Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> __/ [Larry Qualig] on Sunday 12 February 2006 03:08 \__
>
> > I really wanted to run windowmaker. It is so good looking and I had my
> > desktop setup so that it was visually stunning. But beauty is only
> > skin-deep and I think that I'm going to have to return back to KDE.
>
>
> KDE is highly functional. You are many 'easter eggs' to explore and, even
> after ~5 years with KDE, I contune to discover something new every now and
> then.
My favorite recent discover was the "Windows->Terminal emulator"
feature in Konqueror. I like working from the console but it's easier
for me to navigate around and explore from a GUI. This feature always
puts a console exactly where I need one.
> Random example: Press Alt+<F2>. Now put in the path of some given file. See
> how the icon shows a red cross when the path is invalid. When the path to
> the file is valid, the corresponding icon (resolved in accordance with file
> associations) gets shows. Also in KDE: alias open='kfmclient exec'. 'open'
> now opens a file from the command-line using its default interpreter. Just
> one example among many, that one....
>
>
> > There were the occasional "knotify" crashes that only happen with
> > windowmaker. Not very often but maybe once an hour. Everything always
> > ran fine so it if was for the dialog that popped up I never would have
> > known this was happening. But it *only* happens with windowmaker.
>
>
> I never liked windowmaker. Enlightment was rather nice (visually) in the
> older days, but nothing beats KDE in my humble opinion, from a purely
> functional perspective.
I remember seeing Enlightment around 1998 on a friends machine. The
theme he was using was very futuristic and modern looking. At the time
it seemed like the cutting edge and now the project seems to be
abandoned.
> > There are probably two things that are annoying with windowmaker. One
> > is that I can only launch a single instance of an app from the
> > "dockapp." If I want to run two konquerors it won't let me. (There's a
> > workaround for this but it sucks.) I could always launch another
> > konqueror from the konsole but why can't I simply click on the icon.
> >
> > But the *biggest* issue is that windowmaker is not very dual-monitor
> > aware. Seems that every dialog wants to pop-up in the middle of my
> > screen. The middle being where the left-monitor meets the right-monitor
> > and there's a gap between the two. Same with menus... if I'm running an
> > app that's near the center of the screen quite often the menu would
> > appear with 1/2 on one monitor and the other 1/2 on the other monitor.
>
>
> You could probably specify fixed coordinates. There are commands for doing
> just that, albeit they are inferior to so-called "Smart" windows placements.
> You at least have the control, shall you be interested in changing the
> behaviour to suit your needs.
If I worked at it I could probably come up with something usable. But
KDE just seems to do it right out of the box.
> > So I think that I'm going to go back to KDE, at least for now. KDE is
> > very good with handling dual monitors and I purposely tried to get it
> > to mess up with menus or whatever. It didn't. So the next mission is to
> > setup my KDE desktop so that it looks like what I had in windowmaker.
>
>
> I agree with you on that one. KDE handles dual-head setups admirably well.
> Back when I was using dual-head on Windows 98, placements were rather poor
> at times, but maybe it just wasn't mature enough. Initial setup in Windows,
> however, was more trivial than that which Sax2 or Xinerama can ever boast.
Very honest answer. Getting my first dual-head setup running on Linux
was a lot of trial and error. It was better the 2nd time around but it
was still far from automatic.
> > Otherwise today was get my crap together day. I printed out all of my
> > krb5.conf, smb.com, fstab, etc. files and placed them all in to a
> > 3-ring binder along with all sorts of other things I printed up about
> > Linux. ...
>
>
> It is a bit old-fashioned, don't you think? Would it not have been easier to
> put it all in a file(s) (even on a remote file/Webspace)? It can later be
> copied and pasted if/when required rather than require pages to be flipped
> over, an eye to interpret slightly illegible characters, and hands to tap on
> the keyboard. It is an opinion, not a criticism by all means.
It is a bit old fashioned... and perhaps a bit paranoid too. One valid
reason for the print-outs was the grub command reference. I spent a
fair amount of time at the grub> prompt and I need hard copies since I
haven't booted an OS yet.
The "paranoid" part is that if I see a really good article or reference
I will print it out. Once someone had a web-page on something like
"comcast.net/~users/shlomo" that had some info I was really interested
in. So I bookmarked the page. Several months later I went to access the
page and it was gone. Seems that 'shlomo' was no longer a comcast
customer.
I could always save the pages locally on my machine but sometimes it's
nice having a hard copy that I can highlite and annotate easily.
> > ... I really like how the system is setup and running right now and
> > should the worse happen... I don't want to start from scratch again. I
> > put copies of the files out on the network but the printout is nice for
> > those occasions where I'm having authentication problems and can't
> > actually access the network.
>
>
> Good move, Larry. Rest assured that nothing will be capable of intervening
> with your settings until 'it' has your root password. I set up this current
> machine back in 2003 (network, dual head, automated backups, etc.). I have
> not had to mess about with anything since. I never bother either. The same
> applies to other machines which I set up, but their test of durability
> through time does not involve /years/.
>
>
> > Part of getting my crap together was to tweak my .profle and
> > /etc/profile scripts. (Saved these files too.) This SuSE install is
> > just about exactly the way I want it. Hmmmm... now if I could just get
> > my KDE desktop to look like windowmaker.... ( I already visited at
> > kde-look.org )
>
>
> Keep all your settings file in a 'locket'. They are very re-usable. You can
> replicate your favourite settings and propagate them onto other machines
> that you use.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Roy
>
> --
> Roy S. Schestowitz | UNIX: Because a PC is a terrible thing to waste
> http://Schestowitz.com | SuSE Linux | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
> 6:15am up 26 days 1:31, 30 users, load average: 0.46, 0.76, 0.91
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