[gentoo-amd64] Re: How do I choose a second window manager?

[gentoo-amd64] Re: How do I choose a second window manager?

[Duncan]

Martin Herrman <martin@herrman.nl> posted
40bb8d3b0906170618g152b5f8fxc79889f0d6213bf6@mail.gmail.com, excerpted
below, on  Wed, 17 Jun 2009 15:18:24 +0200:

> "The Xfce 4 Appfinder is part of the Xfce 4 Desktop Environment and
> features application search on the whole system. It searches for
> .desktop files based on the freedesktop spec and makes an index of the
> found apps."
> 
> Source: xfce website:
> http://www.xfce.org/documentation/4.2/manuals/xfce4-appfinder
> 
> Does Gentoo use these .desktop files?

In general, yes, as it's a freedesktop.org standard now and both KDE and 
GNOME use them too.  However, whether individual (non-main-DE) apps 
packages include them would depend on either upstream (if it ships, so 
will Gentoo in most cases) or the the initiative of the individual Gentoo 
package maintainer, if upstream doesn't ship one.

On the title question, I've never used it, but based on what others have 
said and the originally requested features (including an auto-managed 
menu), I too would recommend XFCE.  It seems to be /the/ middle ground 
between a "full feature" DE and a bare-bones WM, and gets very high 
reviews in general.  If I ever decide KDE's not for me any more, or 
perhaps for my netbook when I get around to putting Gentoo on it, if I 
don't like KDE's performance, I've always thought I'd try XFCE first.  

But on my main machine, at least kde3 has been great.  I can't say the 
same for kde4 (yet?), for a couple reasons.  First, one of the big kde4 
features is 3D eye candy... that my aging Radeon 9200 can't handle at the 
1920x2400 desktop size I run (it maxes at 2048 each, X and Y), and 
without that, there really isn't enough better (and a lot changed enough 
I'm not comfortable with it) to upgrade from kde3.  Second, I've so 
deeply customized kde3 to my own needs and style, and kde4 is so much 
changed, that it's simply different enough that even with full 3D 
features, it'd take me awhile to get kde4 setup similarly effectively/
comfortably.

So, I have both kde3/4 merged, and occasionally run 4 and mess around 
some, but for actually doing anything productive, it's kde3 (or the text 
console).  Sometime later this year I plan to upgrade to, probably, one 
of the later r500 based Radeons (which run thru the x1950 models), and 
meanwhile, kde-4.3.0 and likely 4.3.1 will be out, and we'll see how kde4 
does then.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: How do I choose a second window manager?

[Dmitri Pogosyan]

I used XFCE for a year, having mostly left kde-3.5 unused, but recently since
the update to 3.5.10 came out, and was modular, have updated to just barebone
kdebase-meta. You know - it feels faster than XFCE, and weights in kdebase +
couple apps I need, not much more.

> I too would recommend XFCE.  It seems to be /the/ middle ground 
> between a "full feature" DE and a bare-bones WM, and gets very high 
> reviews in general.  If I ever decide KDE's not for me any more, or 
> perhaps for my netbook when I get around to putting Gentoo on it, if I 
> don't like KDE's performance, I've always thought I'd try XFCE first.  
> 
> But on my main machine, at least kde3 has been great. 
--
Dmitri Pogosyan            Department of Physics
Associate Professor        University of Alberta
tel 1-780-492-2150         11322 - 89 Avenue
fax 1-780-492-0714         Edmonton, AB, T6G 2G7, CANADA

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: How do I choose a second window manager?

[Mark Knecht]

On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 6:43 AM, Duncan<1i5t5.duncan@cox.net> wrote:
> Martin Herrman <martin@herrman.nl> posted
> 40bb8d3b0906170618g152b5f8fxc79889f0d6213bf6@mail.gmail.com, excerpted
> below, on  Wed, 17 Jun 2009 15:18:24 +0200:
>
>> "The Xfce 4 Appfinder is part of the Xfce 4 Desktop Environment and
>> features application search on the whole system. It searches for
>> .desktop files based on the freedesktop spec and makes an index of the
>> found apps."
>>
>> Source: xfce website:
>> http://www.xfce.org/documentation/4.2/manuals/xfce4-appfinder
>>
>> Does Gentoo use these .desktop files?
>
> In general, yes, as it's a freedesktop.org standard now and both KDE and
> GNOME use them too.  However, whether individual (non-main-DE) apps
> packages include them would depend on either upstream (if it ships, so
> will Gentoo in most cases) or the the initiative of the individual Gentoo
> package maintainer, if upstream doesn't ship one.
>
> On the title question, I've never used it, but based on what others have
> said and the originally requested features (including an auto-managed
> menu), I too would recommend XFCE.  It seems to be /the/ middle ground
> between a "full feature" DE and a bare-bones WM, and gets very high
> reviews in general.  If I ever decide KDE's not for me any more, or
> perhaps for my netbook when I get around to putting Gentoo on it, if I
> don't like KDE's performance, I've always thought I'd try XFCE first.
>
> But on my main machine, at least kde3 has been great.  I can't say the
> same for kde4 (yet?), for a couple reasons.  First, one of the big kde4
> features is 3D eye candy... that my aging Radeon 9200 can't handle at the
> 1920x2400 desktop size I run (it maxes at 2048 each, X and Y), and
> without that, there really isn't enough better (and a lot changed enough
> I'm not comfortable with it) to upgrade from kde3.  Second, I've so
> deeply customized kde3 to my own needs and style, and kde4 is so much
> changed, that it's simply different enough that even with full 3D
> features, it'd take me awhile to get kde4 setup similarly effectively/
> comfortably.
>
> So, I have both kde3/4 merged, and occasionally run 4 and mess around
> some, but for actually doing anything productive, it's kde3 (or the text
> console).  Sometime later this year I plan to upgrade to, probably, one
> of the later r500 based Radeons (which run thru the x1950 models), and
> meanwhile, kde-4.3.0 and likely 4.3.1 will be out, and we'll see how kde4
> does then.
>
> --
> Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
> "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
> and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

I suspect that XFCE might be a good one to look at. Thanks.

Any thoughts from folks about fvwm?

thanks to Marc for the pointer to fbpanel. I'll certainly take a look at that.

cheers,
Mark

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: How do I choose a second window manager?

[Mark Knecht]

On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 8:39 AM, Dmitri
Pogosyan<pogosyan@phys.ualberta.ca> wrote:
> I used XFCE for a year, having mostly left kde-3.5 unused, but recently since
> the update to 3.5.10 came out, and was modular, have updated to just barebone
> kdebase-meta. You know - it feels faster than XFCE, and weights in kdebase +
> couple apps I need, not much more.
>
>> I too would recommend XFCE.  It seems to be /the/ middle ground
>> between a "full feature" DE and a bare-bones WM, and gets very high
>> reviews in general.  If I ever decide KDE's not for me any more, or
>> perhaps for my netbook when I get around to putting Gentoo on it, if I
>> don't like KDE's performance, I've always thought I'd try XFCE first.
>>
>> But on my main machine, at least kde3 has been great.
> --
> Dmitri Pogosyan            Department of Physics
> Associate Professor        University of Alberta
> tel 1-780-492-2150         11322 - 89 Avenue
> fax 1-780-492-0714         Edmonton, AB, T6G 2G7, CANADA
>

Good input.

QUESTION: I've been somewhat unhappy over the last year with Gentoo
package maintainers doing little updates to gnome files which seems to
drive more and more little updates. Granted, I could mask things,
etc., but I've found it frustrating. I've worried with KDE that it's
so big I'll find myself updating files pretty much all the time. Is
this warranted or just me worrying?

Cheers,
Mark

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: How do I choose a second window manager?

[Josh Sled]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 432 bytes --]

Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> writes:
> QUESTION: I've been somewhat unhappy over the last year with Gentoo
> package maintainers doing little updates to gnome files which seems to
> drive more and more little updates. 

What do you mean, exactly?  I upgrade weekly, and haven't really noticed
this, or noticed it to be a problem.

-- 
...jsled
http://asynchronous.org/ - a=jsled; b=asynchronous.org; echo ${a}@${b}

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 197 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: How do I choose a second window manager?

[Dmitri Pogosyan]

I was never fond of split ebuilds, because I found you end up installing
almost everything anyway but managing them becomes much more cumbersome.
Bad example is X - I do not have qualification anyway to decide that I need
this library but not that one, and it seems that every single library comes in
it own ebuild, so you start to wonder why not compile each C program individually.

Saying that, I found KDE 3.5.10 split extremely well thought through and
really useful. It is organzied in well defined (and not too numerous) meta
blocks which contain pieces of service packages (like kioslaves) that are
relevant to this block, kdebase-meta is fully functional minimalist
installation, and extra apps that you may need are very intuitive to find.

So kudos to developers on that. 

> Good input.
> 
> QUESTION: I've been somewhat unhappy over the last year with Gentoo
> package maintainers doing little updates to gnome files which seems to
> drive more and more little updates. Granted, I could mask things,
> etc., but I've found it frustrating. I've worried with KDE that it's
> so big I'll find myself updating files pretty much all the time. Is
> this warranted or just me worrying?
> 
> Cheers,
> Mark



--
Dmitri Pogosyan            Department of Physics
Associate Professor        University of Alberta
tel 1-780-492-2150         11322 - 89 Avenue
fax 1-780-492-0714         Edmonton, AB, T6G 2G7, CANADA

[gentoo-amd64] Re: How do I choose a second window manager?

[Duncan]

"Dmitri Pogosyan" <pogosyan@phys.ualberta.ca> posted
200906171636.n5HGaRp03314@webmail.phys.ualberta.ca, excerpted below, on 
Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:36:27 -0600:

> I was never fond of split ebuilds, because I found you end up installing
> almost everything anyway but managing them becomes much more cumbersome.
> Bad example is X - I do not have qualification anyway to decide that I
> need this library but not that one, and it seems that every single
> library comes in it own ebuild, so you start to wonder why not compile
> each C program individually.

FWIW, with X, you should no longer need the xorg-x11 meta-package, and 
without it, pretty much everything you need is now a dependency either of 
xorg-server or of the various other X packages you may install that need 
it.  Among other things, eliminating the xorg-x11 metapackage will likely 
allow depclean to uninstall quite a number of unnecessary (for most 
people, they help with exotic fonts for Uzbekistan, etc.) font packages 
and the like, some of which are unfree, something at least some of us are 
concerned about.

Then you don't have to worry about X any more, as only what you need is 
pulled in as dependencies of whatever.  Unless of course you want some 
exotic font or something.  Then you just emerge that to get it added to 
world on its own, and don't worry about it any more, either.

So it basically ends up much as you were saying KDE does (and I agree).  
Just as kdebase-meta pulls in the basics there, xorg-server (well, once 
you set the INPUT_DEVICES and VIDEO_CARDS variables as appropriate) pulls 
in the basics for X.

But just as with KDE, it wasn't always that way.  It took them several 
version generations worth of practice to get all the metas and 
dependencies setup correctly.  Before that, you'd often have trouble with 
missing dependencies unless you merged the overall meta-package (kde-meta 
or xorg-x11), because the dependencies weren't all worked out properly 
yet and individual packages were often missing one or more of them.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

[gentoo-amd64] Re: How do I choose a second window manager?

[Duncan]

Paul Hartman <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> posted
58965d8a0906170914l4ebca650uba703a2a6b450d69@mail.gmail.com, excerpted
below, on  Wed, 17 Jun 2009 11:14:50 -0500:

> Well, if you want something different then KDE4 is definitely
> different... for better or for worse :)

Agreed, but if he wants low latency, he'll probably want to be sure to 
turn off all the fancy 3D window effects, transparency and the like, and 
with that goes much of the reason for using KDE4. =:^(

If he has a fast graphics card and a relatively low resolution screen, he 
may be able to get away with very limited effects, but if I'm right, even 
that might be a bit too unpredictable in terms of latency.

Meanwhile, Mark, you do have the kernel set for a 1000 Hz clock rate, 
right?  And you have preemptive desktop turned on, and high resolution 
timers, right?  (These are under Processor type and features.)

You may also wish to experiment with Group CPU Scheduler (under General 
setup), if you regularly run background tasks as other users and you want 
to be sure your audio user gets his share of CPU.  With that on you can 
then tweak the /sys/kernel/uids/<idnum>/cpu_share numbers, keeping in 
mind that the default is 1024 while the root default is 2048, and that 
the <idnum> dirs will come and go as users do.  I don't do your sort of 
audio, and run the more moderate voluntary preemption and 300 Hz clock 
(with tickless also on), but combined with setting PORTAGE_NICENESS=19 in 
make.conf, I can run all sorts of emerge jobs, CPU loads in the hundreds 
if I want as long as don't run too far into swap, and still keep a 
relatively responsive desktop, and if I had full preemption and 1000 Hz, 
I think I could almost do your style of recording even while running 
emerges!  (Oh, I also have PORTAGE_TMPDIR pointed at a tmpfs, thus 
keeping unnecessary I/O to a minimum.  That makes a difference to 
responsiveness while merging too, as does having the memory to keep it 
out of swap while doing so.)

Of course, it may be that you simply don't run enough background tasks as 
other users to make any difference with the group scheduling stuff, and 
that was only added in 2.6.27 or some such, so if you're running an old 
kernel you won't have the group scheduling at all.  IOW, YMMV, but it's 
worth looking at.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: How do I choose a second window manager?

[Mark Knecht]

On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 11:14 AM, Duncan<1i5t5.duncan@cox.net> wrote:
> Paul Hartman <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> posted
> 58965d8a0906170914l4ebca650uba703a2a6b450d69@mail.gmail.com, excerpted
> below, on  Wed, 17 Jun 2009 11:14:50 -0500:
>
>> Well, if you want something different then KDE4 is definitely
>> different... for better or for worse :)
>
> Agreed, but if he wants low latency, he'll probably want to be sure to
> turn off all the fancy 3D window effects, transparency and the like, and
> with that goes much of the reason for using KDE4. =:^(
>
> If he has a fast graphics card and a relatively low resolution screen, he
> may be able to get away with very limited effects, but if I'm right, even
> that might be a bit too unpredictable in terms of latency.
>
> Meanwhile, Mark, you do have the kernel set for a 1000 Hz clock rate,
> right?  And you have preemptive desktop turned on, and high resolution
> timers, right?  (These are under Processor type and features.)

I'm using rt-sources which allows another preemption model, intendeded
for real-time, called 'Complete Preemption (real-time)'. My timer
frequency is 1KHz and I do enable high resolution timer support.

Note that running this way I am able to have audio come into my
machine, be recorded and also go back out of the machine to be sent to
other external audio hardware in less than 3mS. (actually 1.2mS * 2 )
It's fast - much faster than Windows/Avid-ProTools on the same
hardware which might need to run around 10mS. Considering that
somewhere around 10mS is where humans might begin to sense an echo I
need fast. I like fast. I pay for fast. This is one area where I have
no doubt I beat M$ by using Linux.

>
> You may also wish to experiment with Group CPU Scheduler (under General
> setup), if you regularly run background tasks as other users and you want
> to be sure your audio user gets his share of CPU.  With that on you can
> then tweak the /sys/kernel/uids/<idnum>/cpu_share numbers, keeping in
> mind that the default is 1024 while the root default is 2048, and that
> the <idnum> dirs will come and go as users do.  I don't do your sort of
> audio, and run the more moderate voluntary preemption and 300 Hz clock
> (with tickless also on), but combined with setting PORTAGE_NICENESS=19 in
> make.conf, I can run all sorts of emerge jobs, CPU loads in the hundreds
> if I want as long as don't run too far into swap, and still keep a
> relatively responsive desktop, and if I had full preemption and 1000 Hz,
> I think I could almost do your style of recording even while running
> emerges!  (Oh, I also have PORTAGE_TMPDIR pointed at a tmpfs, thus
> keeping unnecessary I/O to a minimum.  That makes a difference to
> responsiveness while merging too, as does having the memory to keep it
> out of swap while doing so.)

All of this probably make sense, and I'll do a little study on the
matter, but when running Ardour recording a band playing a live gig
it's a one-shot, you gotta get it right sort of event. There is only
one performance. During tracking (the process of recording the
artist's live sound to individual tracks) I generally run nothing but
Ardour with the Jack server to manage application audio routing and
timing, and then possibly one or two other audio apps. I may not see
my desktop for hours. There are no browsers, generally I even
disconnect network connections at the switch if in my home studio -
probably not necessary but 8 years ago it was very necessary in Linux
as even a packet arriving could cause delays. Typically I'm sitting in
the mixing console area with the live sound guys grabbing a feed from
the stage (for rock) or I'm mic'ing the stage myself for smaller
venues. (Jazz combos, big band, etc.)

Now, my hardware/kernel are really optimized for live recording, but
when I bring the machines home I still have to work on them. They are
used as standard desktop machines most of the time but serve as mixing
platforms after tracking. During these times real-time operation is
still important, but if I have a glitch in the audio the worst I have
to do is do the job a second time. It doesn't happen often, but it
does happen with Gnome once in awhile. In the old days it NEVER
happened with fluxbox, and probably still doesn't. As I say, my
migration away from fluxbox was really a management issue and not a
negative about the technology. fluxbox is great for my audio needs,
just wasn't so great for day-to-day life. However I'm really bored
with Gnome and hence why I started this thread.

>
> Of course, it may be that you simply don't run enough background tasks as
> other users to make any difference with the group scheduling stuff, and
> that was only added in 2.6.27 or some such, so if you're running an old
> kernel you won't have the group scheduling at all.  IOW, YMMV, but it's
> worth looking at.

Currently running 2.6.29.2-rt11, and is probably clear, when it's
important I don't run any background tasks as a user. Only system
things are allowed to take place, and even those are controlled as
much as I can.

Thanks and cheers,
Mark

>
> --
> Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
> "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
> and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman
>
>
>

[gentoo-amd64] Re: How do I choose a second window manager?

[Duncan]

Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> posted
5bdc1c8b0906171350n10d32d2at83600ee6b31baa80@mail.gmail.com, excerpted
below, on  Wed, 17 Jun 2009 13:50:17 -0700:

> All of this probably make sense, and I'll do a little study on the
> matter, but when running Ardour recording a band playing a live gig it's
> a one-shot, you gotta get it right sort of event. There is only one
> performance.

I did enough of that years ago (80s) that I understand what you are 
talking about.  However, back then, it wasn't computerized, or more 
correctly, they were just starting to really get into it, with live 
computer processing at concerts, etc, but that was expensive pro stuff at 
the time, way past my piddly little "running the mixer for the praise and 
worship at the church" level.

But between that and my general computer knowledge now, I appreciate the 
effect latency has on a product, and why there simply can be no 
compromise.  I didn't and don't expect that you /would/ run an emerge 
while doing that, no way, Jose, as they say, but was simply illustrating 
the point that you /could/ or /almost/ could anyway.  Not that you ever 
/would/, but that if it's good enough to deal with /that/ sort of thing, 
it should be a walk in the park for the stuff you /will/ be wanting and 
needing it to do.

Anyway, the topic of sound engineering is still interesting enough to me 
that I love to hear or read people that are still in it talking about 
it.  So I really appreciated your post.  Plus, I know enough about it 
from then, and about computers now, that if the opportunity/need comes my 
way, I could jump back into it again, and then I /would/ be using all 
I've read about Jack, Ardour, low-latency kernels, etc, putting it all to 
use and asking people like you for pointers. =:^)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

[gentoo-amd64] Re: How do I choose a second window manager?

[Duncan]

Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> posted
5bdc1c8b0906181839r18d3a8c0yfa9d5da993d66b6f@mail.gmail.com, excerpted
below, on  Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:39:51 -0700:

> This issue seems to come up occasionally. I'll download some zip file to
> my desktop and use an archive manager to drag a bunch of stuff out.
> Having done that I might delete some audio files but want to keep
> others, or I might want to separate them into different folders based on
> what I'm going to do with them.

I do something a bit different that should work in your case, but I do it 
for a different reason. (I don't like many things on the desktop at all, 
if there's more than can be counted on the fingers of one hand, I'm 
getting uncomfortable.  Thus, while I do use the desktop for individual 
files occasionally, that's /all/ I keep there, individual files.  BTW, no 
"trash" or other such "system" stuff there either.  Well, except for...)

What I hit upon is this:

1.  In my home dir, I have a "dir" subdir.  But it could be called 
"links" or "working" or "inbox", or something else of similar nature.

2.  On my desktop I then keep a single symlink, to ~/dir.  (It's a 
symlink because one time when I used to keep "dir" on the desktop itself, 
one time, I accidentally deleted it... and everything in it!  Since the 
dir is now elsewhere and all that's on the desktop is a symlink, no big 
deal if I do that again, since all it will have deleted is the symlink, 
and I can easily recreate /that/.

3.  Thus, while the desktop itself stays uncluttered, my "dir" aka 
"links" or whatever one wishes to call it, dir, is a single-click away.  
If I want to work with it, I can open it with a single click, but at the 
same time, I don't have to stare at all those ugly icons on the desktop 
all the time.

(BTW, as has been being discussed in another thread, I run a dual-monitor 
setup, stacked 1920x1200, for 1920x2400 total.  The bottom monitor is my 
"working" monitor.  This is where most of my windows go.  When I'm doing 
mail or news, pan or kmail is maximized across this screen only.  When 
I'm browsing either the web or local files, or when I open a terminal 
window, their default size is a quarter the bottom monitor, so I can tile 
four such konsole or browser windows in a 2x2 matrix, and still have 960 
px wide terminal and browser windows, which is normally very reasonable.  
The only thing is those windows, at ~580 px tall, don't give me much 
vertical reading space, so I have kwin's title-bar double-click action 
set to maximize (to one monitor) vertically, so I can get a longer view 
if I want it.  Anyway, that leaves the top monitor free for the 300 px 
tall panel with system monitors, a big clock, etc, across the top, always 
shown, plus 1920x900 px of auxiliary workspace, on which I can put 
another auxiliary window or two, perhaps have an mpd client media player 
going, etc, PLUS still have enough of the desktop still free so I can 
still access the handful of items I typically have on the desktop, 
including the "dir" symlink.  Thus, that "dir" symlink on the desktop is 
almost always available for single-click access, no matter /what/ I have 
spread across the working monitor below, even if I have a couple "extra" 
windows open up top as well!  However, that ALSO means the top monitor 
desktop remains visible nearly all the time, and I really do NOT like 
having whatever wallpaper I happen to have loaded at the time spoiled by 
too many icons, blossoming like big ugly zits on my wallpaper!  FWIW, 
here's a (1/3 scale and reduced to 256-color for the web) now several 
years old screenshot, dated, but gives you a visual idea of what I'm 
talking about.  Watch the link-wrap!

http://members.cox.net/pu61ic.1inux.dunc4n/pix/screenshots/screen.33.256.png

I really need to update that...  It's from early 2006...)

4.  In my "dir" dir, I have other directories (one of which is called 
"working" but could be just as easily called inbox, the reason I didn't 
use that name for the one directly on the desktop), symlinks to other 
frequently visited directories (like my mm partition), and often, 
whatever I happen to be working on that I've just downloaded or whatever.

5.  Thus, as I've said, "dir" is a single-click away on the desktop, so I 
have instant access to whatever I need therein, and that's where I put 
stuff most folks would put directly on their desktop, temporarily.  The 
the desktop itself contains little else.

.....

That's where this whole thing gets back around to your problem.  If you 
create a similar one or two working dirs (or perhaps better, symlinks to 
working dirs) on your desktop and don't put anything else on the desktop, 
you'll still have pretty direct access to them, but they'll open as 
folders, and you should be able to drag and drop multiple items from them 
without issue.  Meanwhile, your desktop itself will stay much less 
cluttered, and because there's only a couple items directly on the 
desktop anyway, you'll never need to worry about whether multi-select and 
drag works on the desktop or not, regardless of /what/ DE/WM you are 
running. =:^)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: How do I choose a second window manager?

[Mark Knecht]

On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 10:15 PM, Duncan<1i5t5.duncan@cox.net> wrote:
> Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> posted
> 5bdc1c8b0906181839r18d3a8c0yfa9d5da993d66b6f@mail.gmail.com, excerpted
> below, on  Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:39:51 -0700:
>
>> This issue seems to come up occasionally. I'll download some zip file to
>> my desktop and use an archive manager to drag a bunch of stuff out.
>> Having done that I might delete some audio files but want to keep
>> others, or I might want to separate them into different folders based on
>> what I'm going to do with them.
>
> I do something a bit different that should work in your case, but I do it
> for a different reason. (I don't like many things on the desktop at all,
> if there's more than can be counted on the fingers of one hand, I'm
> getting uncomfortable.  Thus, while I do use the desktop for individual
> files occasionally, that's /all/ I keep there, individual files.  BTW, no
> "trash" or other such "system" stuff there either.  Well, except for...)
>
> What I hit upon is this:
>
> 1.  In my home dir, I have a "dir" subdir.  But it could be called
> "links" or "working" or "inbox", or something else of similar nature.
>
> 2.  On my desktop I then keep a single symlink, to ~/dir.  (It's a
> symlink because one time when I used to keep "dir" on the desktop itself,
> one time, I accidentally deleted it... and everything in it!  Since the
> dir is now elsewhere and all that's on the desktop is a symlink, no big
> deal if I do that again, since all it will have deleted is the symlink,
> and I can easily recreate /that/.
>
> 3.  Thus, while the desktop itself stays uncluttered, my "dir" aka
> "links" or whatever one wishes to call it, dir, is a single-click away.
> If I want to work with it, I can open it with a single click, but at the
> same time, I don't have to stare at all those ugly icons on the desktop
> all the time.
>

If I'm understanding you correctly this is essentially do now. I have
a couple of external 1394 and USB drives that I use to save web-found
media as well as customer audio. The model I've used in the past is to
decompress a zip file with 200-300 audio files onto my desktop, and
once the files are there I would just drag them to different folder
links. On Gnome I could grab 20 *.wav files, open a specific USB link,
get a folder, create some sub-folder and then simply drag the 20 wave
files to the location I want them in. With XFCE I cannot do that - IF
- I'm simply looking at the desktop. The files are selected but only
the first one selected is deposited at the new location. However if I
open a file system browser in XFCE, cd within that browser to my
desktop, I then can select and drag multiple files successfully.

Like you I don't like a lot of stuff on my desktop. I do keep a few
application launcher icons there in Gnome. However I personally like
downloads from customers/partners as well as things I download using
Firefox to go to my desktop because:

1) If they are on my desktop they will be dealt with immediately, and

2) On all my different systems, both Linux & Windows, the only thing
in common by default is the desktop.

So, I use the desktop as temporary storage and then clean it up
quickly. That's better for me than having downloads go to some obscure
place and then be forgotten about.

<SNIP>
I'll comment on the rest of your post later. I'm busy trying to get a
trade on soonish.

Cheers,
Mark

[gentoo-amd64] frustrated - configure mime types for browser

[Steve Herber]

I have searched the web and failed.  I hate to bother the group but I know
the answer is here.  Thanks in advance.

My problem is how to configure galeon and firefox to use the right helper 
applications on my Gentoo computers.  For a long time most helper 
applications, such as xpdf for PDF files, just worked.  But during the
past few months, with the typical gentoo updates, I have lost the ability
to get the right application chosen for the different mime types.  It 
seems that over time the Linux desktop environment is getting more 
complicated than a Windows computer and it seems like a sad state to me.
Either that, or I am missing some simple piece of information.

I have two desktops, both amd64.  One wants to run gimp for each PDF
while the other runs adobe.  I would like to change them both to use
xpdf or at least change the one from Gimp to adobe.

If anyone can give me a few pointers, I would appreciate it.

Thanks,
-- 
Steve Herber	herber@thing.com		work: 206-221-7262
Software Engineer, UW Medicine, IT Services	home: 425-454-2399

Re: [gentoo-amd64] frustrated - configure mime types for browser

[Dominic Reich]

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Steve Herber wrote:
> My problem is how to configure galeon and firefox to use the right helper 
> applications on my Gentoo computers.  For a long time most helper 
> applications, such as xpdf for PDF files, just worked.  But during the
> past few months, with the typical gentoo updates, I have lost the ability
> to get the right application chosen for the different mime types.  It 
> seems that over time the Linux desktop environment is getting more 
> complicated than a Windows computer and it seems like a sad state to me.
> Either that, or I am missing some simple piece of information.

Isn't it just in Firefox' options dialogue, the tab Applications (fourth
from the left). You can choose the program or tell firefox to ask every
time which app you want to use.
I can't look into it because I'm using windows here, but must be the
same in linux IMO.

Greets, Dominic


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Re: [gentoo-amd64] frustrated - configure mime types for browser

[Tom]

> I have searched the web and failed.  I hate to bother the group but I
> know the answer is here.  Thanks in advance.
> 
> My problem is how to configure galeon and firefox to use the right
> helper applications on my Gentoo computers.  For a long time most
> helper applications, such as xpdf for PDF files, just worked.  But
> during the past few months, with the typical gentoo updates, I have
> lost the ability to get the right application chosen for the
> different mime types.  It seems that over time the Linux desktop
> environment is getting more complicated than a Windows computer and
> it seems like a sad state to me. Either that, or I am missing some
> simple piece of information.
> 
> I have two desktops, both amd64.  One wants to run gimp for each PDF
> while the other runs adobe.  I would like to change them both to use
> xpdf or at least change the one from Gimp to adobe.
> 
> If anyone can give me a few pointers, I would appreciate it.

Look here,bottom post:
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=85748