Re: Lightweight desktops?

A Watcher <stocksami@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

On Nov 5, 11:58 am, Dan Espen <dan...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Dan C <youmustbejok...@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
On Mon, 05 Nov 2007 16:27:05 +0100, Robert Heller wrote:

A 'lightweight desktop' does lots less than Gnome and KDE. A lightweight
desktop generally means:

1) NO GUI file manager. You learn how to navigate the file
system with the shell from an xterm.
2) NO Heavyweight task / session manager. You lauch most
applications from the shell from an xterm.
3) NO 'Start' menu.
4) Little or no 'eye candy' (a very simple / sparse desktop). In
the extreme case it means no application launcher icons at all, just a
simple (usually text only) menu of very basic applications (web browser,
e-mail client, xterm, and a few odds and ends).

Basically, just a small step up from a pure console (no graphics at all)
setup.

I'd have to disagree with most of this, depending on how you define
"lightweight" desktop. Since the OP was referencing it to KDE/Gnome, I
would certainly include Xfce and Fluxbox in the category of "lightweight",
and they certainly do NOT meet any of the 4 conditions you specify above.
They have all of those features, and more.

Someone has to get the draw the line between "desktop" and "window manager".
I nominate Matt Chapman.

By his defintion, only Gnome, KDE, CDE, and XFCE qualify:

http://xwinman.org/

Personally, I have no use for desktops.


There are 2 main features that make desktops really handy for me.
First is the organized list of applications. Second is showing newly
mounted external devices as icons. Related to that is popping a
window to ask what to do with a newly attached usb or firewire device
or a CD or DVD in the optical drive. Maybe I'm just lazy.

No, I don't think you're lazy.
The world is not one size fits all.

As far as the organized list of applications,
fvwm2 contains some scripts that will generate those
from the kde, gnome or Mandriva configs. I still find them
not useful. I prefer to build my own menus that
contain the apps I use using the shortcut key that
I've assigned.

For the icons popping up with newly attached devices,
that mainly applies to my digital camera for me.
I've come to prefer a script I wrote. I just give it
the name of the directory I want to store the images in
and it copies all the images out of the camera and
deletes what's in the camera. In fact the last time
I used a GUI for the camera, I asked it to delete
what was in the camera and it moved all the images
to a folder called .Trash or something. Funny thing
was, the .Trash folder was still in the camera.

I must have had something configured wrong.
.

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