On Mon, 2002-09-30 at 10:21, Joon Guillen wrote:
> I'm planning to depart from my KDE desktop environment and try to make
> my own custom one.
[question] are you planning to develop a WM? or just choose
one and then customize it to your needs. orly and i are answering
the first question. if you're planning to do the second, then
Marvin's email is in reply to that.
what features are you looking for that are not in KDE? (or Gnome,
or whatever, i'm not trying to start a flamewar :). now, if you
want to switch to some other WM "because you can", that's a
valid answer too :). i'm just saying that, if there are objective
or productivity reasons, and they're aired out, then maybe people
will be able to give you better targeted advice.
i prefer to use KDE (Gnome would probably work as well, except i
haven't gotten around to using it) because i like the taskbar, i
like the point and click, i like the multiple desktops, and i
like the ability to put commonly used items on the desktop.
pretty much the only reasons i wouldn't use KDE or Gnome are:
1. computer too slow. I don't use either on anything less
than a 233 Mhz box, and even at 233 KDE is slow (Gnome is
less so, i think, but i'm not sure, i only tested, didn't
use it for any length of time).
2. computer is fast enough, but i want to avoid the slow
startup time of KDE. on my current box, for instance, if
i'm constantly rebooting while configuring stuff, i switch
to runlevel 3 and use some other WM while configuring.
when i'm done though, i switch back to KDE. KDE takes two
to three minutes to start. that's too long to wait :).
fortunately i use a notebook. so most of the time, when
i'm not doing kernel compiles and reboots or something,
i just suspend with apm -s when i'm done. so when i wake
up the computer later, it starts up in KDE sort of
instantly (2 seconds or less).
for an alternative WM, i use icewm. i've looked at the others,
(and a long time ago, when linux came on floppies, i used fvwm).
as orly says, if you generally need to work with just lots of
terminals, then almost any WM will do (i looked at twm once, i
never actually did any work with it though since fvwm was around).
i find that i need (not prefer, actually need) menus these days.
partly that's because my memory isn't as good as it once was, and
i sometimes need the prompting that menus provide. partly that's
because there are now so many programs in a regular linux desktop
or development system that i just couldn't remember them all, even
when my memory was better. so i need the prompting.
while menus are nice, i also like to have icons on the desktop for
the most common things that i do. if anyone can point me at a
lightweight WM that has a menu, a taskbar, and a desktop on which
icons can be put (window/task list and desktop list are optional
although they're nice), i'd be grateful. i wouldn't really switch
away from KDE. but i might switch from icewm being my default
lightweight WM.
i've tried icewm and gmc but that's not stable (well, it is, sort
of, but it's not stable enough for me, by which i mean it's
not transparent, sometimes i have to restart gmc if it dies, plus
it's yet another configuration file to know and configure, etc).
> Anyway, my question now is, what are your recommendations as window
> managers? What do you personally use?
as noted above, and in summary. KDE for choice. icewm with gmc
for a lightweight WM with desktop. icewm alone for a lightweight
WM with no desktop. there are lots of other WMs, but i haven't tried
them since i don't need to learn yet more menu and other configuration
systems, and icewm is good enough for me.
tiger
--
Gerald Timothy Quimpo tiger*quimpo*org gquimpo*sni-inc.com tiger*sni*ph
Veritas liberabit vos.
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