No GNU/Gnome style dependency mess.
EXACTLY! ? That's a reason for my decision for a "simple" wm instead of desktop environment - less mess, more flexibility & independent customizability.
Interestingly the File Manager and Terminal are probably the hardest parts of a DE
I had the very same experience.
I tried several FM and figured out:
- Interesting: The origin of the need for FM seems to be MS Windows.
In general there are two types:
Windows Explorer like principle of Copy-Paste-within-One-Tree
or
Norton Commander like with the Source-and-Destiny-principle.
- Interesting: For unixlike OS I did not find a single FM that really would have convinced and satisfied me fully.
Catseye, Sunflower and Filerunner were the last ones I've tried.
If one puts a bit learning and config effort into it Filerunner can be made really powerful; but because of its usage is designed to be highly efficient instead of moron-save & looking good its handling needs a bit acquiring to get the hang of it.
- Interesting: The more I got into using the shell, the less I needed a filemanager.
I rather like to learn shell instead of relearning semi-intuitive FMs again and again.
So:
I have no filemanager installed anymore.
I don't need it. I have a shell.
The basic FreeBSD shells ([t]c)sh are pretty useful and more than sufficient for the everyday use.
Of course I have bash installed. But I use it for scripting. For the everyday use of simple tasks I find the other ones way more easy and intuitive to use.
(And not using Linux I don't have all that "sudo ... - password..."-junk neither. I'm either user or root.
Tip: I use colorful prompts. That way it's more easy to see where the former prompts are, and to distunguish user (green) from root (red))
From my
~/.cshrc
Code:
set prompt = "%B%{\033[42m%}%n@%m%b %B%{\033[32m%}%C4%b %# "
(Colors can be found in the lower part of
man tcsh )
Very easy and small tasks like copy, move or delete a single file are done more quickly in a shell, before a FM is even started.
And in most cases it's needed to be set to the right directory first, too. With a shell I also don't need no slogging about "favorites", "last used", "frequently used", discussions about garbage cans, or if I'm sure and all this superflous cruft junk flooding and trashing the system only without being remotely useful.
If your are not the total sloth on the keyboard for most small tasks your quite faster by using the shell than a FM.
More complicated things like renaming more than one file at a time are better done within the shell anyhow - if the FM is even capable of doing such.
(Most FM's capable of doing such are doing it by giving the user a CLI aka shell - so you start a FM to use a shell... ?)
The one point left I see what a FM is actually good for is browsing a filesystem.
But if you keep your system clean, have your files sorted and know what's where, you don't need that. And to handle directories with large numbers of files or to clean up a mess you're better off with the shell again anyway.
And for the very rest the programs provide their own simple Filebrowser. E.g. Gimp, picture viewer or mediaplayer a Filebrowser with a preview is already included.
So bottom line:
There really is no need for a Filemanager, actually.
It's just the question of what you are used to, only.
I needed a couple of years to learn that. That's why I here share my experiences with you for you may take the shortcut directly
?
For terminals I have likewise experiences. Some may laugh, but I really use xterm.
I tried several such as rxvt and urxvt. I simply don't see the point what a terminal needs pulldown menus for but using more resources, slowing its start and wasting usable space. I have one config. I don't need to reconfigure the appearence of a program every now and then, especially not the terminal.
Code:
xterm -fg white -bg black -fn "-adobe-courier-medium-r-normal--17-120-100-100-m-100-iso10646-1"
This command is linked to a button.
That's all I want. It's all I need. The rest is within the shell anyway.
To increase your productivity you need to (re)learn the usage of the keyboard.
And for that you need to wean yourself from the overindulgence mouse-usage. ??
(Even if it's not mentioned explicitely I've seen some users presenting
complete mouseless desktop environments. I'll bet some would be astonished how quick those guys work on their computers
)
I also don't need no transparancy terminal. It only looks cool but it's no improvement of productivity at all.
In contrary this even lowers the productivity because you sacrifice clearness and readability especially when using some pictures as desktop background.
But of course I'm aware of observing that this thread is not only about "which useful/interesting things can be done, what alternatives there are"
but it also seems to be some contest of who's presenting the most cool desktop background picture.
That's why I wrote this.
I admire kpedersen's presentation of a clear desktop showing primarily functionality and not participating only at "who's posting the fanciest picture show".
But not to end seeming destuctive I add some ideas you create a desktop background that may be useful and productive:
If you are using many icons on the desktop create a unicolor picture (black, or dark color at best) with exactly the used resolution (e.g. 1920x1080 pixel).
Then place squares in different colors on it. So you can group your icons thematically, such as having anything to do multimedia is within a orange square, all system settings related stuff within a dark blue field...
Another tip to get a homogene but not boring, high quality looking background that is not killing clearness:
Make an actual foto of something regular: the sky, sand on the beach, ocean surface...
e.g.:
Might try different window managers on top of xfce4-panel.
github.com
