Why is so much time and effort wasted developing desktops?

[Deb-fan]

That's just not right to do to an app. Like whoever's packaging it for Debian has a grudge or something. Hideous wallpaper and boxy config that came up default looks like someone vomited a psychedelic bad LSD penguin trip onto the screen. Know it can be changed but dayum, that'll mean having to look at it! Foul play packager, very foul play!

[Deb-fan]

May be so ugly default that it makes someone consider poking out their own eyes, rather than look upon it but icewm's got potential! I like a challenge so despite the dread of having to view it again, fired that puppy back up. It's as light as Fluxbox, took all of a couple mins to figure out setting my preferred keybinds and the thing has the alt + tab toggle deal I've been droning on about built in. Like flux it appears to be plagued with toomanyfilesitis and not yet figured out it's theming either, still may in fact be/is ugly as all get out but based on reading that's by design so no doubt could be radically changed. People actually want something that looks like windows 95? The people who were around at the time didn't want it to look like that, they had no choice in my matter.

Turns out this things worth messing with more. Remember it from long ago times of briefly trying AntiX that it could be attractive and super light on resources. No doubt still true today. Gonna take a lot of work, esp since I'll just be cracking one eyelid so I'll have to look at it the way it is now as little as possible. Archwiki says create a startup script to autorun apps so that's the next big step here. Passes that and may be willing to engage in the massive cosmetic surgery this things gonna need to join the non horribly fugly club. Thanks whoever brought this sucker back in mind, errr at least maybe thanks anyway.

PS, thing is definitely more closely related to fluxbox, than the pinnacle of graphical perfection aka: Openbox but think it's got potential anyway. Also going to have solve the dang no autostart mystery in flux, it'll bug me until I do. :/

[oswaldkelso]

^
You're welcome

I'll swap your two word BUTT UGLY for four letters. First one starts with R last one end with M. You can change the look in 5 minutes but it takes time to read and understand all aspects of the configs. The whole point of running a WM is YOU have to create YOUR desktop.

Maybe your a fast reader and can explain to all concerned how all these settings affect your environment

.icewm

Directories:
cursors
docs
icons
ledclock
mailbox
themes

Files:
applications
focus_mode
keymap
keys
menu
preferences
prefoverride
programs
startup
taskbar
theme
toolbar
winoptions

I fully expect you to come back to school having done your homework or by installing Gnome/KDE/Xfce/LXDE/LXQt etc . Then Punish your self by flagellation with a feather duster.

[Deb-fan]

^LMFAO! You don't have to get testy, not like I've talked bad about Ice's mama ... Yet. I like your style.

Think I've got why no autoapps in fluxbox. The startup file ends with exec fluxbox or similar, thinking I don't need that with startx running in .profile, so guessing it'll work if I comment that out. Will let folks know.

[Deb-fan]

Update: Am sure everyone is on the edge of seats with this unfolding drama.

Score now stands at:

Fluxbox = Fail! Booooo! However Icewm = Success ! Oh sweet but extremely ugly success! Appears I have my work cut out for me. The idea of spending a couple hours screwing with an unfamiliar windows manager to save 8mbs of gawds-dayum RAM yet lives! Somebody please come to my apartment and punch me in the face. Scalpel, de-uglifier ... no gonna need the extra strength type for this one!

[oswaldkelso]

I think we're both going to struggle this weekend. But for different reasons. I'd give you some pointers but off to the 52nd Thistle Rally like in 2 minutes. Weather is crap, So crap the ex bailed "unless we get a hotel" Light weight. So I have a spare ticket any bikers on here fancy getting wet it's yours. Just ask for "kelsoo"

[Deb-fan]

I have come to my senses or at least as close as I ever get to making sense. My findings on Icewm,. Win95 was left behind for A LOT of good reasons and any interface which purposely tries to mimic it should almost surely be avoided. Something's just not right there.

Openbox FOREVA!

PS, errrr unless any large bikerish type people prefer them, in which case Icewm and/or Fluxbox are awesomeness incarnate.

[Deb-fan]

Couple others to try just cause they're already installed, got i3 which many seem to really like and awesomewm, which remember using for awhile and recall liking. Honestly don't think Ob can be beat. Not just for all it's capable of but more so in how simple it is. A few files handle so much and once someone looks them over almost don't need any instruction on how to use the thing. Always been blown away by how it's devs managed such. No having to strip a bunch of junk out cause it comes ready to tweak to taste out-of-box. To me a big part of where these others fail is just that, having to figure out how to change so much before someone even starts changing to their preferences. With Openbox no panel, pick one, fiddle with it's config file and add it to autostart, you're good, setting background color or desktop no problemo. Well doc'ed enough it's 5mins to figure out. Seems with these others you've got to know how to use them to learn how to use them.

Sighs, oh Openbox how do I wuv thee, lemme count the ways. Nah not enough room in a forum post to fit it all. Never fear fellows I'll be back shortly bytching and griping about i3 and awesome. Maybe kissing Ob' s butt a bit more then will leave off folks. Anyone want to share/link some of their cool n favorite tricks pertaining to a given gui?

Ps, don't get me wrong customizing the keybinds and menu in flux or Icewm is fairly well self explanatory. Took no time to set my preferred binds, even for poweroff/reboot. Though ended up using the paths to them, /sbin/reboot vs "systemctl reboot" which required adding the things to a file in sudoers.d so they'd run w/o passwd needed. Probably just had to quote them in the keys-etc file. Though when comes to figuring out a most basic thing any graphical interface should do, setting panel and background or wallpaper these preset styles-themes ended a real pain n arse in them. Curious what happens if someone nukes any/all default styles that get pulled in installing these puppies? Does someone wind up with something simple to build on or the wm's go all wonky?

[Deb-fan]

Really too mentally tired to give these much of a review. Though none really got a fair shake, still the winner is?! You'll never guess! Openbox, that's right peeps, ob rules, others are just waste of drive space and electrons!

For real think it does win out in a bunch of ways. Ease of config and use, system overhead for convenience + features, learnability + simplisticy. Also think by a far margin if just going off these rough metrics. Out of the others Fluxbox takes runner up lmo. Only one that beat it out in terms of sys overhead would be flux, that comes anywhere near in ease of use, being behaved and not requiring you join a cult to learn how to config it in a meaningful way, in a time table that doesn't seem like dog yrs. Will probably read some of the docs and give it another go at some point. (If can ever figure why n de hell it's startup file isn't working. What am I missing guys?)

i3 started off interestingly but still way too much config'ing needed. Thing started nicely asking, I see you don't have a config file, want me to make you one? Course I went with yes and due to laziness didn't know a damn thing about what does what. Switched to another tty, copied it's config, changed x-session and assassinated x with "killall Xorg" so I could check it's defaults. Set it back to default x-session and switched into the thing with "openbox --exit" was using slightly less memory but cpu was choppier than ob/others, nothing major but it'd take a crapton of config'ing to get it to the point of being worth using.

The award for why in the Hades did anyone bother making such a piece of crappo goes to?! Cwm thing didn't even add an entry to update-alternatives x-window-manager group, all others did and I manually installed them to x-session-manager for ease of selecting them default. Cwm had a lovely black screen, no menu, even after making a .cwmrc file in home keybinds had no effect at all. Switched to a different tty and ran ps_mem, this very zen unresponsive black screen was using almost 12mbs, in it's defense looking at it was kind of relaxing. Tis a very nice shade of black.

Openbox wins, Fluxbox comes up second. This has all been very fair and democratic. All hail Openbox! Hail! Hail! Hail!

[Deb-fan]

Well success. Went back to using my .xinitrc file and fluxbox is acting as it should bunch of commenting out and hacking away at it's files and a copy of one of the provided styles I cut to bone. Have looked over the x start process, what gets sourced by what blah blah. Using an xinitrc file is no problem on Debian, x-session is for display managers mostly me thinks. For what I'm doing no worries. Probably still wouldn't be an issue with complex de's either but if someone were installing them what'd be the point of going w/o a DM ?

Anyway flux now runs it's startup file and respects .desktop files put into ~/.config/autostart too with an xinitrc file using exec startfluxbox line for it. Was setting default x-session with update-alternatives. Doing "nano .xinitrc" to quickly set a de/wm is better-faster regardless and flux is playing nice now that it's got the xinitrc file it wanted. Also while hacking through it's keys file noticed it does have an exit keybind set. Ctrl + alt + delete. I'd been killing X to get out of and reconfig the thing. It's still imo much lacking and less polished than Openbox, harder to work with and the difference in overhead isn't much. Though had to figure out why it wasn't working. Openbox didn't care about having a DM or not, an xinitrc file, set it via x-session-manager. Still ran it's autostart file, still ran .desktop files no problemo. Openbox is still the Weiner! Flux still coming up short in a bunch ways. But all things considered think these two are the best in class when it comes to wm's. Easily understood why they have the lions share of the userbase.

In closing dear friends, OPENBOX RULEZ, Fluxbox droolz but only a slight trickle out the corner of it's mouth and it probably has a bit of a palsey like shake and tad of a weird shuffle in it's step. Very likely mumbles to itself as it's drooling, shaking, shuffling along. You folks get the point. Lmfao!

[Deb-fan]

Random thought now I've got to try cwm again. Might actually somewhat work now. Compared to cwm fluxbox acts like a super space ninja beast!

[anticapitalista]

Have you tried pekwm or jwm?

[Deb-fan]

^ Tried Jwm, should really give it another shot but the system overhead it was showing in ps_mem made it seem pointless to bother with it. This cwm thing, no way! Thing just isn't in the cards. Don't care if it uses .4mbs, not possibly worth it. Can't be, thing still just refuses to work and done messing with it. Giving up all the convenience, the features etc for the sake of saving 14mbs?! Forget that noise I've been known to do retarded things but not that tarded.

Was tempted to dork with Icewm some more but it's comparable to fluxbox and flux is really lacking vs Openbox as it is. Would just mean more hacky, hacky, comment n comment out some more and a bunch of time dumped for nothing that'll benefit me at this point. Throwing in towel but dang it do believe I've got pekwm already installed. Nah enough for one dork session. It'll just be more of the same as the others anyway.

[Deb-fan]

Ok stats time peeps.

According to "smem -tk" pss for these processes ... OB + tint2 = 8/5.6mbs for 14mbs - FB + tint2 = 4.2/6mbs let's round that one down. Difference of !?! FOUR GAWD-DAYUM MEGABYTES!

Arghhhh go team dork! Main thing was figuring out why fluxbox wasn't working and at least learning to config it as closely to what I like as possible. Mission accomplished I guess. Flux is one of the best polished, most popular and easiest to use going. These "minimal" deals which use as much as OB/FB anyway and on any sys's nowadays all irrelevant for real. These obscure gui's are simply for people who must enjoy pain for no practical gain. In my view anyway. Folks struggling to be different for the sake of it itself. Though hey each their own too. Whatever makes peeps happy. All these shots I'm taking at whichever wm-etc is mainly tongue in cheek, totally true imo but meant in fun fellows.

Things are painful to even bother with. Unless some distro dev does something with them for people. Remember marveling at how light and attractive AntiX was when tried it long ago. Can't remember if it used pek or Icewm then. Was distrohopping like a person possessed in those dys. Then found gnu/nix perfection = Debian (netinstalls.)

[Deb-fan]

Ah crap should've focused on icewm. Has that running app cycle through thing I'm so hawt for. Will have to build my strength back up.

Also wanting to consider what I'd babbled about fairly. Those folks who do develop a preference for these hard as hades to learn, setup, config gui's. Guess they really want to individualize their gui"s and obviously they do. Like anything no doubt using these setups becomes second nature to such nixers. Doing things, in ways that'd make me and 99.78% of computer users world-wide want to rip out handfuls of hair, they can do on auto-pilot. Just a tiny niche thing, why you never see distro's with these interfaces coming out. Nobody wants to deal with all that. No interest/demand but more power to these nixers nonetheless. Lol ... also better them than me. Would almost rather pitch my old laptop out the window than use a bunch of these obscure graphical setups.

Why the hell does that ugly bright orange boxy thing keep popping up?! Where the hell does it come from, how do you stop/change it !? (Gets out hammer) n gives PC the 1000yd stare. BAM, BAM, BASH BING!!, BONG! Ah there, fixed it.

Something like that was what prompted me to abandon dorking with Icewm. Had tint2 autorunning in the thing, keybinds set, color scheme coming along and this ugly tan box that said <workspace 1> would popup right in the middle of tint2 for a few seconds every startup. Just didn't feel like tracking down what and where the stupid thing was coming from to get rid of it.

[Deb-fan]

ShowWorkspaceStatus=1 Gotcha ya fugly bastid! This is in the ~/icewm/preferences file, change it to 0 ( for disabled 1 = enabled) to get rid of the stupid [workspace: 1] popup! Woot! Still going to dork with Icewm more but coming along nicely. Like it better than fluxbox, though actually seems harder to work with in terms of sheer # of config lines. That preferences file is the friggin library of Congress. However ... toolbar gone, tint2 in place, keybinds set, ugly popup killed off now. Stuff left to do mostly just related to color scheme, windows/titles decorations and sizing some places and this puppy is good enough. Woot again!

Time to move a .bak of this .Icewm directory to my systemfile.bak one. Before I over dork-up something.