Path: csiph.com!weretis.net!feeder4.news.weretis.net!feeder5.news.weretis.net!news.solani.org!.POSTED!raspberry.therandymon.com!not-for-mail From: RS Wood Newsgroups: comp.misc Subject: Re: Am I the only one sick of "modern" desktops? Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2017 21:03:51 -0400 Organization: solani.org Lines: 68 Message-ID: <878to8wtxk.fsf@therandymon.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: solani.org 1489454102 19875 eJwNycERACEIA8CWRBJOyjkY0n8J+t2lh0V/CAYoSmNc2ycNfNwo2+dkT6UqufT2B6sMontdEvQQzA== (14 Mar 2017 01:15:02 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@news.solani.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2017 01:15:02 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.5 (gnu/linux) X-NNTP-Posting-Host: eJwFwYkBgDAIA8CVeJJox6EI+4/gHVOufiAKXK6KR7M+J3CFhObbCht6Z5l1OwzBtzh2Wz8Y4BDr Cancel-Lock: sha1:hIDWddbL1j7No/qplDQqvbQTApM= sha1:0oYJxylFUDVBP6XEo2GPFd4iNAs= X-User-ID: eJwFwYkBwCAIA8CVeJJox6kI+4/gHVOuWhAFDie812aYcGsif2Nt1qe2BArB9FQi3A9uz3n/8BAu Xref: csiph.com comp.misc:13305 Michael Casadevall writes: > I've been recently fighting a major uphill battle with adding a second > monitor to my desktop, and in what is quite possibly a fit of insanity, > went and compiled CDE from source. The end result is surprisingly usable > though Motif has some hiccups with dealing with X apps that are a bit > too smart (pinentry-x11) for their own good. > > I'd like to say that this is a *NIX only problem, but Windows 8 and 10 > also pail in comparison for usability and "getting stuff done" that 7 > had. I've used most of the major desktop operating systems, every > version of Windows, OS/2, classic Mac OS, OS X from 10.1 to 10.5, and > even worked professionally on both Debian and Ubuntu and I never > remember fighting my systems as much to do simple basic things. So I'm > curious if comp.misc in general agrees with me, or thinks I'm out of my > mind. If you do agree with me, I'd also like to know why, and what > you've done about it. > Michael Nope, I'm with you on this one (+1 for the soylent addy, BTW). The only two things I really want in a desktop are a keystroke combination to launch commands (preferably a slightly smart one), an easy way to switch between ongoing tasks, an easy way to monitor my system stats, and ... well, actually that's about it. I do like a menu system for discovering software on my system I don't use often, but even that's an option. That means I've been 100% satisfied with the following: • KDE3 • Gnome2 • Cinnamon • Windowmaker • {flux|open|black} box with grun • Enlightenment now Moksha • KDE4 • FVWM2 • VTWM with grun • LXDE Each has a pitfall or two. KDE4 crashes a lot, in my experience. Cinnamon is gorgeous but I miss a few windowing commands (like that effect where a window rolls up like a windowshade). KDE3 looks a bit dated these days but I find it perfectly functional. My sweet spot has always been Windowmaker (and I see they've got a new version just released this week!). It's been just about perfect for me. Enlightenment is beautiful, but I typically use it on Bodhi, which gives me hassles in other areas since it's such a spartan distro. LXDE is fine for me; VTWM was a bit wonky. FVWM2 does everything I need it to (ie, launch a bunch of terminal emulators, emacs, and a browser). Mac OSX was perfect around Snow Leopard and has gotten more annoying since. Windows was perfect around Win7 and has gotten more annoying since. Gnome3 I find impossible to use. On my desktop (mouse, keyboard) I usually revert to Windowmaker. On my netbook, Linux Mint with Cinnamon has been effortless. I run BSD headless on my servers. Happy camper! Got to say though, knowing I can run KDE3, FVWM2, LXDE, or any *box window manager, the idea that modern Macs or Windows boxes require 4G for a desktop is appalling. So much waste! 17 years ago I used Linux no differently than I use it today and 128MB of RAM were just fine. (OK, I'm happy to concede a little more RAM in exchange for Unicode, better font rendering, and maybe a couple of other things, but that's about it!) Seems these other systems use up all that RAM doing things I find annoying anyway! Obviously, you should all get off my lawn.