Do you like minimalism ? ;)

@harishankar

integrated ACPI power management
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What You mean by that?

nice(r) anti-aliased fonts
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Exacly the same effects can be achieved by creating ~/.gtkrc-2.0 file with your settings, example here: http://strony.toya.net.pl/~vermaden/text/dot.fonts.conf

session management
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I already have everything that I need started by ~/.xinitrc file, but maybe some people need to make it automatic as they will often left 'unfinished bussiness' on their desktops ;)

screensavers
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These can be used the same without GNOME.

convenient menus
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Explain? ;)

notifications
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If, for example, I would be running low on disk space? ;)

auto-mounting
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This can be achieved by sysutils/hald itselt or FreeBSD's amd(8) daemon, GNOME has nothing to do here.

Besides since I use so many Gnome/GTK programs I prefer to run Gnome directly.
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You do not gain anything by going that way, for example, GTK2 applications would not 'behave' or run faster if you will run whole desktop environment based on GTK2, but it may be the opposite in special circumstances, like running low on memory (or while doing CPU intensive tasks) then low memory footprint window manager like openbox will be a lot faster then metacity with all other GNOME 'peripherals'.

Like I said, I could probably work from a minimal desktop, but why bother? I have the disk space and pulling in Gnome actually takes care of a lot of dependencies for applications that I later install.
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Disk space is the least important factor here (cause we also have these dependencies installed to run GTK2 apps), all these daemon/notifications/icons/automounting/anything consumes memory and CPU, but if you feel more comfortable in full desktop environment then just cut to minimum personal applications, then its ok.

Having said that, I think Xfce is a great compromise as well. Lighter than Gnome, reasonably featureful.
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As time has passed XFCE became lighter GNOME, its not all that light anymore, but LXDE on the other hand is still very light and fast.
 
I meant that things you need to set up by hand are usually configured by Gnome by default. Much as I love editing files and configuration, I still like a default approach to these things so that I can concentrate on my important work. So do I know that most of the things can be set up manually but Gnome provides the full "package" so to speak.

As for integrated ACPI management, since I use a laptop I meant that the Gnome power management can handle display turning off, indicate battery low warnings, do automatic shutdowns and so on. Again I know we can set this up by scripts or by command line directly, but I like these things to be handled by the DE.

By convenient menus, I mean the way (some) installed applications are added and removed from the Gnome menus automatically is a nice feature.

I have also used minimal desktops before and I always find myself doing too much tweaking to get it to work the way I want. It boils down to productivity for me. If I waste a few CPU cycles being more productive, I don't consider the CPU cycles wasted. :)
 
vermaden said:
its not all that light anymore, but LXDE on the other hand is still very light and fast.
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Of course, being in part based on Xfce but having a truckload of checks removed makes it lighter. ;)


harishankar said:
auto-mounting of removable devices through HAL
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In my root menu I have a submenu for un/mounting devices. It includes all possible devices I can use and it runs a file manager after mounting the device. So instead of not doing anything but having the HALd horror running all the time, I click once, point to the device and release. Losing that extra calorie won't kill me.

harishankar said:
desktop icons
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Who needs that? It's like those movie/comic villains who can press buttons on their desks to summon or alert their henchmen or open up a trapdoor for their unknowing rivals. :)

harishankar said:
I meant that things you need to set up by hand are usually configured by Gnome by default. Much as I love editing files and configuration, I still like a default approach to these things so that I can concentrate on my important work. So do I know that most of the things can be set up manually but Gnome provides the full "package" so to speak.
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I download, install and configure an entire desktop system from scratch in 3 hours at most. FreeBSD and everything that runs on top of it have never prevented me from completing my work. Keeping ~/* settings can help too.
I would never touch KDE or GNOME with a 100 mile pole.

harishankar said:
As for integrated ACPI management, since I use a laptop I meant that the Gnome power management can handle display turning off, indicate battery low warnings, do automatic shutdowns and so on. Again I know we can set this up by scripts or by command line directly, but I like these things to be handled by the DE.
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So you have no problem using a huge group of applications at the expense of your memory space, CPU cycles and battery power, when you could just use fast and small scripts and resource monitors such as conky.

harishankar said:
By convenient menus, I mean the way (some) installed applications are added and removed from the Gnome menus automatically is a nice feature.
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It's not every day that I install or remove applications but when I do, I open a text file (that I know very well since I wrote it myself), add or remove a single line and save the file. I would never install a DE to babysit me for such simple and easy tasks.
 
jailed said:
What do you mean for clipboard with vim & vim-lite? If it solves the newline issue when set numbers on, I'm a stupid :D and you're a genius. What's the exact difference?
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in vim-lite you can't [red]"+y[/red], [red]"*y[/red] (copy) and then paste (Ctrl+V) selected text in browser for example, and you can [red]"+p[/red], [red]"*p[/red] (paste) text copied from browser with ctr+c etc....

do you see what I mean?

open vim help and type
Code: 
:tag 09.3
and read it, if you build vim lite, you can't do this, if you build how I said you can
 
Beastie, your post is kind of offensive to me, especially the part about "babysitting". I don't need babysitting either. I just think some things that are already available aren't worth configuring by hand in my opinion.

Let us all agree that our needs and uses are different. You would never understand my choices in software and I don't pretend to know yours. I gave a fairly good explanation of why I use gnome and you've only insulted my intelligence and knowledge by repeating stuff I already know can be done without Gnome but I don't care for anyway.

I prefer wasted computer memory and CPU cycles to waste of MY valuable time which is more precious than a piece of hardware running an OS that I use to get stuff done. As long as the system is usable and reasonably responsive I have no problem with worrying about CPU cycles.

Since I don't use FreeBSD any more anyway, I don't know why I'm posting on this thread.

Minimalism is highly overrated in software anyway. I prefer features any day.
 
When OpenCDE is ready we will get late 90's bloat...

... which is today's minimalism :)

And yet I imagine the majority of us will still use late 90's (and possibly earlier) minimalism haha
 
Jeez harishankar, you're very touchy! I never meant to be offensive, even less insulting.

And BTW, more CPU cycles for every single task equals more of YOUR valuable time being wasted. And you said you use a laptop, so it also means lower battery time.
 
aragon said:
Any opinions on LXDE? Been meaning to try it...
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I was about to give it a spin, expecting it not to pull in much more than I already had for XFCE, but 'make missing' made me decide otherwise ..
 
http://frenzy.org.ua/en/

Frenzy is a "portable system administrator toolkit," LiveCD based on FreeBSD. It generally contains software for hardware tests, file system check, security check and network setup and analysis. Size of ISO-image is 200 MBytes (3" CD)
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11.01.2010.
Frenzy 1.2 reincarnation (community release) is out. It's based on FreeBSD 8.0 and available in 2 versions: lite and standard.
This is a first version of Frenzy that's made not by me - author of this build is Egor Vershinin. You can read more on project's website (russian only).
English version of this build is avaliable on our FTP (lite and standard version).
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fetch.php

fetch.php
 
Beastie said:
Jeez harishankar, you're very touchy! I never meant to be offensive, even less insulting.

And BTW, more CPU cycles for every single task equals more of YOUR valuable time being wasted. And you said you use a laptop, so it also means lower battery time.
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Maybe I read your "tone" wrong and thought you were being too aggressive.

In any case, my point was that I am not overly worried about getting the most optimized performance so long as the system is reasonably productive.

Currently on Debian/Gnome, I don't see a CPU utilization of more than 5% average and around 320 MB of RAM. I think that's acceptable for me as a whole when it comes down to performance.

In the past I actually used to keep a WM and a DE for separate logins. I used Fluxbox when I had some resource intensive stuff and KDE for normal "productivity".
 
I prefer wasted computer memory and CPU cycles to waste of MY valuable time which is more precious than a piece of hardware running an OS that I use to get stuff done.
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The thing is, when minimalism is functional, it is cool. When it is not, it is masochistic. E.g., twm is for masochists, as i think, but dwm is not.
 
I used Fluxbox when I had some resource intensive stuff and KDE for normal "productivity".
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Fluxbox is ok wm. When i don't use dwm, i use fluxbox. But i really hate kde. Extremely big wm like a tanker, trillion of dependencies, to see all menu you need video wall. and comes with so much tools that the half of them you will never use them. fax, print, etc. 2-3 times i put kde on some linux distros or i use it on live cd's and had everything. even scientific programs. I don't work on cern. this stop to be functional. Also kde4 sucks. He reminds me vista. i just want a pc to run very fast and have only the 10 programs i want, all the tools i need and nothing more.
 
and comes with so much tools that the half of them you will never use them
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As for me, this is better than pseudo-minimalistic DE - xfce4, where you have almost no integrated tools that do not depend on gnome-crap.
The coolest thing for any DE is that de is full-functional collection of software, that you could set up with one system settings center, not with zillions config files. This is what i theoretically like in emacs - you set up one config file for, as example, hotkeys in all of emacs apps, which contain almost anything that an average desktop user uses (browser, multimedia front-end, email client, im-client, text editor, etc).
 
nekoexmachina said:
The thing is, when minimalism is functional, it is cool. When it is not, it is masochistic. E.g., twm is for masochists, as i think, but dwm is not.
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twm *is* functional. How is it masochistic to use it if it serves your needs? I'd use it exclusively if it had a few more features such as the ability to automatically set windows' location/size when they start, to snap windows to a grid, and to create forms (dialog boxes).
A window manager must do just that: manage windows!

Besides, configuring an application by editing a text file (e.g. twm) is IMHO much less masochistic than editing the source and recompiling (e.g. dwm).
 
For the typical user, I think it is all about balance.

I hate to say it but Windows has it pretty perfect.

1) Simple paint app (for image viewing mainly)
2) Simple text editor
3) Web Browser, inc email client
4) Terminal emulator
5) Driver management tools (wifi, battery, printer, etc...)
6) Simple media player
7) OS management tools (Disk utils, user account utils, etc...)
8) Simple calculator

This is the sort of stuff that any desktop os needs.

KDE however comes with stupid stuff like kgooglyeyes, kpotato, kedu, kmassive math programs, ksomeotherworthlesscrap.

The only fault I can give the default apps with Windows are wordpad and games.

Gnome does a much better job at having sane default applications, but its choice of email client is dumb. Also including the whole of mono just for a postit note taking application???!
 
twm *is* functional.
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I did not want to harm anyones feelings, so sorry :)
As for me, it is not, because of lack of features you've just called.

than editing the source and recompiling (e.g. dwm).
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It is not hardcore source editing, mostly it's just config.h-editing, which is as simple as text-file editing.
Also, when i've used xmonad (it is configured via haskell-source editing, too) i've compiled it just, errr, once.
A window manager must do just that: manage windows!
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Yup. And managing windows includes properly placing it on the screen without (or with minimal one-time) users participation.
 
Beastie said:
automatically set windows' location/size when they start
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It can do this,

I remember looking how to get this working for a while, but it is possible just changing twmrc IIRC.

I will update when I find it :p

EDIT:

"RandomPlacement"

This should allow the window to just appear with its default size (no manually sizing)

But you cannot specify it directly, if that is what you mean. (And after re-reading your post, I do believe that is what you mean :p)
 
kpedersen said:
"RandomPlacement"

This should allow the window to just appear with its default size (no manually sizing)

But you cannot specify it directly, if that is what you mean. (And after re-reading your post, I do believe that is what you mean :p)
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I know about RandomPlacement and it's one of the first things I set when I first tried twm.

If I understand it correctly, your second guess is right. I meant giving each application a specific X geometry, e.g. browser at 990x600+0+0.
 
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