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jdgill0
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Joined: 25 Mar 2003
Posts: 1366
Location: Lexington, Ky -- USA
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 Posted: Wed Dec 01, 2004 12:27 am Post subject: Active Desktop Borders in Gnome |
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I have a question for Gnome users. I have been a KDE user for some time and one of the things that I really love about KDE is active desktop borders. For those who may not know, active desktop borders allows you to move from one virtual desktop to the next by moving the mouse pointer to the edge of the screen.
Does Gnome have this ability? I am tempted of late to try Gnome, but active desktop borders is an option I am not sure I could give up.
Furthermore, I usually keep 10 virtual desktops active in KDE. KDE's taskbar pager will stack them, i.e. I have 2 rows of 5 desktops shown in the pager. It seems Gnome will only allow 1 row of 10 desktops. Am I wrong? The cool thing about them being stacked is the ability to move to the neighboring desktops to the left, right, top, or bottom with active desktop borders.
Thanks. |
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deathdruid
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Joined: 25 Jul 2002
Posts: 343
Location: Philadelphia, PA, USA
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| Posted: Wed Dec 01, 2004 12:33 pm Post subject: Re: Active Desktop Borders in Gnome |
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| jdgill0 wrote: |
Furthermore, I usually keep 10 virtual desktops active in KDE. KDE's taskbar pager will stack them, i.e. I have 2 rows of 5 desktops shown in the pager. It seems Gnome will only allow 1 row of 10 desktops. Am I wrong? The cool thing about them being stacked is the ability to move to the neighboring desktops to the left, right, top, or bottom with active desktop borders.
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As far as the pager goes, right-click on it and change the option "Show All Workspaces in [x] rows" under Preferences. Not sure if this makes a difference to the active desktop borders. |
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maxcow
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 04 Jul 2003
Posts: 126
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| Posted: Wed Dec 01, 2004 4:18 pm Post subject: |
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| For active desktop borders, you can use xfwm4 (the window manager of xfce4) in Gnome, and enable that feature. It's what I have now. Metacity (Gnome's default window manager), AFAIK doesn't have that. |
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jdgill0
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Joined: 25 Mar 2003
Posts: 1366
Location: Lexington, Ky -- USA
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| Posted: Wed Dec 01, 2004 4:29 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | As far as the pager goes, right-click on it and change the option "Show All Workspaces in [x] rows" under Preferences. Not sure if this makes a difference to the active desktop borders. |
Thanks deathdruid. Gnome just finished emerging a bit ago. I will check it out.
| Quote: | | For active desktop borders, you can use xfwm4 (the window manager of xfce4) in Gnome, and enable that feature. It's what I have now. Metacity (Gnome's default window manager), AFAIK doesn't have that. |
Thanks maxcow. How do you start Gnome with a window manager other than metacity? Are there any gotchas to watch out for in doing so. |
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maxcow
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 04 Jul 2003
Posts: 126
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| Posted: Wed Dec 01, 2004 7:55 pm Post subject: |
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| jdgill0 wrote: | | How do you start Gnome with a window manager other than metacity? Are there any gotchas to watch out for in doing so. |
The way I did it was:
| Code: | killall metacity
xfwm4 & |
and then saved the session on logout. |
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Cayennes
n00b
Joined: 01 Oct 2004
Posts: 33
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| Posted: Tue Dec 14, 2004 5:19 pm Post subject: |
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| If you want active desktop borders with metacity, you can use brightside. There's a gentoo bug to get this into portage but it doesn't seem to be going anywhere. |
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jdgill0
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Joined: 25 Mar 2003
Posts: 1366
Location: Lexington, Ky -- USA
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| Posted: Fri Dec 24, 2004 1:29 am Post subject: |
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First let me say, sorry for not responding back sooner. I have been very busy and unable to experiment with Gnome until now. I would like to thank everyone for their suggestions/help.
deathdruid:
I got the workspace pager configured to my liking.
maxcow:
I tried your suggestion, but I could not get metacity to stop so that I could start xfwm4. Metacity seemed to restart instantly whenver I issued the "killall metacity" command. I recall having this same problem long ago. I never understood before or even now how I could do the "killall metacity" wrong! 
Cayennes:
I emerged the brightside-1.4.0 ebuild. It is working great.  Only one thing I don't like is brightside flashing to the screen what desktop I am on. I did not see an option to disable that. Brightside would be a great addition to portage. Like tabbed browsing in Firefox, etc, "active desktop borders" is something I believe people would find they could not do without if they ever used it.
Again thanks for all the help. |
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Sir Alaran
Apprentice
Joined: 11 Dec 2003
Posts: 182
Location: KSJC
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| Posted: Fri Dec 24, 2004 3:31 am Post subject: |
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| jdgill0 wrote: | | Like tabbed browsing in Firefox, etc, "active desktop borders" is something I believe people would find they could not do without if they ever used it. |
I have, and I don't like it. I always end up switching desktops when I want to hit a scroll bar or a window closing button. I prefer the scrollwheel method.
Either way, I don't like Metacity. The rest of Gnome is pretty nice though.
_________________
D is awesome.
Textadept is my friend. |
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jdgill0
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Joined: 25 Mar 2003
Posts: 1366
Location: Lexington, Ky -- USA
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| Posted: Fri Dec 24, 2004 4:27 am Post subject: |
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| Sir Alaran wrote: | | jdgill0 wrote: | | Like tabbed browsing in Firefox, etc, "active desktop borders" is something I believe people would find they could not do without if they ever used it. |
I have, and I don't like it. I always end up switching desktops when I want to hit a scroll bar or a window closing button. I prefer the scrollwheel method.
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Yea, I did this quiet often myself. However, I hit the mark most of the time now. You can set a delay time for how quick you switch to the next desktop. |
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Sir Alaran
Apprentice
Joined: 11 Dec 2003
Posts: 182
Location: KSJC
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| Posted: Fri Dec 24, 2004 6:09 am Post subject: |
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| jdgill0 wrote: |
Yea, I did this quiet often myself. However, I hit the mark most of the time now. You can set a delay time for how quick you switch to the next desktop. |
A stupidity-proofing system has never been invented that could be a match for my powers! FEAR ME!
Anyways. I'll second the suggestion of XFWM4. You may want to combine it into one command to outrun gnome-session.
| Code: | | killall metacity; xfwm4 --daemon |
With any luck you'll get xfwm4 running before Gnome knows what hit it. Metacity will see that there's another WM running, and give up.
In theory, anyways.
Edit: WHEE 75th post! I'm not a n00b.
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Textadept is my friend. |
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Sefthuko
n00b
Joined: 11 Jun 2003
Posts: 64
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| Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 4:49 pm Post subject: |
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I know that this post is old, but I felt it could use some conclusions:
To change the window manager, you can do two things (and probably will want to do both):
In the configuration editor (System Tools->Configuration Editor, or by running gconf-editor), go to /desktop/gnome/applications/window_manager and change the value to the window manager of your liking.
To get xfwm4 up, run
killall metacity && xfwm4 &
which will time it so xfwm4 is run before metacity has a chance to restart itself. |
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