i'm a (clueless) mac

[Nicholas A. A. E.]

For a long while now i used Openbox, but that was more out of being too lazy to find something interesting and nice. It was small/lightweight and worked and had some easy GUI config tool.
Before Openbox i used fvwm and fvwm-crystal. I used to think fvwm will be the pinnacle and where i should end up when i find the strength to tackle its config :P

Well, and then like 2 weeks ago i found tiling wms, first "awesome" and then the next day xmonad, and now i'm with xmonad and can't imagine ever straying away from this

Ogion

That's pretty exciting for me, since I could pretty much say the exact first paragraph you said above, except replace "Openbox" with "GNOME", and replace "fvwm" with "Openbox." So basically, there's something even more extreme than Openbox? Sign me up!

Do you think tiling window managers are really viable for low display resolutions like 1280x800 or 1024x768?

Gnome w/ compiz fusion

This is what I'm using now. it's okay, but it's not as customizable and extensible as I'd like.

 

[Ogion]

Nicholas: Heh. Well, if you're willing to learn.. I can for example give you my config (though there are lots more example configs)(talking about xmonad now).

Yes, i think tiling wms still are sensible. You can tell it to use a full layout, meaning it maximizes every window, which you prolly would do anyway. Also, tiling wms are much mroe keyboard oreinted than floating wms. I dunno how you feel about this, so if you're very mouse-oriented, it might not be your thing, but if you think keyboard mainly can really speed you up then you def. should try it.
For most opf the last years i always thought "tiling wms? No that's way to hardcore". But that's not true. It's a bit of getting used to it, that you not just use the mouse to resize windows, but in a tiling wm you don'T resize windows all the time anyway. You can use predefined layouts, specifically defined for you purpose and then a simple mod+space (mod is the modkey, in xmonad defaults to Alt, but you should use for example the windows key for this) to switch through layouts. It's really empowering.

Ogion


Example of how my chat-workspace (virtual desktop) looks like. The bottom window has the focus/is active, the inactive windows have a different broder color (grey and not orange) and also are slightly tansparent, to make the contrast between active and inactive window more clear.

 

[420MuNkEy]

This is what I'm using now. it's okay, but it's not as customizable and extensible as I'd like.

Really? I have a hard time thinking of something it can't do. When I ran it (am not on it currently for various reasons) I could grab a window, throw a window, tilt a window, rotate a window, snap a window, etc., all very easily and intuitively.

Do you have any specific examples of things it can't to?

 

[Nicholas A. A. E.]

it would be nice if there was a standardized plugin interface. For example, I want to be able to move my mouse to the top-right corner and have that toggle 'show desktop.' But I can't do that, because the keymappings setup isn't really standardized. The plugin author determines whether a particular action can be controlled via keyboard buttons, mouse buttons, mouse gestures, or some combination of the three.

but really, it's a philosophical objection, not at all practical one. it's too bloated, it wants to be "easy to use" instead of "easy to configure," and it assumes things by default, when I should have to have told it first.

I don't like the concept of the "desktop environment" in the first place. It's just a window manager plus a lot of user apps. Those two categories should be separate, not integrated, in order to allow the user to choose whichever combination he wants.

And I know he can, but that's not what it wants you to do. It wants you to just roll with the defaults. Otherwise the defaults wouldn't be there.

Like I said, completely impractical. Whatever

 

[420MuNkEy]

it would be nice if there was a standardized plugin interface. For example, I want to be able to move my mouse to the top-right corner and have that toggle 'show desktop.' But I can't do that, because the keymappings setup isn't really standardized. The plugin author determines whether a particular action can be controlled via keyboard buttons, mouse buttons, mouse gestures, or some combination of the three.

but really, it's a philosophical objection, not at all practical one. it's too bloated, it wants to be "easy to use" instead of "easy to configure," and it assumes things by default, when I should have to have told it first.

Ah, I never even considered that. I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to write a function conditional of the cursor position though.

Also, there's a settings manager (forgot exactly what it's called, but it's in the repositories) that makes configuring everything pretty simple. It may take a long time to configure, but that's just due to the overwhelming customization options there are. I think it assumes things by default just so there is an immediately apparent effect after having installed it. It presupposes that, being a linux user, you're going to customize it just how you like regardless.

I agree there should be some kind of generalized configuration options before it assumes anything (like "Don't enable anything yet, I want to configure it" or "Put on some general cool effects, I'll tweak the rest myself"), but it's a ways away from being that user friendly and I'm sure the developers would contest that you can choose your settings via a cmd line parameter when installing.

 

[Ogion]

Compiz sure looks impressive, but i would argue it's not very efficient. If i want to switch to another workspace, i do not want to wait 2 seconds till the cube rotated, i want it to show up immediately. When i close a window, it's supposed to clear out at once, not burn up, or fly away or something. Menus should not fade in and out but snap into existence and out of it. (Not that i use a lot of menus anyway but still).
That's at least my take.
Oh and btw, compiz may have some configuration options regarding graphical bling, but it is not overwhelmingly customizable. Window mangers that are meant to be serious window managers and not graphical showoff have a LOT more configration possibilietes.

But, and this is an honest but, if you like compiz and can comfortably work with it, then by all means, use it, it is the right for you then. So the above in this post is really just "imho" and for me.

Ogion