On Wed, Dec 21, 2016 at 12:10 PM, Chris Laprise <[email protected]> wrote:
> How often are VMs created?

Personally? At least daily. And deleted nearly as often.

I try to use a separate VM for each project I work on that has a
different set of trusted 3rd parties, and find myself wanting
something like DispVMs but with short-term (~several day) persistence.

> Maybe Ctrl+N would be appropriate. Del/Backspace,
> Ctrl+C, Spacebar... No.

So these shortcuts are inappropriate here simply because they remind
you of a different type of application? If they make sense here, who
cares what else they remind someone of? Call me thick, but I still
don't get it...

> A list of VirtualBox shortcut keys:
> http://kbmode.com/windows/virtualbox-keyboard-shortcuts/

They have a ton of them, and "which keys are still unbound?" likely
played a large role in their assignment. IMO their results should not
motivate our decision here.

> There are a lot, and all but the Help function use modifiers. Since Qubes'
> UI is in flux, I suggest defining small numbers of them for any given point
> release.

Agreed, which is why I'm only targeting the ones I expect are most used.

> I think its less confusing to use a combo like Ctrl+Esc than anything that
> uses Spacebar--to shutdown a VM. But maybe a letter combo is better. VBox
> uses Host+Q.

According to the thing you linked, they use Host+H, and Host+Q for
"Close" (presumably closing a window).

What about Ctrl+S for [S]hutdown? (/ [S]top)

> OTOH, its common practice to offer a shortcut key for stopping VMs, as VBox
> and VMWare Workstation do. Inactivity timers... I've yet to see that for a
> desktop runtime environment (essentially what an AppVM is). I think that's
> because its just better UX to have the user exercise their intention on a
> case by case basis for this function.

There are *MANY* ways in which Qubes is different (better) than the
more traditional (primitive) VM managers. We are a whole integrated
desktop experience, not merely a way to run VMs. I think it's only
natural that some things make sense for Qubes and not for those other
softwares with quite different use cases.


Anyway, enough bikeshed painting. It's just keyboard shortcuts...

Unless someone very seriously disagrees, I propose we proceed with the
plan proposed at the top of the thread with the following differences:
1. remove shortcut for Start VM
2. add Ctrl+P for Pause VM
3. something not-space for Shutdown (Ctrl+S?)

And move the auto-shutdown / shutdown-current-VM discussion to a
different thread, because it is a different problem. Here's a
shutdown-focused-vm PoC [1] based on my open-terminal-in-focused-vm
script [2]. Just bind it to whatever keystroke you want using your
favorite mechanism for doing so is. Xfce provides a suitable
convenient one already.

[1]: https://gist.github.com/jpouellet/d57fb4e98ca3f5ad4ac0ec2596d18154
[2]: https://gist.github.com/jpouellet/0f74459699433cabc26c389caf36b455

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