Favorite window managers, pagers, panels, etc

[hudson]

I did not like MC, until I read the man page and figured out how to use it. Now I love it. If you like terminal file managers, check out Ranger if you have not done so already.

wow...are you ever right about MC...I started reading the man page and I didn't even know you can enter shell commands. Ranger is very cool. Anyone using xterm? I really like it, but I need to get a right-click menu somehow...

[Randicus]

Apparently xterm is very versatile ... after reading and absorbing the man page, which is veryyyyy long.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Anyone using xterm?

It's nice but rxvt-unicode is much faster.

I need to get a right-click menu somehow...

[Deshapria]

I gotta learn MC! I always think I'm going to do something like only use the terminal and tmux for a month, but never do. I think I'm too busy configuring my window manager.

Yes, you should!
It appears that you've never used Norton Commander in the 80s and 90s.
MC would teach you a lot.

[hudson]

Well, I threw in the towel on Fvwm...ultra-configurable means you spend all your time tweaking your window manager and it never seems right...I'm back to Fluxbox now

MC is definitely something I plan to master...at least 6-10 commands like I know vi well enough to edit a config file. I love xterm...it actually has a Tektronix 4014 Emulator you can use...check out http://www.stenyak.com/archives/1208/trick-of-the-day-rendering-graphics-in-your-terminal/

[None1975]

My favorite wm is xmonad. And with xmobar it is rocks. Much better, faster and solid, then i3wm. But configuring it-it is dauntless process.

[ruffwoof]

mc works well within the gui, you can use the mouse to navigate around and double click things to open/run them.

I also like xterm and have a undecorated desktop window for that also. Ctrl-leftmousepress (and hold) opens up the xterm menu where you can switch it to full screen

I set mc and xterm to be below other windows, so they serve somewhat like a wallpaper. Set mc to open the left pane in your ~/bin folder (executable scripts) and the right pane to open your ~/Documents folder and you can mouse/click to open things from the get-go.



For xterm (and other things) my ~/.Xresources contains

Code: Select all

Xft.dpi: 124

! for xterm ctrl left mouse click menu font size
XTerm*SimpleMenu*font: -adobe-helvetica-medium-r-normal--*-140-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*

xterm.termName: xterm-256color
xterm*scrollBar: false
xterm*rightScrollBar: true
xterm*loginshell: true
xterm*cursorBlink: true
xterm*background:  black
xterm*foreground: white
xterm.borderLess: true
xterm.cursorBlink: true
xterm*colorUL: red
xterm*colorBD: red
xterm*colorULMode: false
xterm*colorBDMode: false

!fix alt key input
xterm*eightBitInput: false
xterm*altSendsEscape: true

!print color and bold/underline attributes
xterm*printAttributes: 2
xterm*printerCommand: cat > ~/xtermdump
!mouse selecting to copy, ctrl-v to paste
!Ctrl p to print screen content to file
XTerm*VT100.Translations: #override \
Ctrl <KeyPress> Y: insert-selection(CLIPBOARD,PRIMARY,CUT_BUFFER0) \n\
<BtnUp>: select-end(CLIPBOARD,PRIMARY,CUT_BUFFER0) \n\
Ctrl <KeyPress> P: print() \n

!font and locale

! Default and menu font
xterm*locale: true
xterm.utf8:     true
xterm*utf8Title: true
xterm*fontMenu*fontdefault*Label: Default
!xterm*faceName: Monaco:antialias=True:pixelsize=15
xterm*faceName: DejaVu Sans:pixelsize=16:antialias=True
!xterm*faceName: monofur:antialias=True:pixelsize=20
!xterm*boldFont: DejaVu Sans Mono:style=Bold:pixelsize=15
xterm*faceNameDoublesize: wenquanyi microhei:pixelsize=16:antialias=True
xterm*xftAntialias: true
xterm*cjkWidth:false
xterm*inputMethod:fcitx

!-- Tango color scheme
*xterm*color0: #2e3436
*xterm*color1: #cc0000
*xterm*color2: #4e9a06
*xterm*color3: #c4a000
*xterm*color4: #3465a4
*xterm*color5: #75507b
*xterm*color6: #0b939b
*xterm*color7: #d3d7cf
*xterm*color8: #555753
*xterm*color9: #ef2929
*xterm*color10: #8ae234
*xterm*color11: #fce94f
*xterm*color12: #729fcf
*xterm*color13: #ad7fa8
*xterm*color14: #00f5e9
*xterm*color15: #eeeeec

I launch the two (top xterm that is running htop in the image above, and lower xterm that runs mc) using

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#!/bin/sh
xterm -geometry 90x8+0+0 -fa DejaVu:size=10:bold &
xterm -geometry 85x24+0+176 -fa DejaVu:size=12 -e "mc /mnt/sda2/home/ff/bin /mnt/sda2/home/ff/Documents" &

If you have curl installed, then create a script called weather with content

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#!/bin/sh
CITY=sw19  #  << change to your city/postcode/zipcode
xterm -T "Weather" -geometry 136x44+0+0 -fa DejaVu:size=9 -e "curl wttr.in/~$CITY; read -s -n 1 -p 'Press any key to close . . .'"

Make it executable and you can get a quick multi-day snapshot of your local weather forecast within a terminal window (above geometry is refined for my screen resolution)


xpaint is another old-school but good program. I launch mine using

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#!/bin/sh
xpaint -menufont "Liberation-14:matrix=0.85 0 0 0.9"

as otherwise the default fonts were way too small for my liking

I have radiotray added to my tray and I just scanned around for my favourite radio stations url's and added those to it.

Osmo for calendar, notes, tasks ...etc.

Libreoffice with tray quickstarter for office tools (word processing, drawing, spreadsheet ...etc).

Masterpdf editor (not in repositories and my only non Debian MAIN exception) for PDF editing.

And firefox-ESR

... mostly caters for my needs (I also have Openshot, Blender, Inkscape and Audacity installed for video editing, together with recordmydesktop).

My preferred wm and panel is provided by jwm and pcmanf --desktop (pcmanfm also serves as the filemanager), however currently I'm running LXDE so openbox after having upgraded to Stretch only to discover its still not quite there yet for me, so I reverted back to Jessie.

[nnm]

dwm, dmenu, tabbed, and st.
the suckless.org tools are simple, clean, sane and hackable.