Laptop WM's and DE's

Goya13 · n00b Joined: 12 Aug 2004 Posts: 59

Hey,
just made this thread because I'm curious to see what you guys are using. For me, KDE is almost perfect, but bloated. All i need is the ability to have a triangle next to the menu button (window decoration) that can easily move a window the front of the screen and keep it there. I also need a nice panel for battery and wireless monitoring.

Anyways, I'm trying out fluxbox, but can't get the triangle thing down. Otherwise it would be my favorite!

What do y'all use?

Ambient · n00b Joined: 01 Mar 2004 Posts: 10 Location: Finland

I use KDE. It is perfect. It is not bloated by any means. Bloated is that when you have no features but much slowness and memory consumption. Well KDE has moderate CPU and memory consumption but a feature set like no other! KLaptop is great too. I don't need some gkrellm or wm* crap which does not look nice at all. I just need to get standby and hibernate working. Otherwise this is a dream DE. KDE apps have also matured quite nicely. There are only few non-KDE apps that I use anymore.

P.S. The standby and hibernate issue is not because of KDE, but because of bad drivers.

Goya13 · n00b Joined: 12 Aug 2004 Posts: 59

What about startup times and ridiculous swap usage?
Don't those things annoy you???

seppe · Posted: Mon Nov 15, 2004 12:40 am Post subject:

I use XFCE 4.2 beta 2, it's a lightweight desktop environment and their upcoming 4.2 release adds a LOT of nice things.

Here is a screenshot from my laptop running XFCE 4.2 where I show some new stuff since 4.2. I run the taskbar-plugin as wel so I can have a taskbar on my normal panel which I can expand to fill the screen, just as in Gnome, KDE and Windows.

Give it a try! Release Candidate 1 is out and will be in portage soon!
More info at http://www.xfce.org/
_________________
nitro-sources, because between stable and experimental there exists only speed

Latest release I made: 2.6.13.2-nitro1

Ambient · n00b Joined: 01 Mar 2004 Posts: 10 Location: Finland

LostSon · Guru Joined: 21 Nov 2003 Posts: 514 Location: Wisconsin

XFCE

buzzin · Posted: Mon Nov 15, 2004 1:36 am Post subject:

I like KDE for general use and fluxbox for gaming.

I argee with the poster about kde being bloated. The splitting up of KDE, as announced in 'Gentoo Weekly Newsletter 15 November 2004' should help with this.

raday · n00b Joined: 02 Sep 2002 Posts: 15

I've been trying out a lot of WM's on my laptop as well. I did like KDE quite a bit.

But as of late I have been using the following combination:
- pekwm (CVS version)
- Rox-filer (A bottom ROX-Panel)
- gdesklets (psi displays: clock.display popmail.display)

It works great. Pekwm is very customizable, I have been able to set up a lot of keyboard shortcuts for common tasks. I was also able to customize the menu to display my current battery info, so no need for a battery applet.

I am very happy and productive in this environment.

Ambient · n00b Joined: 01 Mar 2004 Posts: 10 Location: Finland

One point which i failed to mention was also the consistent look and feel of KDE. I'm a very aestethic person so I need my apps to look the same. With Gimp and Bittornado I can make an exception, but otherwise KDE with Plastik style and Nuvola icons is very nice looking. I just can't stand using 5 different toolkits with my programs. It's unbearable. The point is I don't have to. KDE programs are good enough and some even better.

The one thing which I don't get is why people always say that KDE is bloat. Try doing a Konsole with 7 tabs versus 7 aterms. Konsole wins. Integration brings efficiency to memory consumption. Qt is also very fast, much faster than GTK+ 2 in my computer (haven't done any tests though - this is based just on my feel of the UI and widgets).

I haven't much tested XFCE, mainly because it was too hard to configure and was mostly just a glorified WM, not a DE - well perhaps a very light DE

. And ROX does not please me aesthetically.

Nothing in free Linux world beats the power of integration in KDE.

This is just my take on things. I hope you find you favourite WM/DE too

P.S. "Splitting of KDE"? Had to answer to that too. Are you talking about the thing that KDE comes with too many unnecessary programs. This is easily remediable. Just install kdebase and kdelibs. Then install whichever programs you want. Simple

seppe · Posted: Mon Nov 15, 2004 1:17 pm Post subject:

Believe me, the upcoming XFCE 4.2 is more DE than a WM.
_________________
nitro-sources, because between stable and experimental there exists only speed

Latest release I made: 2.6.13.2-nitro1

ahubu · Posted: Mon Nov 15, 2004 2:32 pm Post subject:

gnome/openbox. If gnome is too heavy, just openbox. Using rox as a filemanager, very fast.

I was pretty charmed by XFCE in the beginning, but I never figured out how to drop the toolbar(s). They just had to be onscreen for some reason.

seppe · Posted: Mon Nov 15, 2004 2:50 pm Post subject: