Desktop environment

[littleman]

What are you using and why?

I'll go first. I've installed all the new Gnome and KDE applications and been running them through BlackBox (a very light weight and elegant window manager). This approach seems to work well for me because I get all the Qt and Gnome goodies but don't get the bloat of their desktop enviorments. Which is good for me, I usually have several desktop applications running and apache + MySQL running in the background..

(edited by: littleman at 4:26 am (gmt) on Aug. 11, 2001

[evinrude]

Uhmmm...command line....I'm pathetic...I know..... ;)

When I do have a windowing system, I dig Enlightenment...but I haven't used it in quite a while now. Not the leanest in the world, but I like some of the themes people have come up with. :)

[theperlyking]

I've always liked icewm because its fast and doesnt bring slower systems to a halt (like Enlightenment :) hee hee)
On faster systems I would probably take the easy route and run KDE as a whole desktop environment.

[grnidone]

I telnet in from a Mac, so I get command line as well.

-G

*slinks off*

[windsor]

I use fvwm2.

It's lightweight in color usage and in memory footprint (I only use one or two of the fvwm modules) and works multi-headed ( "two monitors") without having to twiddle with the config file.

I started out with fvwm back when Moses sysadmin'd for Berkeley and it was a minor rewrite to adapt to fvwm2. I'd rather not re-write my desktop config, so I don't bother switching to anything else. Besides, it does exactly what I need for xterms, exmh, and Netscape (and the smattering of other things I use occaisionally).

I guess the color and memory usage isn't an issue nowadays with 24-bit color and cheap memory on the market, but see the third paragraph above. :)

Rob++

[skirril]

I use the following:

- KDE 2 and CDE (on UltraSparc 10 running Solaris, no choice there)
- IceWM (on Sparcstation 5's running Debian GNU/Linux (potato and woody)
- FVWM95, enlightenment and blackbox(on Intel Pentium II running Debian Potato)
- Comnmand line access through ssh (putty) from Windows NT 4

Of all those I like enlighhtenment and Icewm best. ICeWm is extremely resource-friendly, so it also runs on the Sparcstations 5.

[littleman]

I had reluctance, but I find myself using icewm more and more. It is a good window manager for productivity. I like the ability to do everything from the keyboard. It is a very productive WM, but is very light -- I think it's about 300K.

Also the window manager doesn't really get in the way, it isn't in my face with bells and whistles.

My reluctance though has been from it's general look and feel. I think it's defaults are really ugly. I had to spend some time tweaking it so it wouldn't give me a headache when I work. I swapped out that X default icon with something a little more muted, and slim themes -- Timesteps or BrushMetal work for me.

Blackbox is really a pleasure to use. It is very clean and elegant, but for rapidly flipping through applications I can't find anything to outperform Ice.