Re: Choosing among Desktop Enviroments and/or Windows Managers
On 18 Sep 2013, berenger.mo...@neutralite.org wrote: [snip] So, if you want to try them (you said you have time, right? ;) ) start with an easy one like i3, and if and when you will like the idea behind, feel free to try more advanced ones. [snip] I like i3 a lot but I don't like the default window arrangement in columns across the screen. Stacked mode is an alternative but the window titles take up a lot of room. I prefer spectrwm, which gets less publicity but for me is cleaner and more intuitive to use. Like i3, it is also configured in plain text. It has all the features I want, and more. My second preference is dwm. This is configured in C, which I don't know, but it isn't difficult to figure out how it works in this case. However, spectrwm adds some very useful features. Actually, most tiling WMs are fairly similar in appearance and work in much the same way. Altbough they are called tiling, I use spectrwm fullscreen most of the time, and I think quite a few people do this. -- Anthony Campbell - a...@acampbell.org.uk http://www.acupuncturecourse.org.uk http://www.smashwords.com/profile.view/acampbell https://itunes.apple.com/ca/artist/anthony-campbell/id73235412 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130919073920.gd...@arcadia.home.gateway
Re: Choosing among Desktop Enviroments and/or Windows Managers
On 17 Sep 2013, Luis Bandarra wrote: #!/bin/sh # script to start a new server with i3 DISPLAY=:0 Xephyr :1 -ac -br -reset -terminate -screen 1280x1024 2 /dev/null sleep 2 DISPLAY=:1 i3 but you can use just the command line's commands... Hope it helps... I use this: # switch to icewm xinit /home/ac/.xxinitrc -- :1 where ,xxinitrc is a modified version of .xinitrc to run icewm (in this case). I can then switch back and forth between spectrwm and icewm with Ctrl-Alt-Fx. -- Anthony Campbell - a...@acampbell.org.uk http://www.acupuncturecourse.org.uk http://www.smashwords.com/profile.view/acampbell https://itunes.apple.com/ca/artist/anthony-campbell/id73235412 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130918064954.gj32...@arcadia.home.gateway
Re: Choosing among Desktop Enviroments and/or Windows Managers
On Tue, Sep 17, 2013 at 06:44:28PM -0400, Rob Owens wrote: On Mon, Sep 16, 2013 at 01:57:54PM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote: Someone in private mail suggested Enlightenment. Openbox was already on my list. Desktop environments lean towards over kill. Enlightenment and awesome will be investigated further. Then I'd also suggest Fluxbox. By the way, Fluxbox has a Window Managers entry in its menu which allows you to switch to other window managers, such as Openbox, without even closing your session. I just did it. Now I'm in Openbox with no apparent way of switching back without logging out, so I'll have to figure out how Fluxbox does that... Typically, you can say some-window-manager --replace (for example metacity --replace or xfwm4 --replace) to launch a new window manager and replace your current one. -Rob signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Choosing among Desktop Enviroments and/or Windows Managers
I didn't explain myself well, now that i have time, i'll see to it. I use Xephyr[1] to create a new X server in the current X host session. Then i launch the application i which to use on the new display. On 18-09-2013 07:49, Anthony Campbell wrote: On 17 Sep 2013, Luis Bandarra wrote: This script it's just a automation for speed things (laziness)! #!/bin/sh # script to start a new server with i3 DISPLAY=:0 Xephyr :1 -ac -br -reset -terminate -screen 1280x1024 2 /dev/null sleep 2 DISPLAY=:1 i3 but you can use just the command line's commands... Hope it helps... I use this: # switch to icewm xinit /home/ac/.xxinitrc -- :1 where ,xxinitrc is a modified version of .xinitrc to run icewm (in this case). I can then switch back and forth between spectrwm and icewm with Ctrl-Alt-Fx. I'm a bit fan of i3 and find it more productive in most cases but in my desktop i run kde it all the pretty eyecandy because i can, so some times when i don't have time i open a terminal in kde and run: $ Xephyr :1 -ac -br -reset -terminate -screen 1280x1024 2 /dev/null # $ DISPLAY=:1 $ i3 In the OP, he can change i3 for whatever i would like. This way he can try WM and DE like just another window with the mouse. I find some tutorial on the internet: - http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-620003.html - http://blog.pesa.se/2009/07/18/experimenting-with-window-managers/ - http://wenlong.wordpress.com/2012/01/08/awesome-xephyr-devils-pie/ - http://www.doublehops.com/tag/xephyr/ [1] - http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/Xephyr/ : Xephyr is a kdrive based X Server which targets a window on a host X Server as its framebuffer. Unlike Xnest it supports modern X extensions ( even if host server doesn't ) such as Composite, Damage, randr etc (no GLX support now). It uses SHM Images and shadow framebuffer updates to provide good performance. It also has a visual debugging mode for observing screen updates. -- __ Bandarra Enjoy while you can 'cos you'll never know when it'll end
Re: Choosing among Desktop Enviroments and/or Windows Managers
To switch between DEs, you can do it with the usual connection managers, IIRC. But I personally prefer to login on TTY and then start the window manager/DE of my choice. Usually, DEs have a 'start-my_favorite_de' command to do that. If you are tired about starting them by hand everytime, you can add those lines to your ~/.bash_profile file: if [ -z $DISPLAY ] [ $(tty) == /dev/tty1 ];then startx fi Of course, starting from here can allow you to think about other things, like using startx for tty1, gnome for tty2, kde for tty3, etc. It is like the usual connection managers, but without the mouse or eyecandy stuff, and more lightweight. My current only problem with that is that I still need to enter my login and password at start, which is boring on my desktop, but I never tried to fix that for now. Le 16.09.2013 20:57, Richard Owlett a écrit : Dan Ritter wrote: On Mon, Sep 16, 2013 at 10:06:32AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote: As I have minimal to *NO INTERNET* access, when Debian 7.1 DVDs became available from vendors I purchased the 10 DVD set. I also purchased the live DVDs for Gnome, lxde, kde, and xfce. I did some test runs of each. I chose xfce for my initial Wheezy install based almost exclusively on look and feel. It felt comfortable and seemed to express my somewhat vague ideas of how a GUI should 'act'. It was an educational experience. Each had something I'd like to see in an ideal installation. I also did more web browsing comparing Desktop Environments to Windows Managers and product comparisons within those classifications. /Questions 1. Given that I prefer LILO over GRUB and xfce over Gnome/lxde/kde, what GUIs should I investigate further. If you're happy with xfce, you shouldn't need to look further. xfce is a fully supported, first-class environment. I don't _need_ to, but I'm involved with other projects which might benefit. Also I'm retired with lots of free time and I find the topic interesting. If you like XFCE, you might also look at LXDE. It's tools are less linked between them than those of XFCE, and it's even more lightweight. I now use some carefully chosen parts of it in combination with i3, such as the primitive text editor (for notes. I use vim when I need a strong one) and the terminal emulator. Now, it seem you only know about stacking window managers. Let me give you a different direction to explore: tiling window managers. I will try to be as objective as possible, but remember that when I tried them, I simply fell in love with that paradigm, probably because I always was a computer tinkerer. So you are warned. There are, AFAIK, no DE with some of them (well, I have heard that KDE had an optional one in previous versions, but it was removed. No idea about the truth in those words, KDE is too heavy for my computer uses) but if you use lightweight DE, you can usually change the window manager. If you want the name of one on official DVDs, I think I would speak about i3, which is the first one I successfully tried, and the one which remain on my computers, bot netbook and dekstop with 2 screens. It's documentation claims that it is for powerusers but... I think it is only to not have people come and bother them with stupid questions like how to edit a text file, because the doc itself is very clear, and the configuration of that DE is *NOT* made with a programming language, which is a strong point and something which makes it very easy to use. In short, it uses a real configuration file, and it works when you install it, unlike all other TWM I have tried (but others have other features which can be useful as well). Now, why could someone be interested in that kind of managers? The difference is simply that, instead of having a stack of windows of different sizes that you have to manually set, each new window is automatically placed on the desktop and all windows are resized to fill the entire space without overlapping. This allows, for example, to control everything with your keyboard (pretty useful if you are mostly working with text, because you do not have to move a hand to the mouse.), or if you have more than one screen, it is really easier to be efficient with them, when it's painful with classic window managers (moving a mouse from a screen to another just to focus another application is painful, and using alt-tab is not always very fast). The problem is that they are usually not beautiful. I guess that the reason is that they are not very well known, and so, often made by power users for power users, like i3 claim. The beauty problem resides in the fact that there is no transparent windows, no rounded corners, no buttons to control the windows, etc (but there is still an optional title bar). This imply that heavy mouse users will find them harder to use, but maybe ( I never tried that ) it can be fixed by using window decorators or integrating them into a
Re: Choosing among Desktop Enviroments and/or Windows Managers
Le 18.09.2013 14:22, berenger.mo...@neutralite.org a écrit : To switch between DEs, you can do it with the usual connection managers, IIRC. But I personally prefer to login on TTY and then start the window manager/DE of my choice. Usually, DEs have a 'start-my_favorite_de' command to do that. If you are tired about starting them by hand everytime, you can add those lines to your ~/.bash_profile file: if [ -z $DISPLAY ] [ $(tty) == /dev/tty1 ];then startx fi Of course, starting from here can allow you to think about other things, like using startx for tty1, gnome for tty2, kde for tty3, etc. It is like the usual connection managers, but without the mouse or eyecandy stuff, and more lightweight. My current only problem with that is that I still need to enter my login and password at start, which is boring on my desktop, but I never tried to fix that for now. Le 16.09.2013 20:57, Richard Owlett a écrit : Dan Ritter wrote: On Mon, Sep 16, 2013 at 10:06:32AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote: As I have minimal to *NO INTERNET* access, when Debian 7.1 DVDs became available from vendors I purchased the 10 DVD set. I also purchased the live DVDs for Gnome, lxde, kde, and xfce. I did some test runs of each. I chose xfce for my initial Wheezy install based almost exclusively on look and feel. It felt comfortable and seemed to express my somewhat vague ideas of how a GUI should 'act'. It was an educational experience. Each had something I'd like to see in an ideal installation. I also did more web browsing comparing Desktop Environments to Windows Managers and product comparisons within those classifications. /Questions 1. Given that I prefer LILO over GRUB and xfce over Gnome/lxde/kde, what GUIs should I investigate further. If you're happy with xfce, you shouldn't need to look further. xfce is a fully supported, first-class environment. I don't _need_ to, but I'm involved with other projects which might benefit. Also I'm retired with lots of free time and I find the topic interesting. If you like XFCE, you might also look at LXDE. It's tools are less linked between them than those of XFCE, and it's even more lightweight. I now use some carefully chosen parts of it in combination with i3, such as the primitive text editor (for notes. I use vim when I need a strong one) and the terminal emulator. Now, it seem you only know about stacking window managers. Let me give you a different direction to explore: tiling window managers. I will try to be as objective as possible, but remember that when I tried them, I simply fell in love with that paradigm, probably because I always was a computer tinkerer. So you are warned. There are, AFAIK, no DE with some of them (well, I have heard that KDE had an optional one in previous versions, but it was removed. No idea about the truth in those words, KDE is too heavy for my computer uses) but if you use lightweight DE, you can usually change the window manager. If you want the name of one on official DVDs, I think I would speak about i3, which is the first one I successfully tried, and the one which remain on my computers, bot netbook and dekstop with 2 screens. It's documentation claims that it is for powerusers but... I think it is only to not have people come and bother them with stupid questions like how to edit a text file, because the doc itself is very clear, and the configuration of that DE is *NOT* made with a programming language, which is a strong point and something which makes it very easy to use. In short, it uses a real configuration file, and it works when you install it, unlike all other TWM I have tried (but others have other features which can be useful as well). Now, why could someone be interested in that kind of managers? The difference is simply that, instead of having a stack of windows of different sizes that you have to manually set, each new window is automatically placed on the desktop and all windows are resized to fill the entire space without overlapping. This allows, for example, to control everything with your keyboard (pretty useful if you are mostly working with text, because you do not have to move a hand to the mouse.), or if you have more than one screen, it is really easier to be efficient with them, when it's painful with classic window managers (moving a mouse from a screen to another just to focus another application is painful, and using alt-tab is not always very fast). The problem is that they are usually not beautiful. I guess that the reason is that they are not very well known, and so, often made by power users for power users, like i3 claim. The beauty problem resides in the fact that there is no transparent windows, no rounded corners, no buttons to control the windows, etc (but there is still an optional title bar). This imply that heavy mouse users will find them harder to use, but maybe ( I never tried that ) it can be fixed by using window decorators or
Re: Choosing among Desktop Enviroments and/or Windows Managers
berenger.mo...@neutralite.org wrote: Le 18.09.2013 14:22, berenger.mo...@neutralite.org a écrit : To switch between DEs, you can do it with the usual connection managers, IIRC. But I personally prefer to login on TTY and then start the window manager/DE of my choice. Usually, DEs have a 'start-my_favorite_de' command to do that. If you are tired about starting them by hand everytime, you can add those lines to your ~/.bash_profile file: if [ -z $DISPLAY ] [ $(tty) == /dev/tty1 ];then startx fi Of course, starting from here can allow you to think about other things, like using startx for tty1, gnome for tty2, kde for tty3, etc. It is like the usual connection managers, but without the mouse or eyecandy stuff, and more lightweight. My current only problem with that is that I still need to enter my login and password at start, which is boring on my desktop, but I never tried to fix that for now. Le 16.09.2013 20:57, Richard Owlett a écrit : Dan Ritter wrote: On Mon, Sep 16, 2013 at 10:06:32AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote: As I have minimal to *NO INTERNET* access, when Debian 7.1 DVDs became available from vendors I purchased the 10 DVD set. I also purchased the live DVDs for Gnome, lxde, kde, and xfce. I did some test runs of each. I chose xfce for my initial Wheezy install based almost exclusively on look and feel. It felt comfortable and seemed to express my somewhat vague ideas of how a GUI should 'act'. It was an educational experience. Each had something I'd like to see in an ideal installation. I also did more web browsing comparing Desktop Environments to Windows Managers and product comparisons within those classifications. /Questions 1. Given that I prefer LILO over GRUB and xfce over Gnome/lxde/kde, what GUIs should I investigate further. If you're happy with xfce, you shouldn't need to look further. xfce is a fully supported, first-class environment. I don't _need_ to, but I'm involved with other projects which might benefit. Also I'm retired with lots of free time and I find the topic interesting. If you like XFCE, you might also look at LXDE. It's tools are less linked between them than those of XFCE, and it's even more lightweight. I now use some carefully chosen parts of it in combination with i3, such as the primitive text editor (for notes. I use vim when I need a strong one) and the terminal emulator. Now, it seem you only know about stacking window managers. Let me give you a different direction to explore: tiling window managers. I will try to be as objective as possible, but remember that when I tried them, I simply fell in love with that paradigm, probably because I always was a computer tinkerer. So you are warned. There are, AFAIK, no DE with some of them (well, I have heard that KDE had an optional one in previous versions, but it was removed. No idea about the truth in those words, KDE is too heavy for my computer uses) but if you use lightweight DE, you can usually change the window manager. If you want the name of one on official DVDs, I think I would speak about i3, which is the first one I successfully tried, and the one which remain on my computers, bot netbook and dekstop with 2 screens. It's documentation claims that it is for powerusers but... I think it is only to not have people come and bother them with stupid questions like how to edit a text file, because the doc itself is very clear, and the configuration of that DE is *NOT* made with a programming language, which is a strong point and something which makes it very easy to use. In short, it uses a real configuration file, and it works when you install it, unlike all other TWM I have tried (but others have other features which can be useful as well). Now, why could someone be interested in that kind of managers? The difference is simply that, instead of having a stack of windows of different sizes that you have to manually set, each new window is automatically placed on the desktop and all windows are resized to fill the entire space without overlapping. This allows, for example, to control everything with your keyboard (pretty useful if you are mostly working with text, because you do not have to move a hand to the mouse.), or if you have more than one screen, it is really easier to be efficient with them, when it's painful with classic window managers (moving a mouse from a screen to another just to focus another application is painful, and using alt-tab is not always very fast). The problem is that they are usually not beautiful. I guess that the reason is that they are not very well known, and so, often made by power users for power users, like i3 claim. The beauty problem resides in the fact that there is no transparent windows, no rounded corners, no buttons to control the windows, etc (but there is still an optional title bar). This imply that heavy mouse users will find them harder to use, but maybe ( I never tried that ) it can be fixed by using window
Thank you - was [Re: Choosing among Desktop Enviroments and/or Windows Managers]
Richard Owlett wrote: /Background [snip] /Questions 1. Given that I prefer LILO over GRUB and xfce over Gnome/lxde/kde, what GUIs should I investigate further. 2. Given that internet is effectively non-existent and internal/external disk space is effectively unlimited, how can I make as many as possible of the DE /or WM on the distribution DVD simply available to experiment with? Thank you to all who replied. I was able to load multiple DE's/WM's and compare various permutations. What's the best? I still don't know. The exercise demonstrated that I had misconceptions about Debian philosophy and underlying structure [ e.g. led me to read more about package management]. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/52398f05.7050...@cloud85.net
Re: Thank you - was [Re: Choosing among Desktop Enviroments and/or Windows Managers]
Le 18.09.2013 13:31, Richard Owlett a écrit : Richard Owlett wrote: /Background [snip] /Questions 1. Given that I prefer LILO over GRUB and xfce over Gnome/lxde/kde, what GUIs should I investigate further. 2. Given that internet is effectively non-existent and internal/external disk space is effectively unlimited, how can I make as many as possible of the DE /or WM on the distribution DVD simply available to experiment with? Thank you to all who replied. I was able to load multiple DE's/WM's and compare various permutations. What's the best? There is no best solution that we can give you. i3 is probably the best solution for me, but will be the poorest solution for some other people for which Gnome3 will be the best. Which in turn will not even meet the requirements of KDE's users. Every user is different, so should be every Debian installation, at least for personal needs (and sometimes you have different needs depending on the hardware too... ). The only thing other people can do to help you is showing you other roads. I still don't know. The exercise demonstrated that I had misconceptions about Debian philosophy and underlying structure [ e.g. led me to read more about package management]. This is Debian's philosophy as *I* see it: you will be able to choose all tools you want. Even the kernel, since you can use KFreeBSD ( ok it is recent, and maybe not fully tested, I do not know. I should try it someday. ) Debian is not a linux system, it is an operating system, which happen to be (often) relying on the linux kernel. This imply, for example, that systemd will probably not become the only one init system. Same for gnome for DEs or for grub2 for bootloaders (but, yes, they can be the default tool in a period of time). I guess this is why Debian meet my needs: you can tinker things easily, and so learn a lot even if you have poor starting knowledge. But do not worry, it seem that on that list, everyone is still learning things regularly. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/410fa7b8b21c6fda2fbd47591943b...@neutralite.org
Re: Thank you - was [Re: Choosing among Desktop Enviroments and/or Windows Managers]
On Wed, 18 Sep 2013 16:20:02 +0200 Richard Owlett rowl...@cloud85.net wrote: What's the best? I still don't know. Mr. Owlett, I would just like to add to the usual suggestions since you're interested in tinkering with Debian, a worthy hobby to be sure, that no one has suggested the now forgotten UDE with the insightful motto: get used to it. http://udeproject.sourceforge.net/download.html UDE may be mostly unknown but the latest stable version was updated on 5-4-2013. so there's life there yet. You can tinker with some compiling of the source code if you like. The project does not use any special GUI-Libraries such as Qt or GTK+ and is based on the standard Xlibs this makes UDE faster. I used UDE for a long time at lease while it was in the usual repositories; but, to really feel the UDE experience, your system needs to be very uncluttered as it were, and I've given this up for the comfortable but more complex world of XFCE4. My reasons notwithstanding, I would just say that UDE was like Galadriel's mirror, that wonderful glassy black surface reflecting back a pensive face (your face) peering into the void. It was wonderfully existential at the time. -- CK signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Choosing among Desktop Enviroments and/or Windows Managers
On Wednesday 18 September 2013 14:10:43 Richard Owlett wrote: berenger.mo...@neutralite.org wrote: Le 18.09.2013 14:22, berenger.mo...@neutralite.org a écrit : To switch between DEs, you can do it with the usual connection managers, IIRC. But I personally prefer to login on TTY and then start the window manager/DE of my choice. Usually, DEs have a 'start-my_favorite_de' command to do that. If you are tired about starting them by hand everytime, you can add those lines to your ~/.bash_profile file: if [ -z $DISPLAY ] [ $(tty) == /dev/tty1 ];then startx fi Of course, starting from here can allow you to think about other things, like using startx for tty1, gnome for tty2, kde for tty3, etc. It is like the usual connection managers, but without the mouse or eyecandy stuff, and more lightweight. My current only problem with that is that I still need to enter my login and password at start, which is boring on my desktop, but I never tried to fix that for now. Le 16.09.2013 20:57, Richard Owlett a écrit : Dan Ritter wrote: On Mon, Sep 16, 2013 at 10:06:32AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote: As I have minimal to *NO INTERNET* access, when Debian 7.1 DVDs became available from vendors I purchased the 10 DVD set. I also purchased the live DVDs for Gnome, lxde, kde, and xfce. I did some test runs of each. I chose xfce for my initial Wheezy install based almost exclusively on look and feel. It felt comfortable and seemed to express my somewhat vague ideas of how a GUI should 'act'. It was an educational experience. Each had something I'd like to see in an ideal installation. I also did more web browsing comparing Desktop Environments to Windows Managers and product comparisons within those classifications. /Questions 1. Given that I prefer LILO over GRUB and xfce over Gnome/lxde/kde, what GUIs should I investigate further. If you're happy with xfce, you shouldn't need to look further. xfce is a fully supported, first-class environment. I don't _need_ to, but I'm involved with other projects which might benefit. Also I'm retired with lots of free time and I find the topic interesting. If you like XFCE, you might also look at LXDE. It's tools are less linked between them than those of XFCE, and it's even more lightweight. I now use some carefully chosen parts of it in combination with i3, such as the primitive text editor (for notes. I use vim when I need a strong one) and the terminal emulator. Now, it seem you only know about stacking window managers. Let me give you a different direction to explore: tiling window managers. I will try to be as objective as possible, but remember that when I tried them, I simply fell in love with that paradigm, probably because I always was a computer tinkerer. So you are warned. There are, AFAIK, no DE with some of them (well, I have heard that KDE had an optional one in previous versions, but it was removed. No idea about the truth in those words, KDE is too heavy for my computer uses) but if you use lightweight DE, you can usually change the window manager. If you want the name of one on official DVDs, I think I would speak about i3, which is the first one I successfully tried, and the one which remain on my computers, bot netbook and dekstop with 2 screens. It's documentation claims that it is for powerusers but... I think it is only to not have people come and bother them with stupid questions like how to edit a text file, because the doc itself is very clear, and the configuration of that DE is *NOT* made with a programming language, which is a strong point and something which makes it very easy to use. In short, it uses a real configuration file, and it works when you install it, unlike all other TWM I have tried (but others have other features which can be useful as well). Now, why could someone be interested in that kind of managers? The difference is simply that, instead of having a stack of windows of different sizes that you have to manually set, each new window is automatically placed on the desktop and all windows are resized to fill the entire space without overlapping. This allows, for example, to control everything with your keyboard (pretty useful if you are mostly working with text, because you do not have to move a hand to the mouse.), or if you have more than one screen, it is really easier to be efficient with them, when it's painful with classic window managers (moving a mouse from a screen to another just to focus another application is painful, and using alt-tab is not always very fast). The problem is that they are usually not beautiful. I guess that the reason is that they are not very well known, and so, often made by power users for power users, like i3 claim. The beauty problem resides in
Re: Thank you - was [Re: Choosing among Desktop Enviroments and/or Windows Managers]
I recommend to stay with Debian and to stay for Debian with the Linux kernel and what ever boot loader you're using now. Test WMs and DEs, win experiences and in the future you still can decide to use FreeBSD, another Linux distro and/or other bootloaders. I prefer Linux over FreeBSD, but have both installed, I prefer another Linux distro, but Debian IMO is a good choice too and the bootloader is relatively unimportant, as long as it makes the needed multi-boots available. We all needed to start at some point and win experiences. Having a choice between uncountable solutions for a newbie definitively is confusing, but the advantage is, once you have got experiences, you can customize your OS too your needs. This community can give you hints, if you would describe your needs. E.g. is the target to get a server, something real-time related, IOW audio or CNC, something to make arts, office work etc. pp.?! 2 Cents, without following the whole thread. We could confuse you completely by explaining, why we chose the set up we prefer, this wont help you, but only confuse you. You've got the choice between audio servers, startup systems and many other things too. Libre has got a learning curve. Even a discussion about the preferred editor could cause a flame war :D. Simply start, I guess the only useful hint were _all_ of us agree is, that you should start with learning how to make backups of your install and that you should make regular backups, so you are free to damage your install and simply restore it to a working state. Regards, Ralf -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1379520900.1847.15.camel@archlinux
Re: Thank you - was [Re: Choosing among Desktop Enviroments and/or Windows Managers]
berenger.mo...@neutralite.org wrote: [*SNIP*] I guess this is why Debian meet my needs: you can tinker things easily, and so learn a lot even if you have poor starting knowledge. But do not worry, it seem that on that list, everyone is still learning things regularly. That tinkering is generally recognized as valid in Debian community is part of my justification for using it. That does NOT mean that my sanity is never questioned : I continue to say Thank you to the community. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/523a0cfb.4010...@cloud85.net
Re: Thank you - was [Re: Choosing among Desktop Enviroments and/or Windows Managers]
Le 18.09.2013 22:28, Richard Owlett a écrit : berenger.mo...@neutralite.org wrote: [*SNIP*] I guess this is why Debian meet my needs: you can tinker things easily, and so learn a lot even if you have poor starting knowledge. But do not worry, it seem that on that list, everyone is still learning things regularly. That tinkering is generally recognized as valid in Debian community is part of my justification for using it. That does NOT mean that my sanity is never questioned : I continue to say Thank you to the community. The best way to show that you liked what we did, is to do the same :) (and that's a nice way to learn stuff too, when more experienced people fix what you said) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/24da8f5d767a99439e35dfbad8b40...@neutralite.org
Re: Thank you - was [Re: Choosing among Desktop Enviroments and/or Windows Managers]
*CAVEAT LECTOR* - long winded humor included in following Ralf Mardorf wrote: I recommend to stay with Debian and to stay for Debian with the Linux kernel and what ever boot loader you're using now. Test WMs and DEs, win experiences and in the future you still can decide to use FreeBSD, another Linux distro and/or other bootloaders. YEPP I prefer Linux over FreeBSD, but have both installed, I prefer another Linux distro, but Debian IMO is a good choice too and the bootloader is relatively unimportant, as long as it makes the needed multi-boots available. We agree that there are sociological as well as technical reasons to chose. We all needed to start at some point and win experiences. Having a choice between uncountable solutions for a newbie definitively is confusing, but the advantage is, once you have got experiences, you can customize your OS too your needs. I would say choice is good. results up to user ;/ This community can give you hints, if you would describe your needs. E.g. is the target to get a server, something real-time related, IOW audio or CNC, something to make arts, office work etc. pp.?! In theory I agree. In practice grin...;/ I admit some of my questions may be malformed. Whether intentionally or not, results cause me to *THINK* ! Thinking is good. 2 Cents, without following the whole thread. We could confuse you completely by explaining, why we chose the set up we prefer, this wont help you, but only confuse you. Maybe. Maybe not. Can you say HIGH speed paper tape without choking? Knew there had to be others. You've got the choice between audio servers, startup systems and many other things too. Libre has got a learning curve. Even a discussion about the preferred editor could cause a flame war :D. How about 8080 vs 6502 vs TMS??? ;/ Simply start, I guess the only useful hint were _all_ of us agree is, that you should start with learning how to make backups of your install and that you should make regular backups, so you are free to damage your install and simply restore it to a working state. You mean I should follow advice I've been giving out for DECADES? You may have missed a comment I made in this or a related thread -- I purchased a used laptop *EXPLICITLY* for experimental installs. Can you say 6J6/12AX7/026/KSR35/S100/CPM-80/DEC/PET/CBM/20mA/RS232 'compliant' -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/523a256a.3070...@cloud85.net
Re: Choosing among Desktop Enviroments and/or Windows Managers
On 16-09-2013 22:50, Richard Owlett wrote: Dan Ritter wrote: On Mon, Sep 16, 2013 at 01:57:54PM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote: 2. Given that internet is effectively non-existent and internal/external disk space is effectively unlimited, how can I make as many as possible of the DE /or WM on the distribution DVD simply available to experiment with? apt-get install [metapackage name] for each of them. There's no restriction to only having one installed at a time, you know. I hoped/suspected apt-get was the answer. But that why I phrased it in an open ended manner. An implied questions include: how do I switch between them while comparing? In my case, i have a desktop quite powerful for my need, i run KDE just because of the eyecandy, but got used to work with a tiling window manager: i3-wm. So for been more productive in some corner cases, in my X session i run a instance of Xephyr with i3 as window manager (i tested for E17 and it worked also). I have a small script: #!/bin/sh # script to start a new server with i3 DISPLAY=:0 Xephyr :1 -ac -br -reset -terminate -screen 1280x1024 2 /dev/null sleep 2 DISPLAY=:1 i3 but you can use just the command line's commands... Hope it helps... You have a range of options. You could start multiple X servers, and run one on each, simultaneously. You could switch between them via the per-login option in a display manager (xdm, gdm, lightdm...) You could edit your .xinitrc file to start the system that you want, and then run startx from your machine's virtual console. will thy potentially interfere with each other? Only in the sense that only one can have control of your X session at a time. Otherwise, they're very good about ignoring config files that belong to other packages. Thank you. -- __ Bandarra Enjoy while you can 'cos you'll never know when it'll end -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/523847d3.30...@gmail.com
Re: Choosing among Desktop Enviroments and/or Windows Managers
On Mon, Sep 16, 2013 at 01:57:54PM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote: Desktop environments lean towards over kill. In that case, have a look at fvwm. http://www.fvwm.org/ -- If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing. --- Malcolm X -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130917144807.GD12457@tal
Re: Choosing among Desktop Enviroments and/or Windows Managers
On Mon 16 Sep 2013 at 10:06:32 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote: /Background I'm relatively new to Linux. I got my feet wet by installing Squeeze We are all relatively new. If you installed Squeeze a couple of years ago and used it on a day-to-day basis you should now have a good feel for Debian. (6.0.5) on a used laptop (Lenovo R61) purchased explicitly purchased for experimenting. Having used computers since Hector was a pup, accidents happen. Hector? This is not a family history mailing list. As I have minimal to *NO INTERNET* access, when Debian 7.1 DVDs became available from vendors I purchased the 10 DVD set. I also purchased the live DVDs for Gnome, lxde, kde, and xfce. I did some test runs of each. I chose xfce for my initial Wheezy install based almost exclusively on look and feel. It felt comfortable and seemed to express my somewhat vague ideas of how a GUI should 'act'. What does connecting to the internet have to do with Debian? You can choose to connect or not; your choice. Xfce is a DE; it has no preference for an internet connection. It was an educational experience. Each had something I'd like to see in an ideal installation. I also did more web browsing comparing Desktop Environments to Windows Managers and product comparisons within those classifications. Ideal installation? What is that? I've got it using Debian; you must not be trying hard enough. /Questions 1. Given that I prefer LILO over GRUB and xfce over Gnome/lxde/kde, what GUIs should I investigate further. There is absolutely no connection between LILO, GRUB and the software you mention. The question has no value. 2. Given that internet is effectively non-existent and internal/external disk space is effectively unlimited, how can I make as many as possible of the DE /or WM on the distribution DVD simply available to experiment with? This seems the nub of your post. Have you thought of just installing all of them and then sorting out what you want to use? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130917191832.ga13...@copernicus.demon.co.uk
Re: Choosing among Desktop Enviroments and/or Windows Managers
On Mon, 16 Sep 2013 13:57:54 -0500 Richard Owlett rowl...@cloud85.net wrote: 2. Given that internet is effectively non-existent and internal/external disk space is effectively unlimited, how can I make as many as possible of the DE /or WM on the distribution DVD simply available to experiment with? apt-get install [metapackage name] for each of them. There's no restriction to only having one installed at a time, you know. I hoped/suspected apt-get was the answer. But that why I phrased it in an open ended manner. An implied questions include: how do I switch between them while comparing? Your GUI login screen (display manager) will normally offer session options. I use kdm, though I don't have the full KDE installed. Try: update-alternatives --list x-session-manager to see what sessions should be available. Using x-window-manager after --list will, as you might expect, show you the list of available window managers. I currently have blackbox, icewm, openbox, twm, xfwm4 and metacity, though I think the last is a hangover from when I used to run Gnome. The display manager will usually allow the option of making the chosen session the default one or not, the latter being more useful when experimenting. The /etc/X11 directory contains a lot of things that are useful to study, including the configuration information for xterm, if you use that. will thy potentially interfere with each other? Maybe. This isn't a pre-digested, *integrated* operating system, so it is possible. The intention of course is otherwise, each DE should have completely separate configuration information, though they all run the same applications, and two or more may use the same window manager. I recently had a hiccup in LXDE, making it difficult to use. No problem: I had most of Xfce installed, and I added the rest using the metapackage and just selected it at login time. As it happens, both LXDE and Xfce use the openbox window manager by default, but impose their own sets of configurations. There can be subtleties, particularly with regard to menus. I like the Debian menu sub-tree, as it contains bits and pieces that the main menu structure misses (presumably old stuff that doesn't have the currently-standard menu installation hooks). LXDE in particular has an aversion to it. My main workstation does have it (I'm back on LXDE) but another sid LXDE installation doesn't, and when I have an hour or two to spare I try to work out why not. I do know I had to do some work to get it in my main workstation menu. NOTE: log everything you do. I don't. Remember that even while using one DE, you can usually make use of many of the features or preferred applications of others. It does mean that you need a lot of libraries installed, but they are mostly pretty tiny, and as you say, drive space is fairly cheap and abundant. A minimal installation might, for example, use PCManFM as the default file manager, but I happen to like the rather heavyweight Nautilus, similarly for leafpad and gedit. -- Joe -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130917193256.0e8d8...@jretrading.com
Re: Choosing among Desktop Enviroments and/or Windows Managers
On Mon, Sep 16, 2013 at 01:57:54PM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote: Someone in private mail suggested Enlightenment. Openbox was already on my list. Desktop environments lean towards over kill. Enlightenment and awesome will be investigated further. Then I'd also suggest Fluxbox. By the way, Fluxbox has a Window Managers entry in its menu which allows you to switch to other window managers, such as Openbox, without even closing your session. I just did it. Now I'm in Openbox with no apparent way of switching back without logging out, so I'll have to figure out how Fluxbox does that... -Rob signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Choosing among Desktop Enviroments and/or Windows Managers
On Tue, 17 Sep 2013 18:44:28 -0400 Rob Owens row...@ptd.net wrote: Then I'd also suggest Fluxbox. By the way, Fluxbox has a Window Managers entry in its menu which allows you to switch to other window managers, such as Openbox, without even closing your session. I just did it. Now I'm in Openbox with no apparent way of switching back without logging out, so I'll have to figure out how Fluxbox does that... -Rob I'm a Openbox user. If the 'menu' package is installed you will have a entry in Openbox menu to switch to other windows managers. Right click on desktop - Debian - Window Managers -- EMACS is my operating system; Linux is my device driver. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130917205406.6dcfd427@yeh1.parsec
Re: Choosing among Desktop Enviroments and/or Windows Managers
Dan Ritter wrote: On Mon, Sep 16, 2013 at 10:06:32AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote: As I have minimal to *NO INTERNET* access, when Debian 7.1 DVDs became available from vendors I purchased the 10 DVD set. I also purchased the live DVDs for Gnome, lxde, kde, and xfce. I did some test runs of each. I chose xfce for my initial Wheezy install based almost exclusively on look and feel. It felt comfortable and seemed to express my somewhat vague ideas of how a GUI should 'act'. It was an educational experience. Each had something I'd like to see in an ideal installation. I also did more web browsing comparing Desktop Environments to Windows Managers and product comparisons within those classifications. /Questions 1. Given that I prefer LILO over GRUB and xfce over Gnome/lxde/kde, what GUIs should I investigate further. If you're happy with xfce, you shouldn't need to look further. xfce is a fully supported, first-class environment. I don't _need_ to, but I'm involved with other projects which might benefit. Also I'm retired with lots of free time and I find the topic interesting. If you're curious, you should probably look at some simpler systems, since GNOME and KDE are the heavier systems. Enlightenment, Openbox and awesome are probably good choices to gain breadth. Someone in private mail suggested Enlightenment. Openbox was already on my list. Desktop environments lean towards over kill. Enlightenment and awesome will be investigated further. 2. Given that internet is effectively non-existent and internal/external disk space is effectively unlimited, how can I make as many as possible of the DE /or WM on the distribution DVD simply available to experiment with? apt-get install [metapackage name] for each of them. There's no restriction to only having one installed at a time, you know. I hoped/suspected apt-get was the answer. But that why I phrased it in an open ended manner. An implied questions include: how do I switch between them while comparing? will thy potentially interfere with each other? Thank you. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/523754b2.1070...@cloud85.net
Re: Choosing among Desktop Enviroments and/or Windows Managers
On Mon, 16 Sep 2013 13:57:54 -0500 Richard Owlett rowl...@cloud85.net wrote: An implied questions include: how do I switch between them while comparing? will thy potentially interfere with each other? Thank you. The choosewm package is an option. Hopefully not. -- EMACS is my operating system; Linux is my device driver. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130916164947.5759c47e@yeh1.parsec
Choosing among Desktop Enviroments and/or Windows Managers
/Background I'm relatively new to Linux. I got my feet wet by installing Squeeze (6.0.5) on a used laptop (Lenovo R61) purchased explicitly purchased for experimenting. Having used computers since Hector was a pup, accidents happen. As I have minimal to *NO INTERNET* access, when Debian 7.1 DVDs became available from vendors I purchased the 10 DVD set. I also purchased the live DVDs for Gnome, lxde, kde, and xfce. I did some test runs of each. I chose xfce for my initial Wheezy install based almost exclusively on look and feel. It felt comfortable and seemed to express my somewhat vague ideas of how a GUI should 'act'. It was an educational experience. Each had something I'd like to see in an ideal installation. I also did more web browsing comparing Desktop Environments to Windows Managers and product comparisons within those classifications. /Questions 1. Given that I prefer LILO over GRUB and xfce over Gnome/lxde/kde, what GUIs should I investigate further. 2. Given that internet is effectively non-existent and internal/external disk space is effectively unlimited, how can I make as many as possible of the DE /or WM on the distribution DVD simply available to experiment with? TIA -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/52371e78.5010...@cloud85.net
Re: Choosing among Desktop Enviroments and/or Windows Managers
Cláudio E. Elicker wrote: On Mon, 16 Sep 2013 13:57:54 -0500 Richard Owlett rowl...@cloud85.net wrote: An implied questions include: how do I switch between them while comparing? will thy potentially interfere with each other? Thank you. The choosewm package is an option. Hopefully not. It may be of use - yes I'm strange ;/ In any case reading the manpage was educational. Thank you. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/52377de3.8080...@cloud85.net
Re: Choosing among Desktop Enviroments and/or Windows Managers
Dan Ritter wrote: On Mon, Sep 16, 2013 at 01:57:54PM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote: 2. Given that internet is effectively non-existent and internal/external disk space is effectively unlimited, how can I make as many as possible of the DE /or WM on the distribution DVD simply available to experiment with? apt-get install [metapackage name] for each of them. There's no restriction to only having one installed at a time, you know. I hoped/suspected apt-get was the answer. But that why I phrased it in an open ended manner. An implied questions include: how do I switch between them while comparing? You have a range of options. You could start multiple X servers, and run one on each, simultaneously. You could switch between them via the per-login option in a display manager (xdm, gdm, lightdm...) You could edit your .xinitrc file to start the system that you want, and then run startx from your machine's virtual console. will thy potentially interfere with each other? Only in the sense that only one can have control of your X session at a time. Otherwise, they're very good about ignoring config files that belong to other packages. Thank you. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/52377d42.9080...@cloud85.net
Re: Choosing among Desktop Enviroments and/or Windows Managers
On Mon, 16 Sep 2013 16:53:39 -0500 Richard Owlett rowl...@cloud85.net wrote: Cláudio E. Elicker wrote: On Mon, 16 Sep 2013 13:57:54 -0500 Richard Owlett rowl...@cloud85.net wrote: An implied questions include: how do I switch between them while comparing? will thy potentially interfere with each other? Thank you. The choosewm package is an option. Hopefully not. It may be of use - yes I'm strange ;/ Oh, sorry for the bad quoting. how do I switch between them while comparing? The choosewm package is an option. will thy potentially interfere with each other? Hopefully not. In any case reading the manpage was educational. Thank you. -- EMACS is my operating system; Linux is my device driver. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130916224136.7fbd9115@yeh1.parsec
