Which is your desktop environment?

Currently:
Work: HardenedBSD 11.0 + WindowMaker
Home: HardenedBSD 11.0 + WindowMaker
Laptop: OpenBSD 6.0 + WindowMaker
 
Currently:
Work: HardenedBSD 11.0 + WindowMaker
Home: HardenedBSD 11.0 + WindowMaker
Laptop: OpenBSD 6.0 + WindowMaker
What made you chose OpenBSD on your laptop. That seems so inefficient. If you are using Hardened just stick with it.
 
What made you chose OpenBSD on your laptop. That seems so inefficient. If you are using Hardened just stick with it.
I just wanted to learn OpenBSD. Why do you think it's unefficient? I remember you being kind of OpenBSD fanboy :)
 
Recently,
Home: FreeBSD 10.3-RELEASE-p12, Enlightenment E20

Thank you for FreeBSD Enlightenment Team efforts. EFL 1.18.2 and Enlightenment 0.21.3 run very stable on the top of FreeBSD 10.3-RELEASE-p12. devel/efl port keeps up-to-date with upstream.
 
I just wanted to learn OpenBSD. Why do you think it's unefficient? I remember you being kind of OpenBSD fanboy :)
Using a multiple OSs always affects your fluency and productivity just like speaking multiple natural languages (I speak 3 on daily basis) makes you essentially non-fluent in any of them.
The best decision I personally made was to make an appropriate choice of OS for myself about 9 years ago and stick with that choice over the years. That made me very fluent in that particular OS. You guessed right I chose OpenBSD which is not the right choice for most people. Unfortunately I had to diversify little bit (RHEL was must, FreeBSD was sort of optional) due to my work. However I was paid for it so at the end the feeling was not the one of wasted time.

My advise to anybody would be pick one thing (one OS, one editor, one window manager) and just stick with it.
 
Using a multiple OSs always affects your fluency and productivity just like speaking multiple natural languages (I speak 3 on daily basis) makes you essentially non-fluent in any of them.
The best decision I personally made was to make an appropriate choice of OS for myself about 9 years ago and stick with that choice over the years. That made me very fluent in that particular OS. You guessed right I chose OpenBSD which is not the right choice for most people. Unfortunately I had to diversify little bit (RHEL was must, FreeBSD was sort of optional) due to my work. However I was paid for it so at the end the feeling was not the one of wasted time.

My advise to anybody would be pick one thing (one OS, one editor, one window manager) and just stick with it.
I run 3 routers for my own use (APU2 and 2x Edgerouter Lites). I wanted to run *BSD on it and FreeBSD with its old pf makes it not a good choice for me. Also, mips64 is tier 3 on FreeBSD, I wouldn't want my router to run basically untested and potentially unstable software, while it's perfectly stable with OpenBSD. Choosing the OS for APU2 was simple because I already had configs for OpenBSD :)

That's also why I run OpenBSD on laptop, I want to get familiar with it and it's the only PC I have that is perfectly compatible with OpenBSD (not counting home server or routers, I wanted a desktop or notebook).
 
  • Thanks
Reactions: Oko
  • at work : Windows 8.1
  • at home : Windows 10, Ubuntu 16.04, OS X Mavericks, FreeBSD 11.0 with KDE / Lumina, Chromium OS
  • on mobile : Android 4.3 (Samsung Galaxy i9305)
 
· Work?
· Windows 7 / FreeBSD 11.0 + fluxbox (Generic Desktop)
· Arch Linux + i3-gaps + tons of scrips (DellXPS 13 9343)
· Android* (Generic Phone)
 
Oko 3 languages? Oo bravo sir, I manage two. But the flora and fauna nomenclature will always escape me in one language, where most technical terms related to my work or computers will fail in another.

On topic.
>media center, FreeBSD Fluxbox + XFE
>laptop(s) Void linux Fluxbox +XFE (soon to be demoted to a thin client) & OpenBSD + CWM (wanted to learn the window manager) + Worker.
>main machine, now Void Linux, deciding on which desktop to run now actually. So far enlightenment failed hard (metric tons of bugs, things break in minutes), will try KDE and LXQT... Odds are will just use fluxbox again.
>rest are just ssh from the laptop.

Honestly, I would say, I want a DE. Its neet to have nice widgets for easy control. But at the end of the day, instead of cute widgets, I get gnarly crashes and unexplained bugs. Which is why fluxbox has firmly became my go to. It works, never crashes, stupid-simple to configure, very fast. Yes, it lack kewl effects, but... meh?
 
During my nearly 20 years of Linux (and now FreeBSD) use, I have gone back and forth from DE's to minimal WMs. I used to always come back to a DE but now that I have abandoned Linux and settled happily in with FreeBSD, I am happier running a minimal WM, currently x11-wm/windowmaker. Not exactly bare-bones, but it is fast and I like it. I toggle back and forth between it and x11-wm/dwm. I really like x11-wm/dwm - it is fast, minimal and the fact it is configured by C code is very cool. I am having a hard time getting used to window manipulation but I'll eventually figure it out. I do like the fact we have choices. With commercial OS's, you have no choice.
 
During my nearly 20 years of Linux (and now FreeBSD) use, I have gone back and forth from DE's to minimal WMs. I used to always come back to a DE but now that I have abandoned Linux and settled happily in with FreeBSD, I am happier running a minimal WM, currently x11-wm/windowmaker. Not exactly bare-bones, but it is fast and I like it. I toggle back and forth between it and x11-wm/dwm. I really like x11-wm/dwm - it is fast, minimal and the fact it is configured by C code is very cool. I am having a hard time getting used to window manipulation but I'll eventually figure it out. I do like the fact we have choices. With commercial OS's, you have no choice.

I installed x11-wm/windowmaker and I like it too but looks like that WN is dead. There were no activity from 2014 and mailing list I think from 2008? Do you know something more, please.
Thank you.
 
I always check the commits on https://www.freshports.org/ and if the port is unmaintained or hasn't had commits in a long time I'll avoid the port. As tobik mentioned, there has been recent activity so I will continue to use it. Until I get bored and try something else :)
 
How funny, I got bored already and switched back to x11-wm/dwm :rolleyes: It is quickly becoming my "go to" wm because frankly, it just works. It is odd getting used to a tiling wm when you've been using a stacking wm for nearly 2 decades, but the only "hard" part is typing out the first 3 or so characters of an apps name in x11/dmenu. I even successfully customized and am running "dwmstatus". I deserve another beer for that :beer:
 
Dear Sevendogs, since x11-wm/i3 has some issues I tried x11-wm/dwm, too. x11-wm/i3 is more flexible in the ways of tiling and has a superior documentation. My normal way of tiling matches the x11-wm/dwm practice. Beside the options patches for x11-wm/dwm provide the default tiling should be ok for me.
the only "hard" part is typing out the first 3 or so characters of an apps name in x11/dmenu.

For the menu you can make a script to feed dmenu as
Code:
#!/bin/sh

# dmenu requires a list of newline separated items as input.
# This items are listed at the top of the screen.
# The selected item is outputted to stdout.
# Here it is stored in the variable selection.
# In case of the result different programs are launched.

options="Mutt_Slrn"
selection=`echo $options|tr "_" "\n"|dmenu`

case $selection in
    "Mutt") st -e mutt -y & ;;
    "Slrn") /usr/home/chris/scripts/slrn.sh & ;;
esac
and modify the configuartion file as
Code:
-static const char *dmenucmd[] = { "dmenu_run", "-m", dmenumon, "-fn", dmenufont, "-nb", normbgcolor, "-nf", normfgcolor, "-sb", selbgcolor, "-sf", selfgcolor, NULL };
+static const char *dmenucmd[] = { "/usr/home/chris/scripts/dmenu_wrap.sh", "-m", dmenumon, "-fn", dmenufont, "-nb", normbgcolor, "-nf", normfgcolor, "-sb", selbgcolor, "-sf", selfgcolor, NULL };
 
Don't get me wrong, I like x11/dmenu just the way it is; it's just that coming from a WM where you either click an icon to start an app or click a root menu, it takes me a bit to think of the apps name. It's not a bad thing. I have customized x11-wm/dwm a bit to my liking but not in the way it operates; merely the way it looks in terms of colors and fonts. The only other customization I have done is to add x11/xcalc to the list of apps that should be floating and not full screen.

Thanks for the suggestions!
 
I wouldn't consider WindowMaker dead. Last release was in August 2015 and there were several commits in 2016 (see http://repo.or.cz/wmaker-crm.git/shortlog/refs/heads/next). Clearly someone out there cares for it.
I was on the lists until recently and WM is alive indeed! Of course, it sees far less activity than many other, younger and more fashionable WMs, but bugs do get fixed, features do get implemented. There's also an ongoing effort to rebuild a curated collection of dockapps at http://www.dockapps.net and if you have a dockapp that isn't there yet, please let them know (I did just that with wmmp, which I fixed and kept in a GitHub repository for years, and they added it to the collection in a matter of minutes).
 
Here:
  • KDE Plasma 4 on a notebook
  • the same at work, plus occasional requirements to use Windows 7
  • Android on a YotaPhone 2.
When Windows is required I usually either walk to a free machine, or use RDP. It's usually quickest to walk. There's also a Citrix solution.
 
There's also an ongoing effort to rebuild a curated collection of dockapps at http://www.dockapps.net and if you have a dockapp that isn't there yet, please let them know (I did just that with wmmp, which I fixed and kept in a GitHub repository for years, and they added it to the collection in a matter of minutes).

After I wrote that, I realised the right thing to do would be to make a port for the dockapp. So this morning, before rushing out to work, I cleaned the source tree in my GitHub account, prepared a simple port for it and submitted the proposal. This is my first port, so I might have done something wrong, but if all is well, it should be available soon under x11/wmmp. If you try it, please let me know if you find something wrong with it!
 
On my side:
  • Work: Windows 7. Worst thing is, I came to know a few months after I started that I could have asked for anything (including FreeBSD), they just default to Windows 7 for new machines. Sadly, now, it's too late to change...
  • Home: FreeBSD 11.0 + Window Maker or StumpWM
  • Laptop: Dead, will be looking for a new one in a few months
 
I loved the hell out of Windowmaker. Its just cool. It hearkened back to the days of NeXTSTEP for me. Then once I got a taste of all of that oldschool boxy simple goodness, I wanted more. So I did NeXTSTEP+GNUstep complete with the "recycler" and everything. But for me everything kept crashing and just wasn't ready for primetime. Now I am on fbsd11 with dtwm/cde. :)
 
I loved the hell out of Windowmaker. Its just cool. It hearkened back to the days of NeXTSTEP for me. Then once I got a taste of all of that oldschool boxy simple goodness, I wanted more. So I did NeXTSTEP+GNUstep complete with the "recycler" and everything. But for me everything kept crashing and just wasn't ready for primetime. Now I am on fbsd11 with dtwm/cde. :)

Yay! I did the same and for some time used the whole GNUStep environment. I never had a problem with it, however, you might have been unlucky there. However, I could never get (Open)-CDE to work, and even though I must confess I have some guilty nostalgia for CDE, I gave up after a few days. Does it compile cleanly now?
 
https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/55125/

If you use acheron's port above, it compiles very nicely. Really everything else you need to know to get it running is in that thread. I only had an issue with the following:

The calendar works, but only after you fix some path issues in your inetd.conf.

The "Information Manager" won't load for me. I think this is a path issue as well but I need to find exactly where. Others have complained that it will load, but won't close.

If you install any of your own backdrops (like bigger than say, 5k) it will slow down the entire DE. I recommend that you use xli or something like xli to correct this issue.

Other than that, everything works and compiles great!
 
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