Linux

I grew to loved Gnome2, switched to it when KDE4 was released. Was what KDE3 was, very very customisable with many wee tweaks you could use to increase productivity. Then Unity and one size fits all or Gnome3, another size fits all. So I gave KDE another try and have found it has matured greatly. Funnily enough almost back to being a proper desktop as we all know and love again. It is well worth a try, maybe a bit bloated, but some people claim it uses less memory than Gnome3 or Unity, all I know it is pretty snappy. Mind you I am seriously thinking of dumping ubuntu as they cant even be bothered to make the thesarus work in Libreoffice using en_gb localisation for the last 3 releases.

As for synaptic being left out of the default ubuntu install, just need to add one more thing to your first ever command on each new system, for me that will now be.

sudo apt-get install synaptic htop mc
 
Donn said:
A Haskell-driven WM? Ouch. I bow to your brain... as I shudder.

:D
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You don't really need to know any Haskell to use Xmonad. You can configure it by following examples. In fact, it works quite well out-of-the-box using the default configuration file.
 
I'm sure you can. I was kidding around. I have been thinking Fluxbox, how does xmonad compare?
 
Donn said:
I'm sure you can. I was kidding around. I have been thinking Fluxbox, how does xmonad compare?
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I haven't used Fluxbox, but I've used Openbox, which seems to be similar. Neither is a tiling window manager like Xmonad is, so it's going to be a very different user experience. With a tiling window manager, windows don't overlap, so you never have to use a mouse to move, focus, and resize your windows, and your screen space is used efficiently.
 
Donn said:
Gnome 2 was fabulous. Subtle, stable, sensible. Sniff...
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I only hope at least one fork survives.

Come to think of it, I can't think of a better GUI to use than a fork of Gnome. I already use a fork of Amarok (Exaile), a Linux alternative for Windows Live Messenger (Emesene), a fork of a fork of a fork of sun office (LibreOffice).

Heck, Linux itself is based on a fork of Unix. And wasn't Unix also a fork?

Either way, I will sorely miss Gnome, to the point that I might even consider moving back to Windows. Imagine that...
 
Bram Kaandorp said:
Have you been living in a cave? There was an immense falling out over how buggy KDE 4 was.
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Uh, yeah, there was. :blush: Even Linus switched away from KDE when 4 came out. Not sure what he's using now.

You know what, if I can find adequate KDE 4 alternatives for many of the Gnome dependent programs I use, I might switch to that after all. It can't be worse than Gnome 3. Right?
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A lot of Gnome stuff will run on KDE, because distributions often install both sets of libraries. But that's not to say the applications you use in Gnome will run. And if you switch to the KDE equivalent, you have to get used to its quirks and put up with the odd feature that you liked in the Gnome app but isn't in the KDE one.

I tend to be fair bit "old school" and use a lot of generic applications (I've been using Linux for about 15 years now.) I prefer Firefox to Konqueror for web browsing. I use LibreOffice instead of whatever "office" apps KDE may offer. I use the Midnight Commander for filesystem stuff because it's fast and I know a lot of its keyboard shortcuts. I even use a combination of Midnight Commander and the ancient 'xv' program for maintaining my digital photograph collection, even though Gwenview and digiKam have features that I would find useful if I bothered to invest the time to learn them properly. I use the Gimp for picture editing. I much prefer plain old text files that I can edit with vim, although recently I've taken to using Kate as well.

All of these are independent of the actual desktop environment I'm running. The only KDE-specific programs I run are KvIRC, Kontact (all-in-one Email / Contacts/ Calendar /To-do List / RSS Feeds / Journal / Notebook / Time tracker), Amarok, and Kate.

I mean, does KDE still give the user all freedom to change things?
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I'm not sure what you're wanting to change, so I can't really address it. I do know that KDE's control centre has many more options than Gnome's does.
 
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Blue Mountain said:
Uh, yeah, there was. :blush: Even Linus switched away from KDE when 4 came out. Not sure what he's using now.
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Seeing as how he left KDE, then Gnome, I think he goes command-line now.

A lot of Gnome stuff will run on KDE, because distributions often install both sets of libraries. But that's not to say the applications you use in Gnome will run. And if you switch to the KDE equivalent, you have to get used to its quirks and put up with the odd feature that you liked in the Gnome app but isn't in the KDE one.
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I have noticed that many of the non-distro programs I use are architecture independent (if that's the word). Totally accidental.

I tend to be fair bit "old school" and use a lot of generic applications (I've been using Linux for about 15 years now.) I prefer Firefox to Konqueror for web browsing. I use LibreOffice instead of whatever "office" apps KDE may offer. I use the Midnight Commander for filesystem stuff because it's fast and I know a lot of its keyboard shortcuts. I even use a combination of Midnight Commander and the ancient 'xv' program for maintaining my digital photograph collection, even though Gwenview and digiKam have features that I would find useful if I bothered to invest the time to learn them properly. I use the Gimp for picture editing. I much prefer plain old text files that I can edit with vim, although recently I've taken to using Kate as well.
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I tend to do the same. The first thing to go is Evolution, because I use a web-based mail service.

The only thing I'm struggling with now is finding a good PIM (organizer program). I use Osmo now, but through some weird accident I only have my tasks in the form of a .ical file, which I exported from Osmo, but it has no way of importing it (illogical).

All of these are independent of the actual desktop environment I'm running. The only KDE-specific programs I run are KvIRC, Kontact (all-in-one Email / Contacts/ Calendar /To-do List / RSS Feeds / Journal / Notebook / Time tracker), Amarok, and Kate.


I'm not sure what you're wanting to change, so I can't really address it. I do know that KDE's control centre has many more options than Gnome's does.
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I found out that it's very customisable, compared to Gnome. Maybe I'll give it a go when 10.04 hits the EOL.

'Till that time, I want to figure out if someone has successfully forked Gnome already (MATE seems promising, but it isn't released yet).
 
Did you see this way to get window buttons without interfering with the strange notification thing down the buttom: putting the windows in the top panel? You could try https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/51/extend-left-box/ and then https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/25/window-list/ to put the windows list in the top panel in Gnome Shell.

I tried them out and they don't work for me for some reason but others report it is good.

If the panel in Gnome Shell was more like the bar in Unity, in terms of the global menu and indicators, then I would be super happy with it.
 
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Alan said:
Did you see this way to get window buttons without interfering with the strange notification thing down the buttom: putting the windows in the top panel? You could try https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/51/extend-left-box/ and then https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/25/window-list/ to put the windows list in the top panel in Gnome Shell.

I tried them out and they don't work for me for some reason but others report it is good.
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That wouldn't work for me. The top panel would just get crammed full.

Actually, I'm back in good old 10.04. It has support until April 2013 so I won't worry too much now.

ETA: I haven't even mentioned the main reason for my leaving Gnome Shell/Gnome 3;

When I Transfer data from my external disk to my internal, it freezes up in long enough bursts to be unusable. This might be a temporary issue, but at that moment, it was the last straw.
 
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Nothing wrong with Haskell. I lack the gray cells to comprehend it, is all. I kinda pretend I can do Python, but Haskell is beyond my feeble powers.

I was picturing a config file that required Haskell code... :jaw-dropp
 
Donn said:
I was picturing a config file that required Haskell code... :jaw-dropp
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The Xmonad config file is written in Haskell, but, paradoxically, you don't have to know Haskell to edit the config file. You can just follow the examples in the default config file.
 
Alan said:
Did you see this way to get window buttons without interfering with the strange notification thing down the buttom: putting the windows in the top panel? You could try https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/51/extend-left-box/ and then https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/25/window-list/ to put the windows list in the top panel in Gnome Shell.

I tried them out and they don't work for me for some reason but others report it is good.

If the panel in Gnome Shell was more like the bar in Unity, in terms of the global menu and indicators, then I would be super happy with it.
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Thanks for the tip, just added the Window List one to my Linux Mint 12 install, and I find the window list in the top panel far more responsive than the one provided by Mint in the bottom panel. :)
 
Bram Kaandorp said:
Seeing as how he left KDE, then Gnome, I think he goes command-line now.
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XFCE, actually. Which is the thing I also ran to after being forced to use Unity and trying Gnome 3 and KDE. After a bit of playing with the configuration you can get the desktop to look like Gnome 2. An early, unpolished version of Gnome 2. :)
 
If the XFCE devs were not so dead-set determined NOT to allow/intro tabbed file-browsing, I'd be inclined to give it a good go, but it's far too limiting once you're used to having it. :)
 
Well, I used Nautilus as it was left over from my Unity/Gnome installation. :) I must admit I haven't used XFCE a lot, though - I made the foolish mistake of updating Ubuntu on a desktop computer that I rarely use. The netbook that I'm working on at the moment is still running Ubuntu 11.04 with Gnome 2, and will probably run it until the end of support for that release (October 2012, just in time for Ubuntu 12.10). I hope that this will be enough time for Canonical, Gnome and XFCE to improve their offerings.
 
Donn said:
Nothing wrong with Haskell. I lack the gray cells to comprehend it, is all. I kinda pretend I can do Python, but Haskell is beyond my feeble powers.

I was picturing a config file that required Haskell code... :jaw-dropp
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Ah, okay. I was interested in learning (as in self-teaching) Haskell, so I was curious if you knew something that I should know. :)



On-topic: I downloaded and burned the newest DVD of Linux Mint Debian with xfce this time. There are some features which I have really liked about KDE though that Gnome just either can't do or I can't find how to do them.
 
daggerstab said:
XFCE, actually. Which is the thing I also ran to after being forced to use Unity and trying Gnome 3 and KDE. After a bit of playing with the configuration you can get the desktop to look like Gnome 2. An early, unpolished version of Gnome 2. :)
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Torvalds likes Gnome Shell more than he used to.
"Hey, with gnome-tweak-tool and the dock extension, gnome-3.2 is starting to look almost usable."
https://plus.google.com/102150693225130002912/posts/WTLyn7dqYoR?amp&amp
 
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