Linux Questions

esuhl

fermi wrote: »

A lot of that is why I tend to use KDE no matter what distribution. Not saying that is perfect, but it at least gives you a much greater ability to tweak settings of that sort to what you want, rather than what a developer thinks is the best default.

Modern Gnome, Unity etc are very poor if you don't want to work in the way their developers think are best.

Gnome is just awful and KDE isn't much better -- they're both so bloated. You should definitely have a look at XFCE if you haven't already. It's just so quick and simple -- a breath of fresh air!

fermi

esuhl wrote: »

Gnome is just awful and KDE isn't much better -- they're both so bloated. You should definitely have a look at XFCE if you haven't already. It's just so quick and simple -- a breath of fresh air!

I use XFCE4 on a couple of laptops.

On desktop or higher end laptop the not too bad extra bloat of KDE is not a factor for me, or can be mitigated to a large degree.

Stoke

fermi wrote: »

I use XFCE4 on a couple of laptops.

On desktop or higher end laptop the not too bad extra bloat of KDE is not a factor for me, or can be mitigated to a large degree.

XFCE lol. Yeah, let's make our computer look like it's running NEXTStep from 1989.

I've done some work with XFCE and considering it parades itself as the bug-free desktop environment, I was surprised how !!!!ing buggy it was!

fermi

Stoke wrote: »

XFCE lol. Yeah, let's make our computer look like it's running NEXTStep from 1989.

:rotfl::rotfl:


Looks nothing like this.





Also has been rock solid on those laptops. Certainly not 'buggy'.

Fightsback

fermi wrote: »

:rotfl::rotfl:


Looks nothing like this.
Also has been rock solid on those laptops. Certainly not 'buggy'.

IceWM does though, that's really is retro desktopping.

Stoke

fermi wrote: »

:rotfl::rotfl:

Looks nothing like this.

Also has been rock solid on those laptops. Certainly not 'buggy'.

XFCE


NEXTStep


Yeah, they look nothing alike. Computers have come a long way since NextStep eh? Especially, when you use XFCE :T

I am using it right now. It's on one of my target machines that I am currently developing for at work, and it's horrific to use. Good to see the desktop still using shared surfaces as well, rather than compositing. It's Windows 95 all over again.

fermi

Fightsback wrote: »

IceWM does though, that's really is retro desktopping.

That is true.

IceWM is out of the ark

XFCE4 here

fermi

Stoke wrote: »

I am using it right now. It's on one of my target machines that I am currently developing for at work, and it's horrific to use. Good to see the desktop still using shared surfaces as well, rather than compositing. It's Windows 95 all over again.

:eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:

I can't begin to imagine how out of date that version is!

No wonder your opinion has been scewed against. Believe me, any reasonably up to date version is not like that. Has compositing etc.

Some simplicity to it, but not bare arssed ugliness and unusabalility like that.

Fightsback

fermi wrote: »

That is true.

IceWM is out of the ark

XFCE4 here

IceWM is a handy fallback login if things go titsup while testing KDE5 bleeding edge. Being of a lazy persuasion it's easier to have a GUI than CLI.

Stoke

fermi wrote: »

:eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:

I can't begin to imagine how out of date that version is!

No wonder your opinion has been scewed against. Believe me, any reasonably up to date version is not like that. Has compositing etc.

Some simplicity to it, but not bare arssed ugliness and unusabalility like that.

I couldn't tell you how old it is, I've not really looked. As I am sure you've worked out, the target hardware is low powered embedded hardware, eventually to be put into some equipment of sorts (possibly set-top boxes?) so there is a tendency for the customer to opt for older software in some bizarre attempt to improve performance. In reality, shifting the window compositing onto the GPU would immeasurably enhance the performance (and make our job easier). I have to be careful with what I say though because I am bound by an NDA.

As I said earlier, I enjoyed linux as a command line OS. I enjoyed the way in-which I could SCP my binaries to the target in 20 seconds straight from Windows. I could use all of the goodness of Windows like Eclipse (yes I know it's on Linux too, but it's !!!! in comparison) and what not, build my binaries, and then SCP them to the target, a bit of sudo mount -o remount,rw / and all that.

I found myself very comfortable with that. Once I had to actually use Linux (Fedora 17 or Ubuntu) as a day to day OS. I realized what a crock of !!!! it seems to be. It's usable, but it's a pain and it's awkward and they still haven't sorted out the caps lock bug, a whole 10 years after it was discovered!!!!!!!