Re: [arch-general] [OT?] Which is most future-proof desktop environment?
Ralf Mardorf writes: > IIRC, I won't read the thread again, all the mentioned WMs and DEs have > a past and most likely a future. You might have noticed another thread, > "plasma 5 crashing". The bloated DEs, especially GNOME and KDE do not > provide a steady work-flow. New major releases often are released before What is a "steady work-flow"? > they are stable, but again, even if those releases would be stable, > the way they work changes and breaks the work-flow. I don't know if a More generally, what do you mean by "work-flow", and how have DEs like KDE and Gnome broken "the work-flow" in the past? /M -- Magnus Therning OpenPGP: 0x927912051716CE39 email: mag...@therning.org jabber: mag...@therning.org twitter: magthe http://therning.org/magnus Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety -- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759 signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [arch-general] [OT?] Which is most future-proof desktop environment?
Hey, > More generally, what do you mean by "work-flow", and how have DEs like > KDE and Gnome broken "the work-flow" in the past? By being buggy and lacking features. When I switched to Plasma 5 several things that I regularly used stopped working, among them: - Plasmas calendar widget (the one opened from the tray) did not contain week numbers anymore. I often consulted that widget when scheduling meetings with other people. I had to switch to other calendars, and this feature hasn't come back yet. - Pressing Ctrl+Space in konsole registered as Space (in Emacs this is an essential combination as it sets the mark). This has been fixed since. - Pressing Ctrl+Alt+Space in konsole registers as Ctrl+Space (in Emasc Ctrl+Alt+Space is mark-sexp, one that I regularly use in all kinds of modes). This hasn't been fixed yet. Those three are just from the top of my hat and required changes in my way of doing things. The first one is only annoying, the second one forced me to work with a different terminal emulator for the time being though, and the last one requires workarounds that I have to actively think about to use. I'd rather have done without any of those. Kind regards, mosu signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [arch-general] [OT?] Which is most future-proof desktop environment?
GNOME For example, GNOME once provided menu bars and then dropped the menu bar, you can see this by simply installing e.g. gedit or file-roller. GNOME requires priority for 3D graphics, if you have bad luck the combination of graphics driver and graphics doesn't work anymore, if you run GNOME, even if e.g. google-earth shouldn't cause an issue. If you set real-time priorities for audio, it will make the situation likely more worse. Even the name for idiotic crap, such as configurations that aren't human readable changed from gcrap to dcrap or similar. Somebody already gave a few KDE examples, so just a note regarding Qt. Qt was "improved" by dropping qtconfig, this is an issue what ever WM or DE you're using. GTK fortunately still provide .gtkrc-2.0 and .config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini. Xfce4 After an update e.g. a small window title bar with a clean design, became a fat thing with a Microsoft appeal. Enlightenment Was steady in always being buggy whenever I tested it and always providing blatant nineties look, with no option to get rid of it. Many basic DE applications are simply crap. E.g. try to disable or enable the bell for xfce4-terminal by the GUI. Then try to do the same by an editor to edit it's configuration file but find this configuration file for an older version and a new version of Xfce4. Resize the window of what ever terminal emulation that belongs to what DE ever you're using. What happens to wrapped lines? In the end you anyway will install a file manager, terminal emulation, editor or something else that doesn't belong to the DE. Some DEs make pluseaudio, GVFS and other things you might not need and that ould cause serious issues, a hard dependency, while those things could be optional dependencies, since if you replace them by empty dummy packages nothing evil will happen. At least GNOMEish apps allow to get rid of the green HDD killer GVFS by simply replacing it with an empty dummy package. I never found out what to remove to get rid of KDE's green HDD killer, after launching e.g. K3b my green HDD spins down and up and down and up ... until I restart the computer. The developers of those bloated DEs don't care about their broken virtual file crap. OTOH when I experienced that libfm-gtk wakes up green HDDs, used for e.g. lxpanel, a developer immediately fixed it. The long and the short of it, if you want to decide how your environment should work, what you need and what not, then better do not use ad DE such as GNOME, KDE, Xfce4 or similar, instead use a WM such as openbox, jwm or similar. 2 Cents, Ralf
Re: [arch-general] [OT?] Which is most future-proof desktop environment?
Moritz Bunkus writes: > Hey, > >> More generally, what do you mean by "work-flow", and how have DEs like >> KDE and Gnome broken "the work-flow" in the past? > > By being buggy and lacking features. When I switched to Plasma 5 several > things that I regularly used stopped working, among them: > > - Plasmas calendar widget (the one opened from the tray) did not contain > week numbers anymore. I often consulted that widget when scheduling > meetings with other people. I had to switch to other calendars, and > this feature hasn't come back yet. > > - Pressing Ctrl+Space in konsole registered as Space (in Emacs this is > an essential combination as it sets the mark). This has been fixed since. > > - Pressing Ctrl+Alt+Space in konsole registers as Ctrl+Space (in Emasc > Ctrl+Alt+Space is mark-sexp, one that I regularly use in all kinds of > modes). This hasn't been fixed yet. > > Those three are just from the top of my hat and required changes in my > way of doing things. The first one is only annoying, the second one > forced me to work with a different terminal emulator for the time being > though, and the last one requires workarounds that I have to actively > think about to use. I'd rather have done without any of those. Ok, makes sense. Personally I've not come across anything in new releases of Gnome that has been even close to that irritating. /M -- Magnus Therning OpenPGP: 0x927912051716CE39 email: mag...@therning.org jabber: mag...@therning.org twitter: magthe http://therning.org/magnus Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils. -- Hector Louis Berlioz signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [arch-general] [OT?] Which is most future-proof desktop environment?
Le 30/12/2015 10:37, Moritz Bunkus a écrit : > - Plasmas calendar widget (the one opened from the tray) did not > contain week numbers anymore. I often consulted that widget when > scheduling meetings with other people. I had to switch to other > calendars, and this feature hasn't come back yet. Just answering this (I agree on the whole point being made) : this was an issue for me too, but it has been fixed for a long time now. Just do a right click on it, go to settings, and it should be the second checkbox right below “Show date” (or something like that). ;) signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [arch-general] [OT?] Which is most future-proof desktop environment?
On Wed, 30 Dec 2015 12:22:46 +0100, Magnus Therning wrote: >Personally I've not come across anything in new releases of Gnome that >has been even close to that irritating. Dropping the menu bar isn't irritating? Employers need to re-train staff, if such a radical change happens, not to mention that there even could be the need to buy new hardware, because the graphics could be to slow, when 3D capability is required. It's not only expensive, but also polluting. I don't know another DE that made such evil changes as GNOME does, IMO it's the most worse DE of all DEs.
Re: [arch-general] [OT?] Which is most future-proof desktop environment?
On Wed, 30 Dec 2015 12:23:40 +0100, Bruno Pagani wrote: >Le 30/12/2015 10:37, Moritz Bunkus a écrit : >> - Plasmas calendar widget (the one opened from the tray) did not >> contain week numbers anymore. I often consulted that widget when >> scheduling meetings with other people. I had to switch to other >> calendars, and this feature hasn't come back yet. > >Just answering this (I agree on the whole point being made) : this was >an issue for me too, but it has been fixed for a long time now. Just do >a right click on it, go to settings, and it should be the second >checkbox right below “Show date” (or something like that). ;) And what will happen when the next major version of KDE will be released? Such issues do not happen, at least not consistently happen, if you use one of the much used WMs instead of a DE. The bloated DEs are always released, while they are still buggy. GNOME 2 -> 3, KDE 3 -> 4 -> 5.
Re: [arch-general] [OT?] Which is most future-proof desktop environment?
On Wed, Dec 30, 2015 at 11:57:48AM +0100, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> Xfce4
>
> After an update e.g. a small window title bar with a clean design,
> became a fat thing with a Microsoft appeal.
Wrong. It's not xfwm4, but the default gtk3 theme. Just use a gtk2 xfwm4 theme
and be happy :) Or better yet, recompile libxfce4ui w/o gtk3 support.
> The long and the short of it, if you want to decide how your
> environment should work, what you need and what not, then better do not
> use ad DE such as GNOME, KDE, Xfce4 or similar, instead use a WM
> such as openbox, jwm or similar.
A DE is a vague concept because it includes many non-essential (IMHO) "apps"
like browser, file manager etc. For instance, is GNOME epiphany in any way
superior to FF or Chromium (besides "better integration")? Or how does a
DE-specific calculator better than bc(1)?
For apples-to-apples comparison, I'd only focus on WMs because this is a
component you interact with the most. Bigger DEs have failry sophisticated
compositing WMs (xfwm4, kwin, whatever metacity is called these days) with hw
acceleration etc. Compositing does not imply eyecandy, it's just a better use
of system resources (for instance by exploiting GPU).
On the contrary, things like {open,flux}box and tiling WMs (i3, jwm) still use
a design from '90s. And from olden days of Win98 we remember what it leads to.
Cheers,
--
Leonid Isaev
GPG fingerprints: DA92 034D B4A8 EC51 7EA6 20DF 9291 EE8A 043C B8C4
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Re: [arch-general] [OT?] Which is most future-proof desktop environment?
Hey, > Just answering this (I agree on the whole point being made) : this was > an issue for me too, but it has been fixed for a long time now. Just > do a right click on it, go to settings, and it should be the second > checkbox right below “Show date” (or something like that). ;) Ah, that's good to know, thanks. I have to admit that I haven't checked the widget's settings since back in the day when I first encountered it and found a corresponding bug in bugs.kde.org. One more issue I'd like to point out as extremely annoying during the transition phase: kwallet, KDE's password management facility. There's a wallet subsystem provided to all applications that need to store and access secret information in a safe way. Additionally there's a management tool, kwalletmanager, which the user can use to look up the stored settings and adjust changed passwords. KDE's developers decided to create kwallet5, a subsystem that is only available to apps already using KF5 libraries. This kwallet5 system converts the existing kwallet4 library to a kwallet5 library on first start. So far, so good. However, all existing apps that still use kwallet4 (at that point most of the old KDE applications like the whole of KDEPIM, nowadays still Chromium for example) where still using the old wallet database. This is fine as long as they don't diverge – which they do quickly, of course. So a new KF5 app would be using an updated password while e.g. kmail was still using the old one and vice versa. Do make matters worse kwalletmanager, the user's only tool to actually inspect and edit those passwords, hadn't been ported to KF5/kwallet5 yet. Therefore you couldn't really fix such issues either. On top of all of that Arch only ever provided one version of kwalletmanager. So now I've been running two separate wallet systems for a couple of months, and at each point in time I've only ever been able to manually inspect/change/fix one of them. One of the reasons I'm incredibly glad that KDE4 is phased out in Arch. Anyway, I've always been and will most likely stay a hard-core KDE/Plasma user (even though I've taken a serious look at LxQt, xfce lately). But I understand every other user who's frustrated and switches away. That being said: I'm also a developer. I know that library transitions require an immense amount of work, and I also understand that a lot of issues in Plasma 5 weren't actually due to KDE but to Qt (I think one of my aforementioned Alt+Space issues was one of those, as are several multi-monitor issues that are still around). I highly appreciate all the work the KDE/Plasma/Qt developers are doing. The same applies to Arch's KDE maintainer(s) – thanks to you, too. Kind regards, mosu signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [arch-general] [OT?] Which is most future-proof desktop environment?
On Wed, 2015-12-30 at 04:49 -0700, Leonid Isaev wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 30, 2015 at 11:57:48AM +0100, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> > Xfce4
> >
> > After an update e.g. a small window title bar with a clean design,
> > became a fat thing with a Microsoft appeal.
>
> Wrong. It's not xfwm4, but the default gtk3 theme. Just use a gtk2
> xfwm4 theme and be happy :) Or better yet, recompile libxfce4ui w/o
> gtk3 support.
Zen{,x} are gtk2/gtk3 themes, however, I don't remember if the chosen
window bar belongs to the Zen{,x} themes, however, it was ok for years
and _within_ a major release it got broken.
>tiling WMs (i3, jwm)
JWM isn't a tiling WM, it's a stacking WM very close to openbox, with a
neutral, not blatant look. AFAIK it's the most lightweight WM. The look
is timeless nineties, not fashion flashy nineties. For serious work I
can't imagine any bad it could lead too, when being steady. The look is
not as blatant as Win 98, XT, Win 7 look, other than the window title
bar I got after the Xfce4 upgrade, it looks much like Windows.
Re: [arch-general] [OT?] Which is most future-proof desktop environment?
On 30 December 2015 at 10:19, Magnus Therning wrote:
> More generally, what do you mean by "work-flow", and how have DEs like
> KDE and Gnome broken "the work-flow" in the past?
For a good rant on some things that are wrong with Gnome 3 (and GTK 3):
https://igurublog.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/gnome-et-al-rotting-in-threes/
On 30 December 2015 at 12:49, Leonid Isaev
wrote:
>
> On the contrary, things like {open,flux}box and tiling WMs (i3, jwm) still
> use
> a design from '90s. And from olden days of Win98 we remember what it leads
> to.
>
>
In my experience, it leads to very productive and happy users that don't
have to change the way they use their computer every time some dev or
designer decides to "streamline the user experience" by removing useful
features or adding extra empty space everywhere.
-- Maarten
[arch-general] wmctrl doesn't show the PID of all windows
Hi, wmctrl could fail, if I want to get the PID that belongs to a window? assumed I want to kill just one instance of xfw, how could I e.g. get the PID of the xfw windows? [rocketmouse@archlinux ~]$ ps aux|grep -v grep|grep xfw rocketm+ 28733 0.2 0.3 126964 13836 pts/4S+ 14:25 0:00 xfw root 28734 0.0 0.1 72312 5216 pts/3S+ 14:26 0:00 sudo xfw root 28735 0.2 0.3 127744 14220 pts/3S+ 14:26 0:00 xfw [rocketmouse@archlinux ~]$ ps aux|grep -v grep|grep pluma rocketm+ 28736 4.0 1.0 625936 40996 pts/2Sl+ 14:26 0:03 pluma root 28741 0.0 0.1 72312 5112 pts/1S+ 14:26 0:00 sudo pluma root 28742 3.1 0.8 991168 32152 pts/1Sl+ 14:26 0:01 pluma [rocketmouse@archlinux ~]$ wmctrl -lp 0x00a3 -1 25836 archlinux panel 0x00e0001d -1 25835 archlinux panel 0x0087 0 28670 archlinux rocketmouse@archlinux:~ 0x014004be 0 0N/A .jackdrc - /home/rocketmouse 0x018004bf 0 0N/A .bashrc - /root 0x01a00114 0 28736 archlinux .jackdrc (~) - Pluma 0x01c00110 0 28742 archlinux .bashrc (~) - Pluma [rocketmouse@archlinux ~]$ Regards, Ralf
Re: [arch-general] [OT?] Which is most future-proof desktop environment?
On Wed, Dec 30, 2015 at 01:15:40PM +0100, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> Zen{,x} are gtk2/gtk3 themes, however, I don't remember if the chosen
> window bar belongs to the Zen{,x} themes, however, it was ok for years
> and _within_ a major release it got broken.
So, if you had a gtk2-only theme like Ops, then the update would have been
seamless...
> JWM isn't a tiling WM, it's a stacking WM very close to openbox, with a
> neutral, not blatant look. AFAIK it's the most lightweight WM. The look
> is timeless nineties, not fashion flashy nineties. For serious work I
> can't imagine any bad it could lead too, when being steady. The look is
> not as blatant as Win 98, XT, Win 7 look, other than the window title
> bar I got after the Xfce4 upgrade, it looks much like Windows.
Sorry, I meant stacking as well. And it's not about the looks (a good WM is
anyway customizable), but the internals. For example, what do you mean by
lightweigth? If it is something that uses system resources efficiently and
alows you to disable unnecessary bloat, then we agree. But this also implies
that you'd like to use graphics card to render windows, not CPU.
AFAIU, jwm et al. can't do that w/o a standalone compositor. So, if you compare
them to xfwm, bring xcompmgr or compton as well... otherwise the comparison is
not fair.
Cheers,
--
Leonid Isaev
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Re: [arch-general] [OT?] Which is most future-proof desktop environment?
On Wed, 30 Dec 2015 06:47:49 -0700, Leonid 'Beef Marsala' Isaev wrote: >If it is something that uses system resources efficiently and >alows you to disable unnecessary bloat, then we agree. But this also >implies that you'd like to use graphics card to render windows, not >CPU. I like that the graphics driver works with a rt patched kernel and that I don't get xruns at high DSP load and low latency, when doing real-time audio work, while the GUIs still must remain responsive and fast. It doesn't matter in which way this is provided, it only matters that it proves itself in practice.
Re: [arch-general] [OT?] Which is most future-proof desktop environment?
On 30 December 2015 at 14:47, Leonid 'Beef Marsala' Isaev < leonid.is...@jila.colorado.edu> wrote: > > Sorry, I meant stacking as well. And it's not about the looks (a good WM is > anyway customizable), but the internals. For example, what do you mean by > lightweigth? If it is something that uses system resources efficiently and > alows you to disable unnecessary bloat, then we agree. But this also > implies > that you'd like to use graphics card to render windows, not CPU. > > AFAIU, jwm et al. can't do that w/o a standalone compositor. So, if you > compare > them to xfwm, bring xcompmgr or compton as well... otherwise the > comparison is > not fair. > > Cheers, > -- > Leonid Isaev > GPG fingerprints: DA92 034D B4A8 EC51 7EA6 20DF 9291 EE8A 043C B8C4 > C0DF 20D0 C075 C3F1 E1BE 775A A7AE F6CB 164B 5A6D > Lack of compositing has nothing to do with rendering on CPU or GPU. Applications can still get an opengl context and render things. Compositing simply means that the applications wont be rendering to a directly visible buffer but to a buffer that is used by the compositor. That way it can add effects and eye candy. If anything, lack of compositing will increase performance by cutting out the middleman and having applications render directly to a visible buffer. -- Maarten
Re: [arch-general] [OT?] Which is most future-proof desktop environment?
On Wed, 30 Dec 2015 15:01:56 +0100, Maarten de Vries wrote: >Lack of compositing has nothing to do with rendering on CPU or GPU. >Applications can still get an opengl context and render things. >Compositing simply means that the applications wont be rendering to a >directly visible buffer but to a buffer that is used by the >compositor. That way it can add effects and eye candy. If anything, >lack of compositing will increase performance by cutting out the >middleman and having applications render directly to a visible buffer. This explains why without compositing performance doesn't slow down and that it could have a positive effect and not a negative one. Compositing might cause xruns for audio signals or at least might increase MIDI jitter. At best it doesn't affect audio and/or MIDI, but if it affects audio and/or MIDI, then it would make it work worse. Each additional interrupt could cause issues. If audio or MIDI signals are delayed by a fixed time, that isn't too long, it's possible to adjust this without causing an issue. If timing too much fluctuates randomly, this could cause serious trouble. I suspect that CNC machines are more prone to jitter, than MIDI is.
Re: [arch-general] [OT?] Which is most future-proof desktop environment?
I think, XFCE. On 12/30/2015 03:11 AM, Francis Gerund wrote: Wow. It seems that desktop environments and window managers are like "standards" - "the good thing is that there are so many of them". :-) Well, then: which DEs and WMs are MOST likely to be still around (and have major usage and development) in 5 years? In 10 years? And which are LEAST likely? On Tue, Dec 29, 2015 at 11:45 AM, bob wrote: I use i3 with xfce4 session, It took me a while to figure out, but in the session and startup dialog for xfce4 you canchoose a display chooser on login, I disable all xfce4 sessions except xfce4-panel and xfsettingsd, install i3 with urxvt and all the plugins for urxvt (tabs, perls etc). In my ~/.cache/session I have the sessions xfce4 and i3 beneath eachother.So now when login from tty, the display chooser appears (when checked in xfce4 session and startup manager) with i3 or xfce4 as wm.The xfce4 is only xfce4, the i3 is in combination with the xfce4 whisker menu, and 2 panels with mainly xfce4 features. Also took a while to make the i3 config as I want, but to be honest, with this setup I am 10x times more productive.Switching workspaces, with dual monitor setup , the second monitor almost feels as overkill.Especially with laptop or 1 screen, things are super. So for me i3 and xfce4
