050831 Matt Garman wrote: > what window manager do you use, and why? I've done my own review a couple of times, when dissatisfied, so I have an idea of what each of a fair number does.
I started with a very primitive KDE on an early Mandrake, read about Xfce, tried it -- version 3.18.8 -- , liked it & adopted it: it was more elegant than KDE, but fully capable of managing my activities. Soon afterwards, the Xfce devs brought out a total rewrite (4.0.0), which never lived upto their promises & lacked items from 3.18.8 . Finally, irritated by the state of things around Xfce, I did another review & discovered Blackbox (0.65), which was very simple, but also fully useable once I found out how. Soon afterwards, the Blackbox dev (there's only one) brought out a rewrite -- 0.70 -- which didn't work with some of the BB plug-ins & gadgets, making it impossible to use without constant irritation. As I had KDE installed to support useful apps, I went back to that & have found that it is now fast & highly configurable to my tastes with a very wide range of useful features, so that is today's choice. I like to use the whole of my 15" screen & KDE allows me to hide the panel; I rely on the R-click desktop menu to start apps. The KDE team did a very thoro' survey of users' requests c 2003 & as a result introduced a host of improvements, which shine today. They also made a real effort to make the whole thing much faster & now the Gentoo devs have split it up into easy bits for emerging. I do have Fluxbox installed as a back-up, in case KDE falls down a hole. Fvwm looks like a meta-WM which can be infinitely configured & I still have it installed, but haven't pursued it anywhere. My strong preference is for something I can use & look at day after day without being distracted by candy or hindered by awkwardnesses. -- ========================,,============================================ SUPPORT ___________//___, Philip Webb : [EMAIL PROTECTED] ELECTRIC /] [] [] [] [] []| Centre for Urban & Community Studies TRANSIT `-O----------O---' University of Toronto -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
