the linux window manager debate!

Soldato
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18 Oct 2002
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Right, now, I know the selection of window manager generally splits lots of linux users.

Most of the crowd are familiar with gnome / kde and a couple of the more lightweight "pro" ones.

My question is this, are there any more window managers out there that aren't completely basic, but are also quite fluffy to boot :)

Its a shame theres no OSX style window manager out, or is there?

I personally like gnome, what do you guys use / like ?
 
Man of Honour
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14 Nov 2003
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When I first started using Linux I was an avid KDE fan, cold turkey from Windows brainwashing I suppose. Now, Gnome all the way.
 
Associate
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GNOME mainly for me although my laptop uses Fluxbox. Fluxbox is great for small systems but I like the eye-candy of GNOME. I haven't tried KDE lately but the one thing that put me off was QT - made applications look horrible in my opinion.
 
Associate
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Gnome here although i have just switched to xgl and think its brilliant. It took a little configuration work using ati drives but it wasnt more than an afternoons work and now i couldnt be without it.

:D

Anyone know much about enlightnment ?
 
Soldato
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I tried XGL, but couldn't manage to get it working over two monitors (dual-head nvidia card). Switched back to Gnome not because of the dual-monitor issue, but because I found the abundance of animation slowed my productivity. I'm aware you can configure what effects are enabled, and the speed they occur. I found it simply too 'busy' to be working at as I'm switching between windows/workspaces very frequently and quickly.

Still, it's a fantastic implementation and very smart looking. I'd happily install it on a media pc or such where you want to want to show off the interface.

As much as I like XFCE, I didn't get on with it. Gnome suits me. Simple, but with enough optional bell-and-whistles and the traditional interface requires little thought to be able to dive straight in with it.
 
Soldato
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punky_munky said:
I thought Safari was based on Konquerer but that's as far as it went?
They shared the same underlying engine - KHTML. Just like how Gecko is used by Netscape, Camino, Firefox etc. However Apple now have their own implementation for Safari, with Webkit :).
 
Associate
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York
I'm an openbox user. Whenever I try to switch, I always come back to openbox. It's light its fast, and its very configurable. My desktop consists of openbox, pypanel, conky and devilspie for a couple of things.

One of my favourite things about openbox is it support custom keys and mousebuttons so well. On my MX1000 I use the horizontal scroll to switch desktop, which is just slick. The only feature I wish it had is workspace warping.
 
Associate
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#!/usr/bin/perl
Im a windowmaker man myself, just like riven i've tried others and I just keep comming back :)

I love the simplicity of just having a dock on the side, program icons on the bottom and nothing inbetween :)

I run my system here at work with dual head but I use 2 seperate desktops rather than xinerama, both have their own set of docks and each gets used for differing tasks (i like it that way).

Alas, I only have the one 20" tft at home (for now) :p
 
Associate
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4 Feb 2006
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I use KDE, and my experience with it has improved recently due to 2 new programs I installed:

Katapult: Press alt+space and type what you want. You can tell it to put on a specific song, or show you a specific folder, or run a specific program, etc... very cool. It's in the debian repository.

Kompose: Based on Mac's Expose, by pressing a button (or moving the cursor to a specified corner of the screen), the windows are tiled and shown to you. You then click on the one you want to focus on. Again, in the debian repository.

Have fun!
 
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