On Wednesday 25 October 2006 10:58, Kjetil S. Matheussen wrote: > I have always wondered why people bother to use other window > managers than fvwm? I know about variety and choice, he he, > but its like using beos, windows vista, macosx, hurd, or some > other fancy new OS instead of linux, which is fast enough, > extremely stable, and can be configured to be or do whatever. > Just like fvwm. I don't use fvwm for the same reason I don't use Gentoo or Slackware. It's too minimal, too close to the metal for my general use. Linux is the operating system I use every day on half a dozen different machines, between mine and my clients'. It's not just some personal comp sci project where I have time to tweak config files endlessly. I use GNOME or KDE and whatever window manager they have set up by default. And any window manager I use will be one that has a start menu, quick launch bar and task list on screen by default. Currently my choice between the two is GNOME because I'm running Ubuntu and some of the system menus seem to be absent from KDE, but since I'm typing this in kmail, all that KDE crap is running anyway, and I am offended by the fact that gnome-panel uses 147MB of VM, so I'll probably end up switching back. These choices are not only for my own convenience, but because I see a day in the future where I can seriously tell a pretty normal user, "To do anything you want on this Linux machine you will never need to see a command line or edit a config file." It's already about 90% of the way there but then one of my customers or my partner will ask me how to do something and I'll have to grumble and open up Konsole. If I'm doing something which needs all the CPU and RAM I can give it (like music stuff on a non-Molnarized machine) or on really slow machines I fire up IceWM, which at least has third-party graphical config tools. I also like that its system bar goes all the way across the bottom of the screen by default, like on the Macs and Amigas I cut my teeth on 20 years ago. (The only reason the "icons sprayed across the bottom of the screen" thing works on OS X is because of their transparent background and that nice smooth scaling effect.) Even then, it annoys me that I can't just drag the start menu/task bar up to the top of the screen (the way those Macs and Amigas had it) like I can with the other two desktops. I also miss the temperature/heat index/wind chill applet I wrote for the KDE panel. E16 was popular with the tweaker set and I know e17 will be as well. I personally have no use for weird bitmap themes or partially transparent terminals or white-on-dark-brown color schemes or weird ornamental fonts that make me feel like I'm using a fake computer on the set of one of the CSI's or a desktop interface that consists of "right click on the desktop to do anything", and that's what I remember from e16. I think you just have to be a little more, uh, elite than me to appreciate that stuff. Rob
