Brian Dunn wrote:
So you guys helped me pick a distro, and i'm pretty
happy with it. Lets here the verdicts, what window
manager? Gnome 2.12 is what i've been using, but it
isn't the most stable. Sometimes i can't logout and i
have to switch to a vt and kill it. The absence of
easily configurable menus has me sticking all my music
apps in a "drawer," where those without icons apear as
big feet that must be mouse-overed until i get
tool-tipped to even know that program it is. I could
work around/live with it but then i resized one day
with <ctrl>+<alt>+- to read some fine print and all o'
the sudden the horizontal refresh was busted like an
old television. the whole screen was cycling to the
left at a dizying pace and my muse cursor disapeared.
Even after killing X and restarting this nonsence was
still going on and i hate having to reboot my machine.
So now i'm playing with e16... before i invest in
realy figuring out how to use it, what do any of you
using a jack studio setup with like MusE and Ardor and
the like prefer?
Thanks,
Brian
Brian,
Strong preference for Fluxbox. Light, powerful, elegant, fast, highly
configurable. Pure productivity in an excellent work environment. It
has tabbed windows and the ability to open a group of programs in one
window accessed by their tabs. It has simple text files for this
(~/.fluxbox/groups) and for key bindings (~/.fluxbox/keys) and for the
menus (~/.fluxbox/menu), and a menu maker that will search for
applications as you specify.
Here's a set of clips from those files to show you how clear and simple
configuring this wm is and how in-control the user is:
Groups:
ardour_editor ardour_mixer (guess what two apps this opens in a single
window)
Keys:
Mod1 e :ExecCommand gedit
Mod1 f :ExecCommand Eterm --trans --borderless --scrollbar off
--buttonbar off --geometry 00x44+185+65 --font 10x20 --foreground-color
white -e mc >/dev/null 2>&1
Mod1 g :ExecCommand gimp
(that Eterm/mc command is very cool - along with my settings for
transparency, it results in Midnight Commander just floating disembodied
on the screen - no window, no scroll bar, no title - just its display
contents set transparently against my blue background. Then when I
shell out to a command prompt using ctrl-o all you see is the prompt
floating on the screen until something is executed, then its output
floats against the bg)
Menu:
[separator]
[submenu] (Local Menus)
[submenu] (Local-Applications)
[exec] (AbiWord) {abiword}
[exec] (Bookshelf) {/usr/share/wine-c/bookshelf}
[exec] (Celestia) {celestia }
[exec] (CmapTools) {cmaptools }
[exec] (Inkscape) {inkscape }
[exec] (GNUmeric) {gnumeric}
[exec] (Lyx) {lyx }
(which is a tiny piece of what displays when I right-click my mouse
anywhere on any screen - no Start button, no launcher, no drawers - just
a simple quick and elegant cascading menu structure where I slide down
to Local Menus, slide over to Local-Applications, and slide down to
AbiWord and I'm off and running. If I want to work within my Multimedia
sub-menu where all my self-installed music apps are I can simply tear
that off by pulling on its title and leave it open on the screen as I
launch all the programs needed for that session.).
Frank
