Linux users unite!

[TwinQY]

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Yeah, openbox is pretty fast as well, in terms of drawing windows, but it has no aliasing or multi colors, so the looks can take a hit.
I'll take a look at fluxbox or pekwm, they provide a little bit of eye-candy.

For sheer eye-candy, FVWM and Windowmaker are da bomb. 

 

[bbarnes1]

 
just updated to linux 12.10.... not a unity fan.  Decided to switch to linux mint MATE to show gnome 2 some love

 

[proton007]

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just updated to linux 12.10.... not a unity fan.  Decided to switch to linux mint MATE to show gnome 2 some love

I used to be a Gnome 2 user. It was an awesome DE, until it got screwed up by Gnome 3. I moved to KDE, also an awesome DE.
 
Its good to know MATE carries on that awesomeness, and its being further refined, I like the UI changes that are being made.

 

[Ech0]

Archlinux user for 6 years +/-. Fluxbox / Openbox on Video & Music Servers and Gnome 3 on my laptop. Hated it at first, moved to KDE & then came back to Gnome. I've gotten used to it and like it now. 
 
I haven't tried FVWM that I can remember. I think I'll give this a try. 

 

[TwinQY]

Quote:

Archlinux user for 6 years +/-. Fluxbox / Openbox on Video & Music Servers and Gnome 3 on my laptop. Hated it at first, moved to KDE & then came back to Gnome. I've gotten used to it and like it now. 
 
I haven't tried FVWM that I can remember. I think I'll give this a try. 

 
It's the most ugly, functional pile of a WM that I can barely use (FVWM, not Gnome). 
 
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just updated to linux 12.10.... not a unity fan.  Decided to switch to linux mint MATE to show gnome 2 some love

 
It's immensely weird to see myself on there as the only post. MATE looks nice.

 

[Dissonant]

I knew there'll be a thread on here! Those who browse the anime thread will recall me reminiscing of the time I ran Arch on my decrepit laptop. The topics discussed on this thread were more than sufficient to give me a blast of nostalgia (despite having only given up Linux for 2 years). In those 2 years though, several projects I once looked forward to have died, fluorished or simply kept in the periphery by certain new projects. Cue incredibly long post on my opinions of such progress after doing some reading up.
 
Firstly, I am honestly staggered by the progress Elementary OS has made. From an icon theme, to a GTK theme, to a full distro derivative with unique applications in such a short span of time is staggering. Looking at the Youtube videos of the latest beta, I actually think it is quite polished. Perhaps further refinement could put it on equal footing with Ubuntu in terms of mainstream prominence, but I am inclined to think it will only be reached by reaching a stage where Elementary can separate itself from Ubuntu and building from scratch. This will unfortunately, be likely to take very long, given the differing aims of both projects. It does look nice, but it is not my cup of tea. And from what I have seen on Youtube, the effects seem a bit choppy, though that could also be a consequence of the screen capturing program. Nevertheless, I do wish them good luck in what they do: bringing consistency and beauty to the Linux desktop - even if some aspects certainly looked to be more than merely inspired by Macintosh . I once participated in their crowd-sourcing project to choose the default wallpapers for the Alpha or something and it was refreshing to say the least to see such attention to detail on the devs' part. Luna looks quite promising, considering I booted the first release (Jupiter?) on LiveCD for a bit. Who knows, I may even install it someday.
 
Going on, I am still not sure if the new interface paradigms introduced by Unity, Gnome-shell (and subsequently Gnome3) et al are suitable for non-touchscreen usage. That was an opinion I held when I installed Gnome-shell over Ubuntu 9.10 and one that remains unchanged, even with the introduction of Elementary's interpretation (Dash?). I think, in general, such interfaces are quite jarring on the keyboard and mouse - both of which, need I remind you, are still very much the de facto interface device - unless you use a tiling WM; then, I stand corrected. I honestly cannot see the replacement of both devices by the touchscreen in the short run to such an extent as to justify changing to such an interface. Although, it may also be my rose-tinted glasses interfering with my judgement. I can't deny, though, it is pretty darn... pretty and quite sane. I can therefore see the relevance of MATE at least for now. However, I say the above as an inveterate fan of *box-style WMs (PekWM, Openbox and Compiz-standalone), so I may (will) be biased.
 
Finally, a short question: how far has BTRFS progressed? It seemed to be the next big thing after Ext4 (which, I recall, was termed as an interim solution). Looks like it hasn't received mainstream adoption yet. I was looking forward to it as an alternative to JFS, Ext4, and ReiserFS/Reiser4 (we all know what happened to the latter filesystem).
 
Of course, given how I am quite out of my depth right now (I was too, back then), please excuse me for any ignorance on my part and feel free to educate me or disagree with this ignorant boy.
 
By the way, FVWM and E17 still look hideous, imo. Sorry.

 

[proton007]

@Dissonant
In terms of UI, there are only a few ways in which you can draw windows. Rounded Square, or square. Similar with buttons, round, rounded square, or square. One seems to be taken by OSX, the other one by Windows.
So I guess if you want a good looking desktop, you'll either end up looking similar to Windows or Mac.

 

[Dissonant]

Quote:

@Dissonant
In terms of UI, there are only a few ways in which you can draw windows. Rounded Square, or square. Similar with buttons, round, rounded square, or square. One seems to be taken by OSX, the other one by Windows.
So I guess if you want a good looking desktop, you'll either end up looking similar to Windows or Mac.

Haha. I agree, though I experimented with chevron-shaped windows before. The assymetry got to me though. That said, looking at all the projects out there, the Linux desktop is quickly becoming more polished in terms of usability and cosmetics. The only contention I have against that is the increasing number of inter-dependencies making the desktop less modular. I guess the great thing about WMs is how modular they are, by virtue of how isolated they are compared to whole DEs. Then again, I was trained in Arch, so my opinion would be biased towards the Arch Way. I can't see myself dedicating the time to reinstall - and I swore not to meddle with partitions on my new laptop because apparently my parents thought I broke the old laptop. Well, using the pacman -Syyu to force an update despite numerous conflicts would tend to destroy your X setup . Thank goodness some of the configs I love were uploaded online to be salvaged. I literally love my old setup so much that I save the old screenshots on my new Windows laptop just to look at it like a lovelorn lover.
 
Unity is pretty awful though. My friend lent me his throwaway netbook and I tried the new Ubuntu. Very chunky - too chunky for me, though some theming may remedy that. The new GNOME is quite a departure too. That said, despite being quite harsh on stuff like the Elementary Project, kudos must be given for some innovations in terms of UI. Their implementation of scroll bars, for instance is totally new, as far as I can make out, and is very usable. And I like how they implemented virtual desktops to be flexible. Definitely a refreshing change from a set number of workspaces. Something I expect to be very popular when refined - my experience spans till the first release of Jupiter.

 

[TwinQY]

Quote:

I knew there'll be a thread on here! Those who browse the anime thread will recall me reminiscing of the time I ran Arch on my decrepit laptop. The topics discussed on this thread were more than sufficient to give me a blast of nostalgia (despite having only given up Linux for 2 years). In those 2 years though, several projects I once looked forward to have died, fluorished or simply kept in the periphery by certain new projects. Cue incredibly long post on my opinions of such progress after doing some reading up.

 
Yeah, I remember you bringing it up there. Finally found this place, huh? It's weird to see anime Linuxers, most are bound to Windows because of all those VNs that don't work properly in WINE. 
 
 

Firstly, I am honestly staggered by the progress Elementary OS has made. From an icon theme, to a GTK theme, to a full distro derivative with unique applications in such a short span of time is staggering. Looking at the Youtube videos of the latest beta, I actually think it is quite polished. Perhaps further refinement could put it on equal footing with Ubuntu in terms of mainstream prominence, but I am inclined to think it will only be reached by reaching a stage where Elementary can separate itself from Ubuntu and building from scratch. This will unfortunately, be likely to take very long, given the differing aims of both projects. It does look nice, but it is not my cup of tea. And from what I have seen on Youtube, the effects seem a bit choppy, though that could also be a consequence of the screen capturing program. Nevertheless, I do wish them good luck in what they do: bringing consistency and beauty to the Linux desktop - even if some aspects certainly looked to be more than merely inspired by Macintosh . I once participated in their crowd-sourcing project to choose the default wallpapers for the Alpha or something and it was refreshing to say the least to see such attention to detail on the devs' part. Luna looks quite promising, considering I booted the first release (Jupiter?) on LiveCD for a bit. Who knows, I may even install it someday.

I've been looking at Luna since the dev releases. From horribly buggy and incoherent (they were using GDM or LightDM or something, it broke the background rendering, icons broke, ugh), to something actually original. It's really the Gnome 3 Mint that had been always left unnoticed. Part of what Mint does the best (user-inclined interface polish) I feel eOS does with great aesthetic appeal and simplicity. The other part (driver support, support in general)...err, they'll get to that.
 

Finally, a short question: how far has BTRFS progressed? It seemed to be the next big thing after Ext4 (which, I recall, was termed as an interim solution). Looks like it hasn't received mainstream adoption yet. I was looking forward to it as an alternative to JFS, Ext4, and ReiserFS/Reiser4 (we all know what happened to the latter filesystem).
 
Of course, given how I am quite out of my depth right now (I was too, back then), please excuse me for any ignorance on my part and feel free to educate me or disagree with this ignorant boy.
 
By the way, FVWM and E17 still look hideous, imo. Sorry.

 
FVWM hideous? Blasphem...okay, it's pretty bad. Not gonna lie. 
 
It's become semi-stable enough for simple, simple home and personal use. I'd still recommend backing everything up at least twice. Anything required beyond that, it's still not stable enough.
 
In fact, I've been using it on a partition with Gentoo on for a while, just to see when it'll break. Considering that I'm still writing this, and haven't experienced anything blown up, fractured, smoking, dissipating, horribly mutilating, guts-ejecting-from-my-eyeballs worthy, sodas spontaneously combusting,  or monitors shooting gamma rays into my esophagus, that says a lot about everyday stability. I'd still give it a week before any of the above actually happens though. 

 

[proton007]

Just took a look at Elementary OS, and I'm in awe.
 
Its so beautiful and soothing, perfect for showcasing how good GTK can look. Being based on GTK3, I would say this is what Gnome 3 should have done.
 
I'm not so sure about their decision to include their own apps inside, but otherwise, its pretty nice, especially for a beginner.

 

[TwinQY]

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Just took a look at Elementary OS, and I'm in awe.
 
Its so beautiful and soothing, perfect for showcasing how good GTK can look. Being based on GTK3, I would say this is what Gnome 3 should have done.
 
I'm not so sure about their decision to include their own apps inside, but otherwise, its pretty nice, especially for a beginner.

The bundled apps like Dexter and Postler are very well done, high quality stuff. Before I stripped off GTK3 stuff, Postler was my default mail client. Liked it even more than Claws, which I was using before. The interface is infinitely more polished, it was light as air, the features weren't weirdly bundled and tucked away in various places, and Hotmail worked well enough with it.

 

[Dissonant]

Quote:

Just took a look at Elementary OS, and I'm in awe.
 
Its so beautiful and soothing, perfect for showcasing how good GTK can look. Being based on GTK3, I would say this is what Gnome 3 should have done.
 
I'm not so sure about their decision to include their own apps inside, but otherwise, its pretty nice, especially for a beginner.

 
 
Quote:

The bundled apps like Dexter and Postler are very well done, high quality stuff. Before I stripped off GTK3 stuff, Postler was my default mail client. Liked it even more than Claws, which I was using before. The interface is infinitely more polished, it was light as air, the features weren't weirdly bundled and tucked away in various places, and Hotmail worked well enough with it.

It'll be hyped to hell and back for good reason - primarily consistency and beauty. But its not my cup of tea.. neither does it seem to be for some of us. Nevertheless, if they use a purpose-built kernel and start from scratch, to remove any conflict both in branding and in packages with Ubuntu, I may use it for convenience's sake. However, I look forward to playing with WMs again, once I get the guts to mess with Arch post-systemd. I can barely remember what packages I installed . Thank goodness for the fantastic documentation. The blocky *box aesthetic is now officially in vogue since the guys at Redmond adopted it for Metro! Though it really perplexes me why people are using PekWM so rarely. Its quite stable for me and can look better than Openbox. Its also in active development!

 

[mosshorn]

I've been having urges to go Arch or revert back to Crunchbang, which while annoying to setup at times, was one of my favorite distros of all time.

 

[proton007]

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I've been having urges to go Arch or revert back to Crunchbang, which while annoying to setup at times, was one of my favorite distros of all time.

Crunchbang is easier to install than Arch, because Arch has gone into pure command line install, which means the instructions need to be followed closely, and network needs to be ready before install.

 

[mosshorn]

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Crunchbang is easier to install than Arch, because Arch has gone into pure command line install, which means the instructions need to be followed closely, and network needs to be ready before install.

Very true, it was just getting #! to look properly aesthetically that took a bit of work.