can see with top or netstat or df, sure, use KDE or Gnome (btw, you can set backgrounds in ratpoison too, but that's not the point). But if you talk about muscle memory or personalization, you should not gloss over these keyboard-oriented window managers.
Check out Michael Crichton's Prey http://www.amazon.com/Prey-Michael-Crichton/dp/006 1015725. Very entertaining; inspired me to actually learn about swarming behavior (flock, spread out, etc.) and programming such things into robots...
I agree (though not with the ADHD bit). I went thru high school about 10 years ago, and there were tons of things we used to do during school -- gym, sports, browsing books you couldn't get anywhere else etc. I seriously think there is nothing much to be lost if only certain whitelisted sites (like wikipedia, maybe) are allowed from school networks.
yeah, and you can just imagine the confusion when you ask for an cappuccino: 'sir, did you want the beverage or the latest fork of java?'
It's a regressive step if you look at the speed at which it can push things across. These days, the power consumed is as important an issue. Active research is going on in the area of Globally Asynchronous, Locally Synchronous (GALS, it's called ;) processors, where each module (like, say, the caches, execution units, reservation stations etc.) run their own clock (and hence its synchronous within the module), and communicate between each other using asynchronous protocols (known as delay insensitive protocols). Such a design greatly reduces the need for clock wiring which would greatly reduce area, reduce clock wiring, save power etc. (at the cost of some processing speed, of course). Google for Globally Asynchronous.. if interested.
Now all the feds need to do is to pay Cheyenne Gentlemen's Club a visit and get a picture profile of the guy who recently blew up $800. Should get a pretty accurate pic especiall if all of the `several' dancers pitch in :)
Almost exactly my setup - ratpoison with numpad bindings to different windows rocks. That, plus the awesome scriptability - if you're a reasonably experienced linux user who can type fast, I dont see why anybody needs bloated window managers like Gnome/KDE. However, I use gnome-terminal as I like the fonts better than xterm.