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Am I the only one sick of "modern" desktops?

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  Am I the only one sick of "modern" desktops? Michael Casadevall <mcasadevall@soylentnews.org> - 2017-03-12 20:38 -0400
    Re: Am I the only one sick of "modern" desktops? Adrian Caspersz <email@here.invalid> - 2017-03-13 12:58 +0000
    Re: Am I the only one sick of "modern" desktops? RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2017-03-13 21:03 -0400
      Re: Am I the only one sick of "modern" desktops? Michael Casadevall <mcasadevall@soylentnews.org> - 2017-03-13 22:31 -0400
        Re: Am I the only one sick of "modern" desktops? RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2017-03-14 23:17 -0400
          Re: Am I the only one sick of "modern" desktops? Kerry Imming <kcimming@pobox.com> - 2017-03-15 07:00 -0500
            Re: Am I the only one sick of "modern" desktops? Dan Espen <despen@verizon.net> - 2017-03-15 11:37 -0400
              Re: Am I the only one sick of "modern" desktops? Kerry Imming <kcimming@pobox.com> - 2017-03-16 08:29 -0500
                Re: Am I the only one sick of "modern" desktops? Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2017-03-16 16:22 +0200
              Re: Am I the only one sick of "modern" desktops? Andreas Eder <a_eder_muc@web.de> - 2017-03-18 20:02 +0100
                Re: Am I the only one sick of "modern" desktops? RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2017-03-19 19:06 -0400
                  Re: Am I the only one sick of "modern" desktops? Michael Casadevall <mcasadevall@soylentnews.org> - 2017-03-24 12:58 -0400
      Re: Am I the only one sick of "modern" desktops? Pham Nuwen <phamnuwen@example.com> - 2017-03-14 09:50 -0700
    Re: Am I the only one sick of "modern" desktops? ANTant@zimage.com (Ant) - 2017-03-14 03:03 -0500
    Re: Am I the only one sick of "modern" desktops? songbird <songbird@anthive.com> - 2017-03-14 11:47 -0400
    Re: Am I the only one sick of "modern" desktops? Anssi Saari <as@sci.fi> - 2017-03-14 12:42 +0200

#13297 — Am I the only one sick of "modern" desktops?

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

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#13301

On 13/03/17 00:38, Michael Casadevall wrote:
> 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.

Both Linux and Windows are way too tied up with forced code to get it 
all 'plug and play' compatible, however its stuff that doesn't play 
nicely with users when it fails.

This class of code gets worse with every new generation of the OS and 
workarounds get more difficult when their developers forget what's out 
there and still usable in the real world. 'Plug and Pray' indeed.

For example, both Windows 10 and Ubuntu/X11 use DDC for automatic 
monitor capability detection. They also use the presence a new DDC 
communication for detecting that the monitor has become attached.

I use my monitor through a Belkin omniview rack KVM that doesn't 
properly passthrough VGA's DDC, so...

  Ubuntu needs a custom xorg.conf file added to give it a modeline for 
the native monitor resolution it can't see, and ...

  Windows 10 display settings constantly need changing to use the 
external monitor for a laptop every time it's reconnected to via the KVM 
switch - it makes a half-hearted attempt to autoconfig, gives up and 
switches back to the laptop internal screen (which lives in a cupboard). 
I have programmed a keyboard shortcut to get me out of that one, but 
AFAICS disabling connected monitor notifications can't be done in 
Windows 10, and this wasn't a issue / feature with previous Windows 
releases.

-- 
Adrian C

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#13305

Michael Casadevall <mcasadevall@soylentnews.org> 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.

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#13308

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On 03/13/2017 09:03 PM, RS Wood wrote:
> 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
> 

I was never a huge KDE fan. I always found it was somewhat cluttered
and unintuitive to use, and it's System Settings panel was very
similar to trying to divine advent's maze of twisty passages, all of
them alike.

I ran Cinnamon for awhile on the laptop, but it lags very hard if you
don't have an NVIDIA or ATi card due to all the eyecandy, and it
didn't like running with acceleration with the Intel on-board
graphics. Even when I eventually fixed that, I found it was wonky at
best, notifications would show up floating in the wrong part of the
screen, and I'd get noticeable UI lag in places.


As for LXDE, I ran that for a long time after Xfce jumped off the
insanity cliff, but I find it handles multimonitor really poorly.
Popping up a context menu had a bad habbit of showing up on the edge
of the wrong monitor; the task bar would strench across both monitors
to matter what I did, and it seems to have a weird behavior with
startup hooks which drove me mad that it would launch some
applications at startup like TeamViewer despite having cleared them
out of the startup groups.

I haven't used Enlightment since the E16 days so I can't really speak
on it. WindowMaker was my de-facto goto for awhile, but I couldn't get
the dock panel to work properly, or have it work at all sanely with
non-GNUstep apps. It also looked fairly ugly with GTk applications. At
least Motif tends to fit in with Thunderbird and Firefox. I might give
it a go when I nuke my desktop back to the stone age as I suspect it's
simply Ubuntu/Debian's version of WM is screwy. I'm hoping for
something less screwy under Gentoo, though I'm semi-debating just
hopping on the FreeBSD train.
Michael
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#13319

Michael Casadevall <mcasadevall@soylentnews.org> writes:

> On 03/13/2017 09:03 PM, RS Wood wrote:
> least Motif tends to fit in with Thunderbird and Firefox. I might give
> it a go when I nuke my desktop back to the stone age as I suspect it's
> simply Ubuntu/Debian's version of WM is screwy. I'm hoping for
> something less screwy under Gentoo, though I'm semi-debating just
> hopping on the FreeBSD train.  Michael

I don't see how changing operating systems gains you much of anything at
all.  A windowmanager on BSD is likely to be no different than the same
windowmanager on a Linux distro, with the exception of defaults and a
few installation choices (I used to find kubuntu to work poorly, while
opensuse did a better job of packaging and pre-configuring KDE).

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#13321

On 3/14/2017 10:17 PM, RS Wood wrote:
>
> I don't see how changing operating systems gains you much of anything at
> all.  A windowmanager on BSD is likely to be no different than the same
> windowmanager on a Linux distro, with the exception of defaults and a
> few installation choices (I used to find kubuntu to work poorly, while
> opensuse did a better job of packaging and pre-configuring KDE).
>

When people think of an OS desktop as good or bad, what specifically are 
they referring to?  I'm a long time user of both Windows and Unix/Linux 
systems and I feel I'm probably missing something.  I don't switch 
windows so often that the mechanism matters much to me.  Windows is 
slightly annoying that you can't type in a window that isn't on top. 
Windows 10 doesn't seem all that different than Windows 7, just slightly 
annoying differences that I see as change-for-the-sake-of-change.

Do most people use a lot of keyboard shortcuts on the desktop to start 
and swap applications?  I feel like I'm missing something that could 
maybe make me more efficient.

- Kerry

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#13323

Kerry Imming <kcimming@pobox.com> writes:

> On 3/14/2017 10:17 PM, RS Wood wrote:
>>
>> I don't see how changing operating systems gains you much of anything at
>> all.  A windowmanager on BSD is likely to be no different than the same
>> windowmanager on a Linux distro, with the exception of defaults and a
>> few installation choices (I used to find kubuntu to work poorly, while
>> opensuse did a better job of packaging and pre-configuring KDE).
>>
>
> When people think of an OS desktop as good or bad, what specifically
> are they referring to?  I'm a long time user of both Windows and
> Unix/Linux systems and I feel I'm probably missing something.  I don't
> switch windows so often that the mechanism matters much to me.
> Windows is slightly annoying that you can't type in a window that
> isn't on top. Windows 10 doesn't seem all that different than Windows
> 7, just slightly annoying differences that I see as
> change-for-the-sake-of-change.
>
> Do most people use a lot of keyboard shortcuts on the desktop to start
> and swap applications?  I feel like I'm missing something that could
> maybe make me more efficient.

Yes, most people use keyboarding to call up windows.
(Sample size 1.)

For my most commonly created or used windows, I use root window
short cuts.  The "e" key warps to the Emacs window.  Shift "e"
creates the Emacs window opened.  The Ctrl "e" key creates the
Emacs window iconified.  This same pattern is used for other
windows.

Sadly a little use of Windows caused me to adopt using
window-key / down-arrow to minimize.  Other keys bring
up menus.  Most of my menus are fully hot keyed.  This
means most things in my menus can be invoked with a maximum
of 3 key strokes.  So, even things in the menus can be
invoked with 3 fast key strokes and no looking.

Lastly, WM menus are navigated with the arrow keys.
Therefore it made sense to me to use those same arrow
keys to start the menus in the first place.   So the
4 arrow keys on the root give me access to 4 base level
menus.

Fvwm2.

-- 
Dan Espen

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#13325

On 3/15/2017 10:37 AM, Dan Espen wrote:
>
> Yes, most people use keyboarding to call up windows.
> (Sample size 1.)
>
> For my most commonly created or used windows, I use root window
> short cuts.  The "e" key warps to the Emacs window.  Shift "e"
> creates the Emacs window opened.  The Ctrl "e" key creates the
> Emacs window iconified.  This same pattern is used for other
> windows.
>
> Sadly a little use of Windows caused me to adopt using
> window-key / down-arrow to minimize.  Other keys bring
> up menus.  Most of my menus are fully hot keyed.  This
> means most things in my menus can be invoked with a maximum
> of 3 key strokes.  So, even things in the menus can be
> invoked with 3 fast key strokes and no looking.
>
> Lastly, WM menus are navigated with the arrow keys.
> Therefore it made sense to me to use those same arrow
> keys to start the menus in the first place.   So the
> 4 arrow keys on the root give me access to 4 base level
> menus.
>
> Fvwm2.
>

When I read about desktop pros and cons, one of the biggest pros is 
usually customization.  Frankly, I don't want to waste time customizing 
my desktop; I want it to work (nearly) perfectly "right out of the box". 
  A computer to me is a tool and I don't care much about eye candy.  The 
first thing I did on Windows was disable that goofy Aero-gloss thing. 
Some reviews make it sound like basic apps like e-mail are part of the 
desktop which I don't agree with.

Aren't the main functions of a desktop application launching, 
application switching, and maybe drag-and-drop as an option for file 
movement?

- Kerry

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#13326

Kerry Imming <kcimming@pobox.com>:
> When I read about desktop pros and cons, one of the biggest pros is
> usually customization. Frankly, I don't want to waste time customizing
> my desktop; I want it to work (nearly) perfectly "right out of the
> box".

I don't see how anybody could make a desktop that pleases me out of the
box.

> A computer to me is a tool and I don't care much about eye candy.

I don't care about eye candy. I care about usability. I want a desktop
that has convenient buttons for a terminal emulator, freechess.org and
emacs. I want a keyboard that has my tweaks for C, Finnish, Esperanto,
Spanish and Hebrew. I want fonts that are the right size and easy to
read.

> The first thing I did on Windows was disable that goofy Aero-gloss
> thing. Some reviews make it sound like basic apps like e-mail are part
> of the desktop which I don't agree with.
>
> Aren't the main functions of a desktop application launching,
> application switching, and maybe drag-and-drop as an option for file
> movement?

You define the main functions for yourself; I do it for me.


Marko

PS I find LXDE nearly perfect for my desktop needs.

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#13333

On Mi, Mär 15 2017, Dan Espen wrote:

> Yes, most people use keyboarding to call up windows.
> (Sample size 1.)

Make that 2 :-)

I use i3 on almost all computers I work with (except the windows box at
work) and with i3 you can do everything you want with the keyboard.
Give it a try.

'Andreas

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#13335

Andreas Eder <a_eder_muc@web.de> writes:

F> On Mi, Mär 15 2017, Dan Espen wrote:
>
>> Yes, most people use keyboarding to call up windows.
>> (Sample size 1.)
>
> Make that 2 :-)
>
> I use i3 on almost all computers I work with (except the windows box at
> work) and with i3 you can do everything you want with the keyboard.
> Give it a try.
>
> 'Andreas


I've seen reference to a couple of tiling windowmanagers here.  Was
going to ask what the big differences are, but then I found this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiling_window_manager

and this:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Comparison_of_tiling_window_managers

Lots of room for experimentation here.  stumpwm looks interesting to me,
but so does I3.  Ratpoison was the first tiling WM I'd heard of.  I'm
kind of astonished to find there are so many.

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#13365

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Tiling window managers are interesting; I've used them on and off over
the years (my preference is XMonad), but I find the biggest issue with
them is they can get to be a virtual desktop swapland. I've never
liked virtual desktops because I can loose windows across them and
sometimes get weird behavior with multi-monitor.

That being said, tiling is great when you're on a netboot or other
small screen.
Michael
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#13314

RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> writes:

> Michael Casadevall <mcasadevall@soylentnews.org> 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.

I keep coming back to stumpwm for both desktop and laptop use.

It's a tiling window manager, so I don't spend quite as much time
shuffling windows around, but unlike a lot of other tiling WMs, it
allows you to split the screen into static frames for your windows
rather than automatically resizing things. I also find the keybindings
to be the least intrusive: every command is prefixed with Ctrl-T, so my
WM isn't eating a bunch of Ctrl- Alt- key combos that other applications
want to use (using emacs within some WMs can be an exercise in
frustration). If I need to pass Ctrl-T to an application, I simply
type "Ctrl-T T".

It's written in Common Lisp so theoretically you can modify it on the
fly, but now that I've got my configuration file the way I like it, that
hasn't been a big deal. However, the ability to eval lisp code on the
fly *was* a big bonus when I was working on my .stumpwmrc, because I
could sit there and poke configuration changes into the running WM and
copy them into my config file if it worked right.


pham

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#13309

Michael Casadevall <mcasadevall@soylentnews.org> wrote:
> 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

Yeah, I am not happy with the newer desktop stuff. Same for Mac OS. 
Argh. I guess we're old. :(
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#13312

Michael Casadevall wrote:
...
> 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.

  no, most program interfaces are horrible to me
and getting worse (dumbing down of the desktop so
it can be used by more than people on PCs).

  i have an older machine which doesn't fare well
with a ton of graphics processing.  originally i
liked KDE then it went rogue and i switched to
Gnome just got settled in and used to it and it
too went rogue (i dislike interfaces which assume
things about how i want my desktops laid out and
how things move or react to my actions, but the 
real issue was that the new versions were too 
much for the hardware i'm running).

  using MATE, lightdm and Debian testing/unstable 
and it is doing exactly what i want most of the 
time , but i'm running out of space for working 
on some projects.

  if i'm persistent enough i'll finally upgrade 
this year, but i'll likely stick with MATE.


  songbird

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#13320

Michael Casadevall <mcasadevall@soylentnews.org> 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 remember I hated CDE on my Sun workstation back in the 90s. Eventually
we were allowed to upgrade to fvwm2.

I liked Gnome 2 OK but when Gnome 3 wiped my careful customizations of
it in some update I kicked it and went to KDE on my laptop.

> 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 don't have a problem with Windows 10 or 7, haven't used 8 much. I use
both 7 and 10 at work currently. Also run 10 at home (games or the
occasional Windows-only thingy.) The two basic Windows tweaks I like
(sloppy focus and caps-to-control) were a little different from 7 as I
recall. Other than that I don't see much of a difference. Well I guess I
have no use for smart tiles or Cortana but I don't have to.

As for Linux, I run Awesome WM on my Debian stable desktop at home and
KDE on my laptop with Ubuntu 16.10. I don't have a problem with those
either although I guess they couldn't be more different. (Awesome is a
tiling WM configured with LUA code.) I like the eye candy of KDE and the
easy config options and support for the laptop's thingies (keys,
navpoint, lights, radios). Also KDE runs fine on my six year old
Thinkpad X200(ish?) laptop with Intel's Ironlake GPU.

And just as well I like Awesome's approach where mouse is optional and
where you tie apps to tags and select what's visible based on tag and
(mostly) let the WM sort out window sizes for you. Wouldn't want to set
it up on more than one PC though.

I dunno, for me computers are tools. Can't seem to get that bothered
about them.

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