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What does your non-Debian desktop look like?

Off-Topic discussions about science, technology, and non Debian specific topics.
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alan stone
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Re: What does your non-Debian desktop look like?

#1216 Post by alan stone »

^ Got curious after watching the screencast and found more details on your blog here and here. Interesting. Thanks. :)

ruffwoof
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Re: What does your non-Debian desktop look like?

#1217 Post by ruffwoof »

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:OpenBSD-current, same setup as Alpine
I've just switched over to OpenBSD-current (from -release) installed to bare metal. Downloaded bsd.rd to / (being in the uk I used a uk mirror https://www.mirrorservice.org/pub/OpenB ... ots/amd64/) booted that (at boot prompt entered boot boot.rd) and selected u (update), then pkg_add -u ... and quickly/relatively easily (mostly for me it was just accepting defaults) I'm now running with the latest version of firefox-esr ...etc.

Booting systemD (Debian Jessie) much less frequently now. OpenBSD now being my primary/default boot. Older version of firefox-esr as per the -release version was a concern for me, but now with switching over to -current resolving that :) :)

Image
Last edited by ruffwoof on 2017-12-30 11:25, edited 1 time in total.

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GarryRicketson
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Re: What does your non-Debian desktop look like?

#1218 Post by GarryRicketson »

That's nice , but
What does your non-Debian desktop look like?
What does it look like ?
Image

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Re: What does your non-Debian desktop look like?

#1219 Post by ruffwoof »

I was fixing the missing thumbnail image link just as you posted Garry.

Like Oswald I favour maximised windows and switching between those. I don't enable multiple desktops, just keep it all in the single desktop, where I have twm set to use tabbed window title bars so that some desktop space is visible to the left of the tab, which when clicked (or menu button pressed + arrow keys to navigate) presents the panel (yad), tray (stalonetray in my case) and twm icon manager (tray). I've recently moved those around as per the image I posted i.e. over to the right screen edge.

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Re: What does your non-Debian desktop look like?

#1220 Post by GarryRicketson »

OK, thanks , I see it now,... interesting .

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Re: What does your non-Debian desktop look like?

#1221 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

ruffwoof wrote:now running with the latest version of firefox-esr
I would strongly recommend using www/chromium instead because that runs fully under pledge(2), which is OpenBSD's (much more effective) equivalent of Linux's seccomp and offers much improved security.

Scrot of my fresh OpenBSD-current install to placate Garry:

Image

Mmmm... stippling :mrgreen:
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Re: What does your non-Debian desktop look like?

#1222 Post by None1975 »

Head_on_a_Stick, 94 packages in the system. Very nice!
OS: Debian 12.4 Bookworm / DE: Enlightenment
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Re: What does your non-Debian desktop look like?

#1223 Post by ruffwoof »

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:I would strongly recommend using www/chromium instead because that runs fully under pledge(2), which is OpenBSD's (much more effective) equivalent of Linux's seccomp and offers much improved security.
Thanks for that pledge /chromium tip. Now have it installed and feeling my way around (I've solely used firefox-esr for so long). I've added ublock origin, zoom page WE and ScriptSafe extensions in (NoScript, Ublock Origin and zoompage were the only things I had added to firefox-esr).

Image
Mmmm... stippling :mrgreen:
My desktop/background is a monochrome xbm, with a xsetroot command in .xsession to set the background to dark-blue and foreground to green. So one less third party program having to be installed. I also have two xclocks on the desktop, a standard analogue and another set as digital to shown the date.

I have previously thought about installing OpenBSD base along with just seamonkey - as that can also serve as a text/html editor that includes spell checking, listen to radio stations, watch videos etc., that along with online versions of spreadsheets (googledocs), email, calendar and image editors could pretty much cover my desktop needs. Perhaps mpv being the only other third-party/non-base program also being installed. Ditching firefox-esr to relearn a new browser (chromium) would seem like a good time to try out that though in practice.

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Re: What does your non-Debian desktop look like?

#1224 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

None1975 wrote:Head_on_a_Stick, 94 packages in the system. Very nice!
Yes, thanks, I'm trying to stick to the base system whenever possible but as Oscar Wilde said:
I can resist everything except temptation
Anyway, my Haswell laptop now has a broken hinge so I had to convert my ThinkPad X201 to a dual-boot system.

There's no way I'm putting systemd (or sysvinit) on that so Alpine Linux it is...

Clean:

Image

Dirty:

Image

That's dwm, firefox-esr, thunar & rxvt-unicode running KornShell (loksh in this case).
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Re: What does your non-Debian desktop look like?

#1225 Post by ruffwoof »

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:
None1975 wrote:Head_on_a_Stick, 94 packages in the system. Very nice!
Yes, thanks, I'm trying to stick to the base system whenever possible
Base OpenBSD 6.2 current (running twm) + chromium .... 69 packages in total

Image

Seems to play youtubes and BBC media OK ...etc.

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Re: What does your non-Debian desktop look like?

#1226 Post by debiman »

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:Scrot of my fresh OpenBSD-current install to placate Garry:
Mmmm... stippling :mrgreen:
punishment!
i wonder if that sort of bg made sense on crt monitors... on lcd it's just painful.

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Re: What does your non-Debian desktop look like?

#1227 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

debiman wrote:
Head_on_a_Stick wrote:Mmmm... stippling :mrgreen:
punishment!
Did you view the image at the native resolution?

It's actually rather nice on my laptop screen, kind of like one of those fabric-type tile wallpapers, I think I may even keep it that way (perhaps).

Wallpapers are bloat! :mrgreen:

Image

^ Check out the load average in htop :D
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Re: What does your non-Debian desktop look like?

#1228 Post by ruffwoof »

Reverted back to firefox-esr. Chromium kept sticking for me (clicking bookmarks arrow sometimes just pulses without showing the bookmarks and had to close the tab ...etc. to get things working again).

Image

8 programs installed (pkg_info -mz ....)

firefox-esr-i18n-en-GB--
libreoffice--
mpv--
mtpaint--
osmo--
stalonetray--
xfe--
yad--

pkg_info | wc -l shows 128 packages in total.

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Re: What does your non-Debian desktop look like?

#1229 Post by GarryRicketson »

Been experimenting with modifying the "css", in my fluxBB software,
so just thought I would share these.
Image
========================
Viewing the posts.
Image

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Re: What does your non-Debian desktop look like?

#1230 Post by oswaldkelso »

@Alan Stone, ruffwooff thanks.

In these show your desktop threads, we see lots of pretty wallpapers but get no idea about workflow and what makes it better for the user. Usually it comes down to a fight between the terminal/desktop, tiling/stacking, keyboard/cursor or just plain bling.
Lots of youtube clips look choreographed and quite spectacular but when you see a tiling WM with big gaps between the tiles over use of the golden ratio it's failed already. Even a master with 2 or 3 smaller slaves takes up more screen than a well configured panel but offers little on a single workspace.
How many of these windows/tiles are you actually looking at and any one time? I could use a well configure notion with tabs and multiple workspaces but as someone once said around here "There's no hacker in my Granny". It fails on the intuitive front. Like wise stacking window managers with icons on the desktop, iconifing, and dragging windows around the screen to find what it's hidden are all failing at a base level.

re: my setup
I think this is the most up to date ramblings, though over a year old so not current

http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/dr ... 00000.html

First off the naming: tbdtitw was a wee bit of a joke and drove everyone mad trying to say it and type it. Hence it was renamed microde (micro-DE). It boots to the desktop on my laptop with ps_mem showing 56MB, but I discovered the name was in use so tbditw just got shortened to TBD. At some point it was going to get a separate control panel but now it will have a separate config like LXDE so as to not bork a bog standard openbox.

I've tried many wm's, more than 20 in an effort to get a lighter but still feature full desktop. A desktop that anyone can learn in a few days but they never quite get the sweet spot of my current setup. The first thing I do when trying another setup is run fittstool. If it handles it OK then all my already learnt actions still work, A massive help when trying new environments.

All essential information should be available without touching the keyboard or mouse. For me that's:

date & time
CPU. So you know if something is still starting like a full blown browser on first start or if an application has hung
what's running on all workspace/desktops and what workspace is focused and which window is active on that workspace. Even if there are several windows open, and they're the same application. e.g. 3 leafpad windows.

This means I don't auto hide tint2. It also means tint2 is themed to have 1 pixel gaps and no padding or curved corners as this looses space. Basically it's as small as can be but showing as much info as possible. The font is likewise a Sans 8. As small as I can comfortably read and everything that's not a workspace doubles as a multiple launcher with up to 5 items. LMB, MMB, RMB, Wheel-UP, Wheel-down. That with fittstool means I get up to 102 launchers with tool-tips using the same action. Move mouse, read tip, click/scroll. Once you've got the location/muscle memory move+click/scroll. You can of course have 102 keybinds as well.

I also get the root menu from any blank space either in tint2 or blank spaces in between the fittstool compass points. It's a lot of bang for your buck, all this using less than a 217x217 window. Even on my netbook screen 1024x768 a window that size is and issue but a panel is not as it doesn't create dead space with my maximized windows.

The only time I run an application full screen is MPV when I watch a film.

It's very rare to need more than two of the TYPE "normal" (see xprop) windows open on the same workspace/desktop. Things like dia, Sodipodi and the old versions of the gimp get configured in openbox.rc as do other not normal TYPE windows. In fact nearly all the applications I use have a setting in rc.xml. Hence it's well over 2000 lines with comments.

The things I'd do to improve my setup:

Steal some of the better ideas from tiling wms for the rare occasions I'd use them.

window splitting only splits the last 2 active windows so if the last 2 active windows were leafpad on workspace 3 and geany on workspace 4 that's what it splits! Having to select and sometimes move the windows to be split. It only takes a second but is ungraceful. I like how Icewm tiles more than 2 windows well across the active workspace. I have wumwum it works, is light but a bit clunky with dual monitors so I never really got into it.

Be able to select the area between split windows and resize both at the same times. Dragging the edge of each widow irks me. I could set this up in openbox rc with the keyboard but not good for granny and I'm to lazy to spend the time

Other setups:

Honourable mentions to window lab, flwm and notion for at least trying to think ootb. If you want a light conventional desktop icewm has a very large feature set and can look good to but gets overlooked for shiny new heavy and usually less feature full alternatives.

When I installed flwm. I use flwm_topside because English text flows left to right, not up and down. The same reason I never put a panel on the side of the screen.
I also seem to recall installing v-desks on one of them to give multiple desktops on wm's that don't support them ootb.

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Re: What does your non-Debian desktop look like?

#1231 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

^ Fascinating explanation, thanks!
oswaldkelso wrote:Usually it comes down to a fight between the terminal/desktop, tiling/stacking, keyboard/cursor or just plain bling.
Lots of youtube clips look choreographed and quite spectacular but when you see a tiling WM with big gaps between the tiles over use of the golden ratio it's failed already. Even a master with 2 or 3 smaller slaves takes up more screen than a well configured panel but offers little on a single workspace. How many of these windows/tiles are you actually looking at and any one time?
I find that dwm (with the appropriate tiling algorithm) closest approaches my ideal workflow and whenever I switch to a stacker I find that I'm wasting too much time moving and resizing windows.

Here is suckless' own take on the advantages of the tiling paradigm:

https://dwm.suckless.org/dynamic_window_management

I tend to agree with them :)
oswaldkelso wrote:It boots to the desktop on my laptop with ps_mem showing 56MB
That's very impressive but...

Image

:D

EDIT: try swapping bash for mksh to save a few MiB for each shell process that you run; it's also twice as fast as bash, which is nice.
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Re: What does your non-Debian desktop look like?

#1232 Post by debiman »

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:
debiman wrote:
Head_on_a_Stick wrote:Mmmm... stippling :mrgreen:
punishment!
Did you view the image at the native resolution?
yes!
glad you like it, but i find it physically painful to look at.
i like lo-contrast stippling and such, but this, actual black/white, pains my eyes.
hence my thought that maybe this looked better (or more bearable) on crt monitors.
or maybe it's from a time when X servers had only 2 colors - but even then i'd have opted for plain black.

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Re: What does your non-Debian desktop look like?

#1233 Post by oswaldkelso »

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:^ Fascinating explanation, thanks!
I find that dwm (with the appropriate tiling algorithm) closest approaches my ideal workflow and whenever I switch to a stacker I find that I'm wasting too much time moving and resizing windows.
Obviously I was not clear enough. And you seem to have missed this bit in the link :D
The issue with stacking window managers is they tend to expect you to iconify and raise or move and resize them. That in my opinion is also a fail.

You should never need to iconify a window it make no logical sense. If your iconifying it's to see something that's hidden. Your not closing it so intend to return to it. You should just start what it's hiding because that just one action.

You should never need to move a window unless it's to another desktop. If your moving it's to see something that's hidden. Your not closing it so intend to return to it. You should just start what it's hiding because that just one action.

Re-sizing windows is rarely needed if you run maximized. In general if your re-sizing windows your desktop setup is failing. You should rarely need to resize a window unless it's to split two windows on the same desktop. Perhaps to read a file and whilst entering text into a terminal.

iconifying makes no sense, if your iconifying it's to see something behind the active window or because your not wanting to use it currently. In either case you need to concentrate on what you do want to do, and do that instead. Just raise what your wanting to do and the window your trying to hid will just go down the stack.

The same goes for icons on the desktop. They make no sense. The desktop is just a directory and the application to manage directories is a file manager. It's the same number of actions to switch to your file manager as it is to switch to the desktop, and as it will be maximized... enough said.
That's why I was advocating running maximized and my openbox theme has no iconify button https://www.box-look.org/p/1191774/

Memory is a mute point when we're using so little. So dwm uses 2.6MB

172.0 KiB + 35.5 KiB = 207.5 KiB fittstool
2.3 MiB + 487.5 KiB = 2.7 MiB tint2
4.2 MiB + 515.0 KiB = 4.7 MiB openbox

uses 8MB

Some of the Dragora guys are using Herbstluft and claiming it's using half a Meg. Remember the how low can you go thread?
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=129223

It's easy to be light. But the point I was making was it needs to be usable by anyone including your granny. I'm talking about thinking of different ways of using your interface. How to address the failings of the current ones. I chose fittslaw with notifications, maximized windows and using a panel like browser tabs. You chose a more conventional model. A dynamic wm that distorts xclock :-)

That's cool, but could your granny use it? We'll have to disagree on dwm and dynamic wm's in general. If your a programmer dealing with mostly text in a terminal I can see they may work well. But for mixed content.... I don't think they're smart enough to change the layout dependent on the content type. Not yet. That means the user has to do it. That's why if I was to use a tiling wm I'd use a manual one, probably notion. But hey, run what you brung I say. Choice is good.

I'm assuming you were just wanting to show your wallpaper and there's nothing wrong with your algorithm seeing all that wasted space on your desktop scrot. :mrgreen:

Re the shell Dragora 3 alpha released last night has a light shell by default. Not much to it yet and they are still trying to see if it will build across all the arches. I've not even booted it to X yet. Maybe your cup of tea. Like Alpine or Void. The package manager qi can be used on any distro as it will build static packages so not interfere with their own package manager. Website is not up to date so finding the iso maybe a challenge and as I said it's very much a testers alpha so likely to change daily and will be full of bugs.
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Re: What does your non-Debian desktop look like?

#1234 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

oswaldkelso wrote:Memory is a mute point when we're using so little. So dwm uses 2.6MB

172.0 KiB + 35.5 KiB = 207.5 KiB fittstool
2.3 MiB + 487.5 KiB = 2.7 MiB tint2
4.2 MiB + 515.0 KiB = 4.7 MiB openbox

uses 8MB
Yes but the codebase for my desktop is significantly smaller — in my fork of dwm (which is GPL'd), dwm.c is 1,916 lines[1] whereas openbox+tint2 runs quite a bit higher:

Code: Select all

alpine:~$ for p in dwm dmenu openbox tint2; do wc -l $(which $p);done
79 /usr/bin/dwm
36 /usr/bin/dmenu
509 /usr/bin/openbox
1370 /usr/bin/tint2
alpine:~$
oswaldkelso wrote:the point I was making was it needs to be usable by anyone including your granny.
Actually, I quite like the fact that my desktop is almost unusable to most other people, I consider this to be a security feature :mrgreen:

I would recommend GNOME for a user-friendly paradigm, it is lovely once you stop fighting it, IMO.
oswaldkelso wrote:I'm assuming you were just wanting to show your wallpaper and there's nothing wrong with your algorithm seeing all that wasted space on your desktop scrot. :mrgreen:
Yes, I made it myself, do you like it? :)

Fake "busy" scrot to stay on topic:

Image

As you can see, my preferences are for CLI-based programs rather than GUIs so dwm seems to suit me best.

suckless.org publish a list of software that works well with that window manager and it just so happens to be stuff I use anyway, which is nice:

https://suckless.org/rocks
oswaldkelso wrote:Re the shell Dragora 3 alpha released last night has a light shell by default. Not much to it yet and they are still trying to see if it will build across all the arches. I've not even booted it to X yet. Maybe your cup of tea. Like Alpine or Void. The package manager qi can be used on any distro as it will build static packages so not interfere with their own package manager. Website is not up to date so finding the iso maybe a challenge and as I said it's very much a testers alpha so likely to change daily and will be full of bugs.
Sounds interesting, I will check that out, thanks!

[1] https://github.com/Head-on-a-Stick/dwm/ ... ster/dwm.c
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Re: What does your non-Debian desktop look like?

#1235 Post by Lysander »

Finally got round to installing Slackware on the netbook. This thing is slooooow so LXDE and a few pre-compiled binaries have done the job nicely so far. I'm not compiling any source larger than a few hundred K on this thing.

Image

LXDE very nicely done by ponce.

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