Desktop Environments and Window Managers

I usually run either Xfce or LXDE depending on what I'm doing or my mood.

Xfce is the full package with some features I really enjoy such as its Windowck plugins that let you migrate window titlebar stuff into the panel to save space and its dank appfinder and weather panel plugin. Also Xfwm has a non-shit window snapping algorithm, unlike a number of other popular window managers.

On the other hand Openbox pipe menus are fucking dynamite and it is seriously baffling to me why no other window managers or desktop environments attempt to implement such a great feature. I need a file manager and panel to go with my window manager and PCManFM fits Openbox like a glove so I just end up using LXDE. One nice feature of PCManFM is that it allows you to select any folder to show its contents as your desktop. Kind of surprised to learn recently that Xfce doesn't have that. On the other hand it quite upsets me that Openbox lost its window snapping functionality when the code was overhauled for v3.

If I could get most of Xfce's features with Openbox's pipe menus and maybe Thunar tightened up compared to PCManFM I would be in heaven.

Have you tried manually mixing Xfce and LXDE components? Xfce doesn't force you to use Thunar.

I prefer Wms because its much more fun that way

Install dconf-editor and window manager will be a setting you can change. I used to use GNOME with i3.

Is there any proof that these "hidden files" even exist? I have tried everything to find them without success..

Go in your home directory and type ls -a

Wow, hidden files.

KDE5 use less resources than GNOME3. Check a new install for yourself and compare.

I tried out a variety of different DEs and WMs and settled on KDE 5. I use pretty much all of the features. The filesearch is something I pretty much need on a computer these days, the environment is tear-free in a fresh install instead of having to fuck around with Compton, and the vertical, icon-only taskbar works great. It could take hours to add all these features to XFCE or i3 or whatever (if it's even possible), and once you're done adding everything, you have extra RAM usage from it anyway. It's not bloat if it's functionality.

Also, I have 12GB of RAM and Firefox takes up 1 to 2GB, so I really don't give a shit that KDE is using ~300MB. And I'm on an SSD so boot times are irrelevant.

I use dwm with no DE.
I just like the sense of elitism.

xfce, fluxbox, something tiling

i tend to rotate up and down the chain. at one end you have complete configuration & keyboard control, at the other you still have something minimal but also Just Works™

I'm going to attend this year's GUADEC, how shit is Gnome?

All I want is an environment modeled after classic MacOS: a global menu bar, an active programs menu that doesn't take unnecessary room, distinction between window and application, title bars that give proper visual distinction between active and inactive window, the close button away from the others to keep you from clicking it accidentally, a way to put away a window as a tab on the bottom of the desktop, a way to make text snippets by dragging a selection to the desktop... and an overall clean, sober, no-nonsense style.

Really, why isn't there such a thing anywhere? Is there some forum or whatever where I could go and say, "hey, developers, you know what would be really cool?" Because it really is, old MacOS got some things so right that no one else did, and it pisses me off how this great design is abandoned and mostly forgotten now.

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I think GNUstep does some of that.

Global menu bar is difficult due to inconsistencies in graphical toolkits, iirc. Topmenu exists for xfce and mate, though. You could set up topmenu and position it next to the whiskermenu, then add a menu with the login options next to topmenu. The window icon thing (not window buttons, the one where you click to switch between all open windows) goes on the far right.

Control strip has no parallel I can think of.

You can move the panel to the top for pretty much any DE really.

Freshly riced for proof of concept. topmenu has some issues, but it's best you're getting outside of unity iirc.

topmenu is a plugin which gives a global menu.

I don't understand what is meant by global menu, elaborate.

There's also the Windowck plugins in Xfce, which allow you to eliminate window title decorations/buttons and move everything into the panel.

Openbox can also pop open menus with custom shortcuts, allowing for global menus without the desktop or panels visible.

KDE4

You see the File, Edit... dialogue on the panel? Same one Macs have? That.

Basically you know how some applications have file, edit, view, help, etc menus in a strip attached to their window? Global menu just means that strip is always there at the top of the screen, and changes to suit whichever application has focus like mac os does. It's a fucking stupid waste of screen space, but apparently some people like it.

Ah yeah, Windowck can definitely accomplish that.

No it's not. If every window has that bar then every window is taking up that screen space even though you can only use one bar at a time. A global menu bar takes the bar off every window and puts them all into one place. And since it takes the whole width of the screen the bar has more space than if it was attached to a window.

speaking as someone who used KDE4 for a pretty long time, please don't insult the creators of the MacOS interface by comparing KDE4 to it.

Call me a special snowflake, but I just love the fuck out of xmonad.
I really tried liking i3, since it's much lighter and popular among Slackware users, but I spent days fighting with it and couldn't get it close enough to the beauty of xmonad, the defaults of which are just so fucking comfy it takes minimal tweaking to get it perfect for my wants.

I appreciate the DE's available out there, Enlightenment, WindowMaker, XFCE, all sexy af. But over time I have become really fucking sick of clickable icons, themes changing on me, "window decorations", holy fuck. I even hate drop down menus now. dmenu FTMFW.

Why not? Akonadi gives you that authentic "cooperative multitasking when someone left their CD tray open on the network" experience

Bloated, SJW riddled shit made by arrogant fucktards.

Bloated, somewhat less SJW riddled shit made by autists

An attempt at a less horrible GNOME

Ded

Ded

XFCE is really the only somewhat acceptible DE, from my experience. It's simple, it's fucking fast, you have all you need, it doesn't fuck with your base Linux system (its probably the most BSD-friendly DE out there too), and you can make it gorgeous as all hell with easy theming.

because Holla Forums's ideal computer has a BIOS, a kernel, and nothing else AKA 'bloatware cancer'

the laws of wizardry

i tried MATE recently and would truly recommend it.

you can strip it all back so there's just a top bar. it's lightweight, doesn't come with much junk, and works with the tasteful theme 'arc'

i want to add that it seems to be much faster to setup to something functional, lightweight, and tasteful, and to customize, than a window manager

Say what you want about gnome, but it isn't completely shit with non-trivial multiple monitor setups. Most DEs fuck up in various frustrating ways.

Baloo. Even the name implies bloat.

Window Managers are easier to rice because they have that very empty look by default. They are also lighter on resources because they are just a window manager and not a full suite of programs PLUS a window manager.

Also, the whole circlejerk of bloated DE's is (mostly) a myth. I often see people cite ram usage as a reason to not use a DE but instead use a WM is that DE's use more RAM. The most ram intensive DE is KDE, which usually eats 200 MB. This sounds bad until you realize that unused RAM is wasted.

I say "mostly" a myth because fuck Unity.

baloo_file is using 0% CPU and 3.5MB RAM right now on my computer.

MATE is a literally meme DE. If you really want lightweight, use LXDE. Xfce has far more features and customizability with nearly the same resource footprint as MATE.

Press Ctrl+H or View > Hidden Files

I THOUGHT UNITY WAS THE ONLY ONE THAT DID THAT

I WOULD HAVE KILLED FOR THAT FEATURE IN XFCE

You described my thoughts on the situation with shocking accuracy

LXQt gets code updates on the freenode channel literally every single day. The real problem is Qt's overhead defeats the entire purpose of LXDE to begin with, which was to be a super lightweight DE good at extending laptop battery life.

I don't like the useless bloat that DE require, nor the way they spam my home directory.
Sometimes I even prefer to forgo X altogether and use the 80x25 plain text console. Not as much now because it kind of looks retarded with widescreen LCD.
Anyway, I was always in this for the Unix, not for a Windows clone or lookalike.

What are you doing? Have you ever heard of for loops? Why are you checking if they're directories when all their names end with a slash? This is equivalent and much cleaner:
for dir in .cache/ .config/ .dbus/ .fltk/ .fontconfig/ .gconf/ .gnome2/ .gnome2_private/ .local/ .mozilla/; do echo "deleting $dir" rm -rf "$dir"done
Or if you want to actually get in the spirit of Unix you should make it as simple as possible and keep the output terse, with no output for expected behavior:
rm -rf .cache/ .config/ .dbus/ .fltk/ .fontconfig/ .gconf/ .gnome2/ .gnome2_private/ .local/ .mozilla/
Using a heredoc with a while read loop to delete a fixed set of directories is a travesty that certainly doesn't belong in Unix.

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I don't know wtf your problem is, but it's a perfectly good shell script. Besides that, I wrote it for me, not for you. If you don't like it, make your own.

Those come with OpenBSD. I don't have to install other lame shits.

Assuming you're replying to , I explained why it's bad and wrote and posted my own. I can give a more detailed explanation in case you're interested. My problem is that you complain about things not belonging in Unix seemingly without understanding what Unix is about.

You don't have to replace them, but they're bloated, so it's weird that you use them. xterm is well-known for being ugly and being stuffed with features you definitely don't need, like Tektronix 4014 emulation. Its README says "Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here" at the top. xterm and twm are used because of inertia, not because of technical merits.

I don't care about saving lines, I want it to print the stupid shit it deletes. Actually next time I'll change it to print the ascii-art of the cow getting fucked while it says the names of stuff deleted (sodomized.cow). Also I like how everything is on a separate line, so I can visually see it in editor, and also pipe lines to/from shell command with vi.

I like the functionality and looks of xterm (and anything else that uses Athena widgets) even if code is ugly. But the code has been approved by OpenBSD team and that means something to me.
I also played with lots of WM over the years and this is the only one that I actually enjoy using. Always end up coming back to it. Eventually I just gave up trying new ones because it's a waste of time.

Jesus christ do you not know how to quote?

Why didn't you keep the OpenBSD one, retard? cwm is miles ahead of twm.

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I tried that and didn't like it. Their default WM is fvwm btw.
Anyway forget this desktop stuff, I'm an ASCIIpunk now.

Noob question because I looked around and couldn't be sure: will GNUstep (or the derived Étoilé and Backbone) require its own NeXT-ish programs, or will all my regular Linux programs just run normally?

I haven't really used it, but I expect programs to run normally but GNUstep programs to have better integration. Give it a try.

So what do you use? DVTM, Screen, or something else?

What desktop environment that works with debian is fastest/lightest? Xfce, LXDE, something else maybe?

LXDE is the fastest, lightest popular full-featured one, but the definition of DE is not clear enough to give a good answer to your question. If your hardware is literally more than ten years old and you want a DE-like experience try icewm.

This. Icewm (via Antix) runs like a champ on my old desktop (AMD Athlon XP with 1 GiB RAM). Give antix a try in a VM or something. It's impressive.

AwesomeWM is my personal favorite. Why choose between tiled and floating when you can have both?

Is there a wm that works like pic related?
I want a top tier comfy desktop, and I think something like this would be good for me.

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Sure that's comfy, if you like being among vomit.

Also, wouldn't any tilling wm do?

Short of writing your own (cool project, right?, your best bet is probably one of these:
sourceforge.net/projects/twin/
vwm.sourceforge.net/

There's also TVision/TurboVision, but those might just be libraries based on or inspired from the old DOS-era Borland TUI stuff. I guess you could write your own windowing system with it though.

Hot damn, that's exactly the kind of shit I'm looking for.
Thanks user!

You know that i3, dwm, spectrwm and just about all other tiling wms also support floating, right?

It's pre-installed bloatware. I don't give a hot god damn fuck about whatever pre-installed music player and document editor and whatever the fuck other bullshit they decided to package into it. It's bloatware designed to appeal to Windows users and new converts who can't even figure out how to install a package and whine about there not being any way to do [thing] in Linux.

There are plenty of intelligent long-time users who like desktop environments, Linus Torvalds included.

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or

Holla Forumss ideal computer is always in your pocket.

Welcome to the new world of CyanogenMod, ParanoidAndroid, Stock ASOP, MokDee, Slimrom, Copperhead OS, Blissrom, AOKP or the great ResurrectionRemix Android ROM, Kali NetHunter ...

99% online with custom firmware and custom ROMs

0 % online with my laptops. Endchan - the end for non-mobile OS

my useragent:

Mozilla/5.0 (Android; Mobile; rv:38.0) Gecko/38.0 Firefox/38.0

Its a really weird feeling if i touch sometimes a real keyboard. Or if ppl talk about Intel / AMD or nvidia drivers or Desktop Environments. 99% online with Qualcomm CPU + GPU + sound + network chip ... etc.

Install a driver - what is that? :)

They never heard the words CM Theme Manager or Arcus Theme Engine

And they dont know what a Launcher is for the mobile world. Or they never saw the Lunar UI CM13 theme or Lone Elite theme or FLUX CM13 or Nova Launcher

I sell next week my IBM ThinkPad T60

wallpaper pl0x senpai

Markov chain?

LXDE is buggy, i tried that a while back. MATE is definitely better

I don't understand either why so many people here seem to worship tiling window managers. I don't like them. My work flow frequently has me putting windows on top of each other because I only need to view a tiny portion of them. I used i3 for a while because of the hype, and I found it actually impeded my work because I was switching between virtual desktops constantly instead of just putting windows on top of each other, showing just what I need from each (Tiling was too time consuming as I had to then use the scroll function within each window to show the portion I needed).

And in xfce I have all the good things you get from window managers. I can tile with my keyboard all I want. I have the app-finder shortcut like you do with just window managers. And as you can see, xfce also looks gorgeous.

GNOME & XFCE = GOD-TIER
OTHER DEs = SHIT-TIER

found that file but what do I do to modify it? I want i3 but I can't into code and I don't know what to put.

Every time my monitor goes to sleep (or I return from sleep with one monitor turned off) there's no signal and I have to run xrandr script to wake up both monitors.

Can I convert this to xorg config in a way that fullscreen still works like in xrandr (so it doesn't span to both monitors in xfce)? Currently xfce panel is showing in left monitor and right only shows background image and windows you drag there.
#!/bin/shxrandr --output DisplayPort-0 --primary --mode 1920x1080 --pos 0x0 --rotate normal --output DVI-I-1 --mode 1920x1080 --pos 1920x0 --rotate normal --output DVI-D-0 --off --output HDMI-A-0 --off

explorer.exe

I don't know, every DE I've tried just feels like shit in my way when I can make hotkeys for the 10 programs I launch all the time and have a terminal for everything else. They basically suck up RAM to give you a big dumb 2nd or 3rd way to do everything.

I use xset s off && xset --dpms in .bashrc or terminal to prevent the screens from sleeping.

I don't really like global menus, but you can get a lot of the same look/functionality on XFCE.

Pic Related is my desktop

That looked cool, so I tried to install Xfce on Mint 18 (Cinnamon edition). Somehow it didn't work: when I try to login, all I get is a black screen and the cursor.

Seems like no one mentioned herbstluftwm itt before. I'm using it for something like a year now and it just feels really comfy without any bloat.

Fuck man.. just fuck

Don't install alternative DEs on Mint. It's one of those homo distros that alter the DEs to make them unique to their distro. And the Mint guys have utterly destroyed all the DEs that aren't Cinnamon.

They haven't fucked with the tiling WM managers though.

If you want the experience the author intended, install a big boy distro like Debian or whatever. If you can't/won't do that, try Xubuntu. They still fuck with the DEs, but Xfce is their default one so it hasn't been wrecked too badly.

i3

This.

🍆🍆🍆

Funny all the places cancer can spread to after awhile.

Is this enough?
If not, I can grow more!
~(=^-^)

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#eggplant

But Xfce is one of Mint's spins too, so you'd expect it to work. Mate and Lxqt worked fine.