On 29/10/13 16:29, Andre Klärner wrote:
Hi Eugen,
On Tue 29.10.2013 15:58:12, Eugen Dedu wrote:
I noticed how to add some of this *manually*. I searched for a
gnome-ish style with all this inside, so that I do not spend hours
for it. And, since it uses external programs developed
independently of awesome, I fear that I will run into trouble. But
I will try.
Well, I feel like you should know, that some on this list did all this a
while ago. Awesome is not like gnome or kde or xfce. It is more a unique
way of approaching the desktop. Some consider it more a desktop framework
than actually "just" a window manager ;).
I myself had 3 attempts at switching to awesome. The first time I saw it
was on a lighning talk at a university nearby, I found it fascinating and
tried it back home a few days later. But I had to get stuff done and didn't
have the patience to look up the keybinding everytime I wanted to do
something.
The second time was, when I stumbled over it in a youtube video. I still
liked the concept, so I gave it a go and ran it for a few days before
getting too annoyed to run back to gnome for doing my work. But this was
still in the times, when gnome's latest version was 2.6 and really usable.
But than a while later the first version of gnome3 came to my desktop, it
slipped through in an update.. So as the first gnome3 version were quite
unusable I thought back to what I might want to switch to now. And I
remembered awesome and how awesome this concept was. But this time I was
upset enough with gnome, so there was no way I'd ever switch back to gnome
at this point in time. So I ran a "man awesome|lpr", glued that to the wall
above my desk and starting using the default config. It took me maybe a
week to get used to the keyboard bindings, and maybe a few months to create
my own config. But now after using it for about two years I'd never go back
to anything else. Gnome's gotten better by now, I can recommend it without
doubts to my friends and colleagues, but I always will tell them, if they
want to be really productive they should give awesome a try.
I exaggerate a bit, but it is like now we cannot buy assembled
computers anymore. One has to choose each of the pieces to have a
computer. It is useful to have customisation, but is there a
customisation ready to use, familiar to people coming from a desktop
manager?
Well, actually the default config is really usable. It has many tags (like
gnome), it has floating windows and sloppy focus. What it misses are things
that everyone would like to customize later. I am lazy, so I am still
running gnome-settings-daemon, gnome-sound-applet, nm-applet in the
background, and they might not integrate perfectly, but they'll do what they
are supposed to do.
If you take one thing away from this really lengthy mail, than that:
Keep going, adapt the config to everything you need. You will never regret
putting the work into this, as the benefit to too high.
Thank you very much for your encouragements and sincere feeling. I am
in the same situation like you. I prefer to be in the 3rd attempt...
Right now awesome 3.5.1 (last debian version) has some major bugs on
window movement and resizing. Also, some applications look bad, such as
ugly colours in ekiga call window. I will try to "fix" them, hope I
will succeed...
--
Eugen
--
To unsubscribe, send mail to [email protected].
