Favorite Desktop Environment/ Window Manager

Puppy related raves and general interest that doesn't fit anywhere else
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rmcellig
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Joined: Sat 19 Nov 2011, 15:18
Location: Ottawa Ontario Canada
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#16 Post by rmcellig »

Thank you so much for the info. I really appreciate this! In the Openbox wiki, they mention the obmenu app. Is this available in Puppy Linux? I know it is used to configure menu items so that I can actually customize the Openbox menu? Sounds pretty cool. I could never to anything anywhere close to this kind of stuff with my iMac. ;)

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`f00
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Joined: Thu 06 Nov 2008, 19:13
Location: the Western Reserve

#17 Post by `f00 »

Never tried it. The xdg used for building (top+template+bottom=full ob rootmenu) works well enough for traditional Puppy menu (like jwm and icewm) with top and bottom sections you can easily customize just for openbox. There are methods used to add new categories and subcats to the template if you need them (Sailorbrand used this in SailPup to get a Navigation category). I use the xml for the top part of the menu to add lots of junk - various backgrounds and setters, different conkies, roxpin(s), panels, any manner of on-demand stuff I might use in openbox but that doesn't have a *.desktop file (these go in the middle via the template). The bottom xml I just leave as the basic ob stuff with maybe some ob user-guide for a doc-ref-help and plogout at the bottom (since that's what I use for re-X, switching wms and 'shutdown')

;) that's why opensource gets the big $ :arrow:

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Colonel Panic
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Joined: Sat 16 Sep 2006, 11:09

#18 Post by Colonel Panic »

I don't yet have a favourite one, but Fluxbox is the one i keep returning to. At the moment though I'm using fvwm-crystal, which i think is very underrated.

I like Gnome 3 in some ways (the overview feature, where you zoom out of the desktop and see all the open windows tiled with spaces in between, looks very cool) but IMO there are too many steps to take when you want to load an application.
Gigabyte M68MT-52P motherboard, AMD Athlon II X4 630, 5.8 GB of DDR3 RAM and a 250 GB Hitachi hard drive running Ubuntu 16.04.6, MX-19.2, Peppermint 10, PCLinuxOS 20.02, LXLE 18.04.3, Pardus 19.2, exGENT 200119, Bionic Pup 8.0 and Xenial CE 7.5 XL.

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`f00
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#19 Post by `f00 »

Hi Colonel - two good ones there (at least, never tried a few like Gnome 3). I thought I was the only puppian who bothered with fvwm 306; it certainly is pretty, functional and efficient but the mans put me to sleep if I tried to choke it down too much at one sitting .. maybe that's why comic-book readers give it less than fair due. I was able to cobble a recipe together and get the gist of how it worked, but little things like getting the application menu to integrate kept eluding me. Got lazy and went back to the less sophisticated 262 (yes, lazy since autoraise with delay is usually a strong preference for me along with sloppy focus - advantages either way depending on your mode of the day in getting it done and how many taps, clicks or gestures it takes).

ºQualify that lazy to 'lazy'* - just recently got the themes packages for 262 working (funny, all it needed was to use fvwm-themes-start rather than fvwm :lol: yet another button in plogout..). Nice but with some caveats: for one the menu was a bit lacking (so I drudged it into a fully illustrated traditional pupmenu+ a la jwm, icewm, fluxbox and e16), for two the config files are a game finding the actual file that has the working values (rather than the numerous 'routing' files) and the third caveat is that the personal menu editor and themes configuration GUI are pretty darn clumsy if not downright inefficient (both tend to put the cpugraph in my conky to a 'full load' after a bit of use and keep it there 'til either is killed, e16's Settings pages are lightyears ahead of this type of gui..). So far my best workaround is to edit the default theme files directly and simply reload to see changes (plus a good idea to ckeck xerrs.log and fix what you can)

Fluxbox is so snazzy - race it, pimp it or do a days work.

Oops, forgot (how could I?) windowmaker in my personal list (Thanks to Dima and all)

ºaddenda 120731 for fvwm-themes

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