Fwd: Fw: Does anyone use MATE (Gnome 2 fork)?

Fwd: Fw: Does anyone use MATE (Gnome 2 fork)?

Shlomi Fish shlomif at gmail.com
Wed Dec 25 22:28:47 IST 2013


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Shlomi Fish <shlomif at shlomifish.org>
Date: Wed, Dec 25, 2013 at 10:27 PM
Subject: Fw: Does anyone use MATE (Gnome 2 fork)?
To: shlomif at gmail.com




Begin forwarded message:

Date: Wed, 25 Dec 2013 19:47:06 +0200
From: Shlomi Fish <shlomif at shlomifish.org>
To: linux-il <linux-il at cs.huji.ac.il>
Subject: Re: Does anyone use MATE (Gnome 2 fork)?


Hi Steve,

On Wed, 25 Dec 2013 11:36:35 -0500
Steve Litt <slitt at troubleshooters.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Wed, 25 Dec 2013 18:06:43 +0200
> Rami Rosen <rosenrami at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> > The main issues I encountered in last months in KDE are:
> > 1) loads application slowly compared to Gnome.
> > 2) sometimes KDE plasma crashes when I press on the Kickoff
> > application launcher
> > 3) the kwallet pop up annoys me (though I am sure it is trivial to
> > get rid of this pop up)
> >
> > I wonder which other problems did you have with it ? KDE is quite
> > veteran as you know.
>
> This is such a cool thread I'm copying my local LUG...
>
> My problems with KDE are described here:
>
>
http://www.troubleshooters.com/lpm/201202/201202.htm#_Steve_You_Sound_Angry
>
> http://www.troubleshooters.com/lpm/201202/201202.htm#_Escape_From_Kmail
>
> And more generally, through the whole document:
>
> http://www.troubleshooters.com/lpm/201202/201202.htm
>
> Bottom line, for me, KDE stands for Krash, Delay, Expand.
>

Well, I've been using KDE 4 (most recently 4.11.4) happily for some time
now. It's certainly not perfect, but it's stable, usable, functional and
looks
great. I had had some problems with X crashing with an OpenGL errors after
several hours of use, but I suspect it was caused by a graphics driver
problem
(I'm using my Core i3’s processor built-in Intel Graphics adapter) and this
is
now resolved (haven't had a crash for some time). What does happen is that
sometimes the screen freezes/delays for a few noticable seconds, but then it
resumes and everything is OK. (Possibly a graphics adaptor problem too).

Seeing the anchor you gave, I agree that the conversion of KMail from KMail
1
to the Akonadi-based KMail 2 was half-done, and as a result I ended up
switching
from KMail to claws-mail, which isn't perfect, but is at least very usable
and
lets me get my job done. But I usually use it on top of KDE.

> > I did not try the other Display Managers. In case this problem with
> > Gnome and JEdit losing focus will not be solved somehow (which I
> > doubt it will), I will consider one of them (starting with Xfce).
>
> Yes. There's a whole *world* of Display managers out there, beyond KDE,
> Gnome and (urk) Unity. Actually, I would never use any of those three
> for a display manager, and have removed every KDE library and program
> from all my computers, for greatly improved stability and performance.
>

You seem to be on a crusade to stamp out KDE usage by every people who tell
you that they use it. Please consider the fact that KDE may work and work
well
for other people, and the world won’t come to harm just by them using it.
“Live and let live.”.

> Here are some of the display managers I've tried:
>
> Xfce: Windows 95 type DM, capable of multiple panels (a panel is a
>       taskbar. Sometimes quirky, but probably the best of the bunch,
>       especially if you like having a start menu. Even if you don't use
>       Xfce, download it so you can use the xfce4-appfinder program,
>       which is a great way to find and launch programs. I use Xfce on
>       all my laptops.

I agree that XFCE is a bit quirky, and I prefer LXDE (but I’m not sure
exactly
why).

>
> LXDE: The most stable taskbar/startmenu type interface I've ever found.
>       Wonderful software whose only problems are: 1) only 1 panel
>       possible, and 2) very slow mouse compared to other window
>       managers. Problem #2 is best solved by using an optical mouse on
>       a very clean surface.
>

I think the speed of the mouse is configurable everywhere. I Remember
playing
with the mouse pointer speed in some cases. LXDE is nice, but I noticed it
has
problems updating the window previews in the taskbar’s pager (though there
may
be a patch for it in the development version - not sure). I was told the
pager
suffered from a lot of neglect even though many people use it.

> IceWM: Old School Windows 95 type interface. Works well, not maintained
>        very well, but still available and still works. I used it for
>        five years and liked it a lot.
>

I think there's also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JWM . I think I tried it,
after packaging it for Mageia, and it seemed mostly OK. It’s more actively
maintained than IceWM.

> OpenBox: Keystroke driven, no start button, no panel/taskbar. Very
>          stable. You need to develop other techniques, driven by
>          hotkeys, which are easy to implement using an editor, to
>          compensate for lack of a start button. I currently use this
>          interface on my daily driver desktop. There are a few user
>          interface hassles caused by lack of a taskbar, but then again,
>          I have xfce4-appfinder to launch stuff, and I have gkrellm on
>          workspace 1 to tell the time and date and stuff. OpenBox is an
>          acquired taste: I like it. By the way, DO NOT use OpenBox if
>          you want other people to successfully operate your computer.
>

Openbox is also used as the underlying window manager of LXDE. There's also
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluxbox .

> Awesome: Lua driven, Lua configured tiling desktop environment. I tried
>          it, but didn't like it. I've seen guys who are good with
>          hotkeys and configuration make Awesome walk and talk. DO NOT
>          use this WM if you want other people to be able to use your
>          computer.

I'm not a fan of tiling window managers.

>
> Sawfish: I think a long time ago this window manager
>          was associated with Gnome. IIRC it's a Windows 95 type window
>          manager.

I think Sawfish’s main selling point was its configurability with a custom
dialect of Lisp.

>
> Enlightenment: Similar to Sawfish, as I remember.
>

Enlightenment is configurable as well, and also aims for very good
aesthetics.
However, I found it somewhat quirky and unusable to use when I tried it, and
ended up returning to KDE. On the bright side, according to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightenment_%28window_manager%29 E 0.18
(FINAL) was released three days ago just in time for Christmas. After that
and
the release of MPlayer 1.1, we now have one less vapourware package to joke
about.

> Fvwm: If your one and only priority is light weight and good stability,
>       this is your Window Manager. It's the only one I've personally
>       gotten to work right on OpenBSD. It's a gift from heaven if
>       you're working on a 256MB RAM machine. This is like a less user
>       friendly version of OpenBox, so you'd better be ready to spend
>       some time tailoring your work habits to it, and setting up
>       hotkeys and workspaces. By the way, this is the only WM I've
>       found whose workspaces are a 2 dimensional array. One of my
>       buddies has 64 workspaces, knows which workspaces always contain
>       what programs, and works quite successfully like that.

I saw a screenshot of JWM running on OpenBSD on Wikipedia.

>
> Fluxbox, Blackbox: Similar to OpenBox, but I personally don't like them
>                    as well. YMMV
>

Regards,

        Shlomi Fish

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Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/

Electrical Engineering studies. In the Technion. Been there. Done that.
Forgot a lot. Remember too much.

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