On 04/26/2014 07:11 AM, Sean Dague wrote:
configurations and favorite apps
My "desktop" has a 2560x1440 landscape monitor on the left and a
1050x1680 portrait monitor on the right. I used to run separate X
sessions to get half a dozen independent workspaces on each monitor, but
it seems none of the usual DMs support that mode these days.
So I run Xubuntu 13.10 and make the best of the situation. Although it
does fancy compositing, I've choked all the foo-foos to the bare
minimum: all I see are big windows with readable characters, simple
colors, and crisp borders.
A flock of devilspie2 scripts slap windows to preset locations /
workspaces on the monitors. Unlike the original devilspie, devilspie2
uses Lua scripts, which I can actually understand a few weeks after
writing them.
All the usual programs autostart in the morning, appear in their proper
locations, and run all day. I never minimize anything and rarely close a
program after starting it; the Xubuntu desktops do have custom
wallpaper, but I never see it.
Actually, the wallpaper images come from the NFS server in the basement.
If I *don't* see the usual images during startup, that means networking
has fallen over. Some backstory may come in handy, with a view of the
monitors during startup:
http://softsolder.com/2013/12/19/upstart-vs-nfs-mounts-vs-display-manager-resolved/
Alt-Tab cycles through all the programs on both monitors; the selected
program pops to the front and is ready when I am.
The left monitor has enough dots that the usual email & browser windows
require only half the screen. Graphics & CAD programs run full-screen,
which is *wonderful* for getting the big picture.
The right monitor presents "text editing" programs with an entire page
at readable resolution: Libreoffice / Kedit / whatever. There's always a
full-screen terminal, too, with multiple tabs for separate hosts /
directories / whatever.
I use Chromium for my blog and Firefox for nearly everything else,
because Chromium doesn't blow up and Firefox has a usable Print Preview.
They stay open all the time, with tabs for all the usual suspects.
Vital Firefox add-ons:
Adblock Plus
Self-Destructing Cookies (set to nuke nearly everything)
FireGestures
HTTPS Everywhere
Image Zoom
Print/Print Preview
Tab Focus
Tranquility
Thunderbird seems to be the least awful email client. Since you smart
folks stopped using email, all the GUI clients have degenerated to crap,
but, sheesh, I'd think email would be a solved problem by now.
Given all the tweakage, upgrading to 14.04LTS looks to be a major
kerfuffle. I still haven't forgiven the upstart nonsense and do *not*
look forward to coping with systemd.
I should turn all that into a blog post...
--
Ed
softsolder.com
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