Unusual Linux Desktops? 89
sparrow_hawk asks: "I'm doing a presentation on Linux, sort of a basic education about what exactly it is and isn't. One of the points I'm trying to hammer home is the idea that Linux can look and act pretty much however you want it to. I'd like to know what's the most unusual Linux desktop you've seen, preferably with screenshots -- the one that looks like the helm of an alien spaceship, or the one that mimics a 50's radio?"
Here it is.. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Here it is.. (Score:1)
Re:Here it is.. (Score:1)
Re:Here it is.. (Score:3, Funny)
http://shelf.dyndns.org/~stu/screen-desktop.jpg
http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/screen.html
I have seen a WINDOWS THEME!! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I have seen a WINDOWS THEME!! (Score:5, Informative)
They did a series about it on Userfriendly.org [userfriendly.org] a bit ago.
Re:I have seen a WINDOWS THEME!! (Score:2)
Not necessarily Linux only (Score:3, Interesting)
As for the UNIX desktop front, everything these days seems to want to copy the better points of the MacOS and Windows. A
Re:Not necessarily Linux only (Score:1)
OH WOW! I haven't been to that site in AGE! It was one of my most visited sites in my early days of using Linux. I'm sure glad that it's still around and up to date.
3 diff os(s)! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:3 diff os(s)! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:3 diff os(s)! (Score:1)
Re:3 diff os(s)! (Score:1)
themes.org (Score:5, Informative)
Ive been most impressed by the 'other' WMs though, the little guys. Some of the Fluxbox or icewm 'minimalist' desktops are cool.
Also dont forget that you can do most of this stuff to XP as well, with a few hacks that is.
Re:themes.org (Score:3, Interesting)
My favourite, the one that I use at home, is XFce [xfce.org].
It's about as fast and small as fluxbox, but looks better and has a few features that I can't live without anymore (ie. switching between virtual desktops with the mouse wheel, from anywhere in the background.)
Re:themes.org (Score:3, Informative)
fluxbox does this too, actually.
Re:themes.org (Score:2)
I just wish the big guys (KDE, gnome) would get the hint...
Re:themes.org (Score:1)
Re:themes.org (Score:2, Informative)
Re:themes.org (Score:3, Informative)
It didn't on the versions I tried (pre-3.2).
You could switch virtual desktop with the mouse wheel, but only if the mouse pointer was over the virtual desktops in the toolbar.
Re:themes.org (Score:3, Interesting)
Both are perfectly usable, small, and almost without any runtime configuration. Still, those are my top-2 of window managers. If I did a top-3 list, then Ion [cs.tut.fi] would be the third I think.
Well if you want neat looking computers... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Well if you want neat looking computers... (Score:1)
Re:Wow! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wow! (Score:3, Insightful)
WindowMaker (Score:4, Interesting)
Windowmaker, while it mimics NestSTEP, is a GREAT WM. I've NEVER had so little trouble as when I've run WindowMaker.
I think that WindowMaker is at the opposite end of the spectrum of Win32 systems, it's a dock-based system with no integrated file manager or desktop. It's like OS X without Finder, it's just there to MANGE WINDOWS.
I personally use WindowMaker, Mozilla, rxvt, xmms, OpenOffice, and GAIM, that's all. All the tools I need besides that run in the rxvt terminal. I've got 7 virtual desktops:
one for 'communication'
two for browsing
two for 'projects'
one for a root shell
one for household finances
xmms is omnipresent, it's ij the background of all desktops. GAIM too when I feel social.
Re:WindowMaker (Score:1)
Re:WindowMaker (Score:2)
I'll list the obvious for you (Score:5, Interesting)
As far as looks go.
If you want funtionality differences some of the themes for KDE work (the B3 decoration in kde changes the way title bars look (only as wide as the title itself and can be dragged by holding shift. This allows for tabbing windows across the top). Then there is the button setting (I wish I knew what this was called, but I am at work and cannot check) where you can give it a marble theme. Or an SGI theme, or many others. It may be worth looking around for impressive Win and Mac clones, but the ones I have seen are obviously different even as a casual Mac user (I have spent 20 minutes on OSX and the aqua themes are lame) Most obvious difference is the buttons are on the right of the Window frame.
For serious functional differences scrap KDE and Gnome and go with some strait up window managers. I had one called WM2 that only allowed you to open Xterms (that you could launch apps from) and move windows and kill windows (no nice close of them, that was the apps job). Enlightenment is pretty cool. And quite unique. The one where you drage the clip around is popular, but I don't even know what it is. After step is kinda neat to look at, but probably shows it's age. Black Box (and probably Flux Box) can look really cool, but are minimalistic, and deffernt then windows and may work good.
Themes.org has Black/flux Box, KDE, and Gnome themes (if memmory serves) with screenshots. There are probably better theme sights with higher standards too (themes.org has some half done work).
Hope this helps.
PS.
just using standard KDE/GNOME with unique panel layout can be a good example.
I used to do an auto hide foot in the corner (for that really big one pixel start menu)with a clock always on top in the center bottum and a task bar somewhere I forget where, I switched to KDE and it wasn't flexible enough to do it for me. I was able to maximize my apps to fullscreen and the always on top stuff was stratigically placed to avoid key spots so it was not in the way. It adds about 5% to your usable screen.
PPS. The taskbar was across the top of the screen from 1/3 of the way (letting me see window titles) to about an inch and a half from the right edge (letting me use the frame buttuns if a window was maximized).
next to the clock I also had a few icon buttons and drawers for stuff I really liked.
Re:I'll list the obvious for you (Score:1)
Re:I'll list the obvious for you (Score:1)
if you want screenshots of what I mean I can send them to you.
It was an unedited semi stream of thought post, so you may have trouble picturing what I mean.
I will send the shots though if you want.
Remember when? (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Remember when? (Score:2, Funny)
look at different window managers (Score:5, Informative)
also look at 3dwm.org [3dwm.org] a 3d window manager that's used at the 3D-CUBE [chalmers.se]
another good one is the Mozilla based desktop over at OEONE.com [oeone.com]
Ion (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, I think it's kinda cool, anyway.
Re:Ion (Score:3, Interesting)
I liked Ratpoison too.
Still I'd try something that's really different... say a desktop that was actually a visually programmable shell with ways of connecting up objects representing command line tools like grep, and cat and loops and variables.. (don't care about 3d).
But for just getting work done, Ion or Ratpoison have simplified things for an old keyboard user like myself.
Re:Ion (Score:1)
I hope my manager never reads this or he might take away my PowerBook.
</offtopic>
Enlightenment v0.13 (Score:5, Interesting)
screenshot1 [swipnet.se]
screenshot2 [virtadpt.net]
screenshot3 [kleinplanet.de]
-metric
Re:Enlightenment v0.13 (Score:1)
Everything nowadays is so boring. When's the last time you have honestly seen an impressive looking desktop?
GNOME? Boring
KDE? Boring
Fluxbox? Windowmaker? XFCE? Boring, boring, boring.
I, for one, am still looking forward to E17, after all this time.
GNOME going in the direction of being totally based on M$
Re:Enlightenment v0.13 (Score:4, Insightful)
$ ps ax | grep kde
. . .
kdeinit: Running...
kdeinit: dcopserver --nosid
kdeinit: klauncher
kdeinit: kded
kdeinit: knotify
kdeinit: ksmserver
kdeinit: kwin
kdeinit: kdesktop
kdeinit: kicker
kdeinit: klipper
kdeinit: konsole --ls
kdeinit: kmix -caption KMix -icon kmix -miniicon kmix
kdeinit: konsole --ls
kdeinit: konqueror --silent
I miss how simple and smooth E ran, even on older, slower systems. The only thing that has impressed me with the desktop in the last couple of years is the addition of tabs to the webbrowsers and Konsole.
Anyone remember when Netscape was the only GUI webbrowser. And it was also the buggiest thing on the system?
Re:Enlightenment v0.13 (Score:2, Insightful)
That little bar to the left with the top 5 downloaded themes was about the biggest motivating factor I've ever had for a project. Just having your theme up there for a few days felt really good.... somebody actually used your theme!
Does this exist anymore? Why isn't there, say, a comparable GNOME themeing community? Alot of the E nerds went to GNOME after E17 faile
Re:Enlightenment v0.13 (Score:1)
Re:Enlightenment v0.13 (Score:1)
I've never cared for the "panel" concept all that much, and at the risk of being modded into oblivion, I've always thought the KDE panel looked "Fisher Price". Gnome is a little more refined looking, but it's still a panel.
Enlightenment may not be the most most resource efficient or feature-laden of all environments/managers, but it seems to strike a pretty good good balance to me.
Here's one of mine... (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's one of mine [lib.oh.us], which demonstrates an unusual accessibility requirement (the soft tertiary colors -- my eyes are unusally sensitive to light; I CANNOT handle Evil Blinding Backgrounds or high contrast). It also demonstrates the left side panel full of launchers, drawers, and applets that I've grown to love. The only things on the bottom panel are the task list and the clock. If it matters, this is a Mandrake 9.2 system with Gnome (but I replaced Metacity with Sawfish (because I want features, darnit) and replaced Nautilus with nothing (because I do all my file management from the command line)). The top drawer (with the drawer icon) holds the foot menu and launchers for assorted utilities and configuration things. The next drawer down, the one with the gnome-terminal icon, holds launchers for gnome-terminal (with various terminal classes and commands -- e.g., one for MySQL, one that does ssh into the cgi server, one that does ssh into the router, and so on). The drawer below that holds launchers for browsers. Then you've got three launchers right on the panel because I use them a lot: OO, Gimp, Emacs. Below the blank space is the screenshot button, the run button, a drawer of audio stuff, a drawer of games, the show desktop button (which really I ought to remove; I never use it), the CPU, memory, and swap meters, and the log out button at the bottom, out of the way. (Does anyone else think the Gnome1 logout icon looked nicer, or is that just me?)
That Mozilla window has been open for some while; the first two tabs in particular have been open for a couple of weeks. This is typical.
One of the Emacs windows has eshell, which is running a telnet connection to the im2 multiplexer for the Perlmonks.org chatterbox. Another is Gnus. The third has open the Changes file for Net::Server::POP3, which is what I really ought to be working on instead of posting to slashdot.
Be sure to get a screenshot showing gdmflexiserver running with the Xnest option. That's a really cool feature. For bonus points, have a different desktop environment running inside the Xnest window than the one running outside it. Also try to get a shot from someone who uses ratpoison; there's no window manager more minimalist than that, especially when it comes to window decorations. Be certain to show off several interesting panel applets, especially if you can get one running in a tiny always-on-top panel. Get one showing something really cool being worked on in Gimp, too. And be sure to get an Enlightenment screenshot showing that weird dragbar thing about halfway up/down the screen. I don't personally like that, but it's innovative and different, and some people swear by it.
Re:Here's one of mine... (Score:1)
> get unusually sensitive eyes, as well as some serious other accessibility
> requirements, primarily in the mental area....
Yeah, none of my coworkers like it either. "Why don't you use some more
interesting colors?" "Like what", I ask. "Oh, I don't know, white?"
I seriously don't understand the obsession that the rest of the world has
with color settings that make you go snowblind in two minutes flat. I know,
lots and lots
Re:Here's one of mine... (Score:1)
eyes for a couple of minutes every little bit, and after a five hour shift
I need to lay down in a dark room with my eyes closed and sleep off a
headache.
You mean, like
I run FVWM 1.24 (Score:5, Interesting)
My friends think I'm nuts but I really like it. If I need a readable terminal with 800 columns, no problem, I can just scroll over to the next desktop area while resizing the window. I have a button for raise/lower the current window right where the old windoze icon on my keyboard used to be. I can use the mouse wheel to change the volume on xmms by catching M4 and M5 buttons (i.e. the scroll wheel events) on the root window, which is very handy for headphones and downloaded MP3s.
It's about the most customizable thing ever written, and it's all in about 900K of pure Xlib, so I just compile it and run it anywhere I go.
If you want, I can send you some screenshots, just reply. I figure it's about as weird a GUI as you'll see.
Re:I run FVWM 1.24 (Score:2)
I used fvwm on Solaris/SPARC boxes back in the day when the CDE Openwindows combination was, by comparison, slow and memory intensive. The keyboard accelerator combinations for things like "verti-zoom" and lockscreen helped to increase my productivity.
Another window manager that I used for a year or two was ctwm. It was quite configurable, but not as memory lean as fvwm.
I live on a heterogeneous LAN. One thing that was nice was "xon remote_sgi_box xterm", etc. and building up a collection of terminal win
Re:I run FVWM 1.24 (Score:1)
This can be done more simply, and in any wm, by using xmms-itouch [saunalahti.fi].
careful (Score:5, Insightful)
I would be really careful about this. While the power of choice is attractive to geeks, it more often than not puts normal people off. I think that you stand to lose more converts than you gain by putting up extreme Linux desktops--normal people react with "this is a much too complicated thing for me", rather than "oh cool! I want to twiddle with my machine too!"
For proof, look no farther than how many Windows users have changed the default background on their machine.
Re:careful (Score:5, Insightful)
Where the heck did you get that factoid? From the Encyclopedia Slashdotica? It's clearly false. While some people abhor choice, the vast majority want it.
Go into MacDonalds and find twenty different kinds of hamburgers, plus chicken and fish sandwiches. Odds are they'll have a specialty sandwich for the month. A far far cry from the John Belushi "cheeseburger cheeseburger pespi" world. Restaurants have dozens of selections. Even those that cater to the non-geek.
Grocery store commercials advertise new larger selections. Automobile commercials advertise new makes, models and a huge range of colors and options. Ditto for just about any other kind of store I can think of. "LiquorMegaSuperMart! Now with three hundred of your favorite microbrews!"
"But," I hear you say, "it's different when it comes to computers!" Nonsense. I walk around my work and I see that at least nine out of ten Windows users have their own wallpaper.
Re:careful (Score:1)
As the system administrator, you're correct. But that still doesn't imply that the user abhors choice. (and of course, "change" is a far different thing that "choice")
yeah? (Score:1)
Also My GF raised apoint about windows: it tells you what to do ("click here to begin") and how to do it. It doesn't really matter where you want to go today; if Micro$oft will tell you then, they just did you a serve: you don't have to figure it out yourself
Re:careful (Score:1)
Every one of these changes makes worki
Re:careful (Score:3, Interesting)
Go into MacDonalds and find twenty different kinds of hamburgers, plus chicken and fish sandwiches. Odds are they'll have a specialty sandwich for the month. A far far cry from the John Belushi "cheeseburger cheeseburger pespi" world. Restaurants have dozens of selections. Even those that cater to the non-geek.
Interesting that you would choose McDonald's as an example. I don't have the reference right now, but McDonald's actually found that peopl
Re:careful (Score:2)
Re:careful (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know how wide spread this is outside Europe, but take cellphones for example.
They used to be just plain black og grey. You could switch between a couple of ringing tones, and the networks had the ability to change the logo on the screen, in order to tell you what network you were currently using.
OK, in under a year, a whole industry blossomed. Personalized covers in all kinds of colors, services where you could download new background images, new ringing tones. Now, the
Re:careful (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe they do, maybe they don't. They can do as they please with their own toys and gadgets. But ask anyone who's ever supported anything, whether answering the phone at the helpdesk or writing code that relies on certain other code being present, and they'll tell you allowing the end user the ability personalize anything more than strictly necessary is a recipe for disaster.
A desktop PC for most people is a work tool, nothing more, nothing less. The
not sure if this is unusual (Score:5, Interesting)
That's the desktop. Nothing else but a web surfing station. Kinda like a browser terminal. This allows me to have a device with only 64 Megs of RAM and run a web browser that I can check email and my favorit sites. It allows for useing plugins and viewing video in the browser window. Oh when opera starts hit F11 key and it will go to full screen mode. I see this as the future of desktops. Simple to use.
Re:not sure if this is unusual (Score:3, Informative)
Opera uses an MDI (multiple document interface). All of the browser windows (i.e. tabs in Moz or Konq.. at one time, when Opera was the only one with tabbed browsing it just referred to them as "windows".. the terminology changed slightly later when the other browsers came along) are contained within the main Opera window. Opera manages these all itself, so you can just run Opera without a w
Re:not sure if this is unusual (Score:3, Interesting)
Now if I can only get my wireless card working under Linux, it
Creative interfaces (Score:2)
The original design [deviantart.com]
My take on it [deviantart.com]
The one in my dashboard... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The one in my dashboard... (Score:2, Interesting)
either you've a funny sense of humor or you've been hacked(cracked?).
kdelook (Score:2)
Me, I'm still waiting for a kde theme that puts my title bar on the right hand side of the window vertically.
Confess, you didn't intend a desktop contest... (Score:2)
Devices not desktops (Score:3, Insightful)
...in all Tivos
...in robotics
...various network appliances
...on mainframes
...in cell phones
...on PDAs
...in wristwatches (though a protype)
...and in and in a variety of other gadgets and practical devices [linuxdevices.com]
In addition, point out that even creative types like Linux as it has been used to produce most of the major films over the last few years -- from the raw horsepower of render farms through to the artist's desktop.
Just some ideas. (Check each one out before claiming it, though I think all the above is accurate.)
LCARS (Score:2)
Re:LCARS (Score:1)
Superkaramba / gDesklets (Score:2)
can really change the look of a desktop. There are lots of unusual panel and taskbar replacements, clocks, etc.
Also check out KDE-Look [kde-look.org]'s screenshots section which is filled with unusual desktops.
<plug>
Finally, there is kleardock [sf.net] a nice dock and kicker replacement for KDE.
</plug>
50's radio (Score:1)
you mean that you have not downloaded FRLinux, the port designed to run on 50's radios.... Aw man, you are so behind the times.
FVWM (Score:2)
There is a collection of desktop screenshots [fvwm.org] at fvwm.org.
I would suggest taking a close look at Tavis Ormandy's Desktop [fvwm.org] which has translucency (due to a patch to the 2.5 source) and thumbnails for icons.
Also: Google is your friend. Try 'linux desktop screenshot' or '$WINDOWMANAGER screenshot', where $WINDOWMANAGER = 'kde', 'gnome', 'fvwm', 'openbox', 'xfce', 'sawfish', 'twm', 'ratpoison', 'ion', 'windowmaker', etc.
My screenshot (Score:1)
Re:My screenshot (Score:1)
Re:My screenshot (Score:1)
Looking glass for a 3D deskop (Score:1)
Awsome...