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Nice, very clean. Xmonad intrigues me; I just haven't gotten around to messing with it.

How did you set up xmobar to show progress bars? Would it be possible to share your configuration files?

I've uploaded everything here:

http://www.minimalblue.com/projects/index.html#dotfiles

:)

Awesome! Thanks for this. It's nice to know there are other xmonad fans out there.

What about: take any default look (with the exception when on Windows of the Luna generation, I never got used to the Fisher Price style; "classic" on those), tone down any remotely vivid colours (neutral grey "wallpaper" for example), and... turn off desktop icons :>

I used to use 9wm, now that was minimalistic ;-)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/23667510@N03/6105463431/in/photostream

From my fully-text-oriented era. I used 9wm, 9wmmenu, Mutt, aterm, links and nvi on Debian stable.

Edited 2011-09-02 12:08 UTC

Why you no seed? Sad monkey =(

Looks like 0 seeds on the torrent, indicating that it's almost dead and there's no one else to upload to. Could also be that his uploads are counted to his data cap by his ISP. I'm in the same boat: I can only afford to keep a ratio of 1.2.

That's beautiful. I've duly noted your setup!

Dave

Well! Actually your Windows 7 desktop looks better because of a blue-green clean wallpaper and without any icons! It is looking better than arch desktop I like it!

Edited 2011-09-02 09:24 UTC

Interesting. I spend most of my time in Arch as I'm just more comfortable there; I feel that I have a fine-grained control of the OS and I'm much more familiar with what's going on at any given moment. Windows exists on my laptop for the purposes of rooting my older Android phone (there's some irony!) and playing a few Windows-only games that don't work well under Wine. That's why it's so Spartan.

I use LibreOffice instead of MS Office -- I actually prefer its interface to the modern Office versions -- and various other free and open source packages in Windows. In fact, Windows itself and a couple of games are the only commercial components of my Windows installation.

I've been considering a regression back to Windows XP and saving my Windows 7 license for the next desktop I build. It would probably be more compatible with my older games anyway (Thief series, Star Trek Armada, etc).

Very nice wallpapers!

Nobody cares, dude.

I tarted my desktop up with Casey Stoner taking a corner at Indy and my Win7 VM.

http://img835.imageshack.us/img835/6268/screenshot0901201107035.png

Nothing wrong with CDE mode! It's one of the nice things about Xfce.

Nothing wrong at all. I just don't think it's commonly used.

I think CDE mode is a more efficient use of the desktop, and it kind of makes me feel like I'm using one of those old Unix workstations I used to lust after. If I could find a modern pizza box case, I would be a very happy nerd.

Does anyone have any tips on how to set up "CDE Mode" on XFCE? I understand that before version 4, CDE mode was pretty much all there was, but that this has changed.

It's pretty much a neglected use case in Xfce, now. You can't really recreate the CDE/Xfce 1&2 panel any more, the 'minimise to desktop' implementation is pretty spartan. The above examples are about as close as you can get.

Always loved CDE, +1 from me.

Excellent, I wasn't even aware that OpenCDE existed. Cheers.

Hey, didn't even know there was an OpenCDE.
Will give it a try over the weekend, thanks for the tip!

I knew about an effort to open the original CDE source code:

http://www.petitiononline.com/opencde/petition.html

but hey!, didn't know anything about your project.
Thanks for sharing!

Awesome! Brings me back to OpenVMS running Motif days...

Wow, awesomeWM looks...awesome. I might have to try that!

Another one using the Awesome Tiling WM:

http://i.imgur.com/qN92e.jpg

The background shows the High Tatra mountains, in the middle the current unix timestamp is spelt out in japanese, showing the "time"

OS: Ubuntu linux
Window manager: Awesome
terminal: Sakura
browser: Opera
quick-launch: Synapse

Nice! Ha! It always surprises me to see people coding in LISP... (I have no problem with the language at all, I like it ... but I also like Ada and it surprises me when people use that as well).

Love love love Toshiba's old Portege's. I had a 3110CT myself until it died a few years ago. Loved it.

yes! They are fantastic laptops. exceedingly well built. The 3110ct is still amazingly thin. I've had mine for pushing 7 years now. One of the best laptops I've ever owned.

Nice to see "links -g" in action!

If someone would add tabs from elinks to it, it would be the perfect lightweight browser :p I seriously adore it.

Wow! That's awesome!

Wow! I'm amazed that such a tight configuration is still functional in these times when software is so overweight.

I'm impressed. How functional is Android w/o a touchscreen?

Nice; probably the only Windows desktop that's ever impressed me (because of how similar they all look, I guess). I had no idea it was so customisable (you're using third party stuff to do it?).

He said it's quad-boot. That's four different OSes, not four different Windows skins.

I was talking about the first screenshot. In 'how similar they all look', I was referring to other Windows desktops.

In that case, I officially don't get it. The 3rd party quick launcher replacement seems to be the only real modification (replacing the VS isn't exactly exceptional).

Well, I'm afraid I've never seen Windows look something other than stock before. Granted, I don't really spend much time looking for ways to customise the appearance of an OS I hardly ever use, or looking for screenshot's of people's Windows desktops.

Whether it's common or not, I like it (the cleanliness), and it surprised me initially.

FYI, if you're still wondering how to get the scrollwheel to sloppy focus correctly, check out Wizmouse or Katmouse. The reason it doesn't sloppy focus by default on Windows (even when you enable focus follows mouse) is due to conflicts with a few legacy apps.

I use sloppy on linux but I find it unpleasant on Windows. Know of any way to control the auto-raise delay?

To control x-mouse features in Windows, under the key
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]

is a value "UserPreferencesMask"
the first hex value, add 41h to the first value for focus follows mouse + auto-raise, or, add 01h to the first value for focus follows mouse without auto-raise (which is what I have it set to)

For example, the value for my key was "9E 3E 07 80 12 00 00 00"
I edited it to "9F 3E 07 80 12 00 00 00" to get "focus follows mouse"
If I had wanted full X-Mouse, I'd have edited it to "D9 3E 07 80 12 00 00 00"

To control the delay, set "ActiveWndTrkTimeout" (in the same key to the decimal value you want in milliseconds (i.e. setting it to 333 is 333ms, or, 1/3 of a second)

You can turn on the focus follows mouse feature via the accessibility control panel (I believe), but auto-raise is activated as well. Editing the registry by hand is the only way to get sloppy focus without auto-raise.

Edited 2011-09-02 10:50 UTC

Okay, try this: open an application with 2 or > panes, manually focus one, then try to scroll in the other.

If it works, congrats; you've probably already got the thinkpad/synaptics software installed. If it doesn't, check out Wiz/Katmouse. Wizmouse works better in Vista/7.

Granted, focus within an application isn't affected, but I only use one app that it actually matters to me (the wonderful Total Commander). It'd be nice if the left or right panes activated based on where the cursor was without me having to click, but since that is the only app I use that it matters, I'm not worried about it. I'd rather make accommodations for one app manually than install one that might affect such behavior.

I'll note that the KDE apps I use on a regular basis also don't respect sloppy focus within the app (or, if they do, I haven't noticed).

Boring? Not at all. It looks good.

What's the name of the explorer toolbar hack? Styler Toolbar?

Yes, it's Styler Toolbar.

Luna Inspirat is the name of the theme. I got it here:
http://krosavcheg.deviantart.com/art/Luna-Inspirat-102972534

No syntax highlighting for C diffs?

Or does OpenBSD only have a monochrome video driver for your hardware? (i'm kidding ). It's very austere, i like the style and i'm sure the contrast is helpful. But you really could consider syntax highlighting

I don't like or want syntax highlighting, I had the diff open in nvi.

ATI Radeon Mobility HD 4250 is used by the chipset, it works fine on OpenBSD with the newer ati DDX..

2D EXA/Xv and r600+ DRI/OpenGL all work fine.

You win

I must ask: Do you enjoy the ultra-widescreen 1366x768 resolution, or does it annoy you? I'm still getting used to my D620's 1280x800, which is less extreme than what you have. My last laptop was an Apple PowerBook G3, with a 1024x768 res. I miss my vertical pixels, especially in the console.

It's also annoying on Windows 7 with that fat toolbar (I know I can shrink it but I like the default look, very KDE 3.x).

That's the native resolution of the panel, or what the DDC returns for it.

Most of the portable systems I've owned in the past had terrible LCD screens, this being one of my first "newer" systems left me fairly impressed. Easy on the eyes, text is clear and colours vibrant.

By comparison I have a LCD TV connected over VGA on another system with a native resolution of 1360x768, and it is visibly harder on the eyes.

I figured it was the native resolution, just as 1280x800 is on mine. My question was more about whether the extreme horizontal vs narrow vertical space was a problem for you. Personally I prefer a 5:4 ratio, as in my 1280x1024 desktop LCD, and I'm trying to get used to the laptop. It's the same width as the desktop but I'm losing a lot of vertical space.

I know that 224 pixels may not seem like much, but it's enough to make me consider moving my Windows 7 taskbar to the side, and configuring Xfce in a similar layout. In fact, I'd say the only thing better about the laptop's widescreen is that movies are just barely letterboxed.

I will also say that my desktop has a much more vibrant and natural picture, and obviously has a much higher color bit depth than the laptop. There is some noticeable dithering on the laptop's screen that makes me think it's a cheap 18-bit unit. I doubt I'll be able to find a 24-bit replacement panel for it, or if I did, that it would be worth the cost on this already four year old machine.

Ohh, so close to my old desktop.

See my other comment:
http://www.osnews.com/thread?488139

I have a background and when a window is in the background it does grey text instead of white text.

Although the screenshot is older.

Strangely enough, I'm on GNOME 2 now. Still using aterm.

I'm thinking maybe I want to try GNOME 3, but I probably need to write some extensions to make it useful to me.

Edited 2011-09-02 12:21 UTC

I forgot to mention in my original post, but I'm running cwm in OpenBSD base along with xterm, xbattbar, xbiff and xclock.

Nice wallpaper.

Oh and my Win7 host w/ Capriccio VS and ClassicShell:

http://ompldr.org/vYTV3Zw/win7.jpg

Thanks for the ClassicShell mention, looks nice, I will try it out.

Would You mind sharing them?

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=CARAT9XO

The wm_y/x scripts control placement, the w/h scripts control size. The scripts ending with _cu are cumulative ie. they grok the current window placement/size and add/subtract from it.

Argument syntax is simply wm_*.sh number number, where the first number is the divisor (ie. divide screen axis in to X many pieces) and the second is the multiplier (ie. place/resize window to X many of those pieces). The _cu scripts accept negative values for the multiplier.
Example args:
wm_x_cu.sh 20 -1 #move window 1/20th of the screen left
wm_w.sh 10 2 #make window width 2/10ths of screen width

You'll have to modify the scripts a bit, yourself, as the screen resolution, panel width and window border variables aren't dynamic and are currently set for my 1920x1080 screen with 2*20px panels and 19*2*2*2 window borders. I could have used xrandr to at least get the current screen res but I was using a pretty old rig when I wrote the scripts and was afraid of latency. So, yeah, if your windows are overlapping, or slowly wandering up/down inappropriately, it's probably because those variables aren't set correctly.

IIRC, I haven't written the scripts in such a way that they'll work with non-whole numbers. If you try to divide your 1024 screen by something like 7, it probably won't work. Also, for the cumulative scripts, the sleep period between moving/resizing and re-focussing the window is only necessary if you use sloppy focus and might need to be adjusted, depending upon how responsive your window manager is. I find that timing works fine in compiz but not in Xfwm. I also don't indent any of my code so... sorry.

My shortcuts are as follows, in case you're wondering:

Shift+Win+WASD for the cumulative move scripts. Ctrl+Win+WASD for the cumulative resize scripts.
Shift/Ctrl+Alt+QWERTASDFG for the x/w scripts.
Shift/Ctrl+Alt+ZXCVB for the y/h scripts.

Thanks You very much, I will look at them asap

Thanks for sharing your scripts.

I'm thinking to switch from Gnome to XFCE and I like a lot the look of your desktop.

Would you mind sharing your wallpaper from this one: http://ompldr.org/vYTV3ZQ/clean.jpg

Thanks

http://wallbase.cc/wallpaper/1167028

Not pretty, kidding me? Simple, elegant, sleek, and as you mention it easy on the eyes. Love it!

No shit! The tiling makes your "dirty" desktop look so clean. I wish I had that. It's a shame I can't seem to know how to use Linux on a daily basis and stand it.

You're my favourite so far :-)

How do you manage to have 5 screens?

Hey, another person who does Favicon bookmarks on the bar! I've been teased by a couple of friends for that, but I'm a very visual person so it works well for me. Combined with Firefox Sync it makes for a no-hassle bookmarking setup.

Yes, same here, my eyes automatically zoom in on any graphical representation and recognize it long before my slow brain finishes processing text so for me it's much faster to find my way with favicons.

Olwm/Olvwm, the window manager for OpenWindows, is still available in some Linux distributions as well as in the ports/pkgsrc for various BSDs. Some quick searching revealed the following, so it's still out there:

ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/pkgsrc/current/pkgsrc/wm/olvwm/README.htm...
http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/olvwm
http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/olwm

Also, on Google, I saw, but didn't track down, hints that OpenBSD and FreeBSD have it too, and even possibly Ubuntu, which makes sense as Debian has it.

If you're looking for more than just the window manager, I'm not sure if one could also find the utilities (or replacements) that went along with the wm in Sun's Open Windows desktop, though XVfilemanager does exist: http://step.polymtl.ca/~coyote/xvfilemgr_main.html

See http://xwinman.org/olvwm.php for a link to a tarball with icons, menus specs, etc. to jazz up olvwm.

Edited to add comma in first line.

Edited 2011-09-02 18:13 UTC

What's the name of the tiling extension for FireFox?

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tile-view/

What tile you are currently "in" is a little bit too discrete IMHO so sometimes I open stuff in the wrong one but generally it works well.

I spend 90% of my time using apps and 10% figuring out how better to use apps. Believe it or not, you can improve upon default workflows dramatically.

At my full time job it's a shared terminal so I can't customize it at all, however the screen is a maximised browser interface full time so there's actually no need for it. At my part time job I'm stuck using WinXP for bench testing purposes, but the machine is more or less mine to customize to my heart's content. Oddly enough, I haven't done much other than dropping to classic desktop mode (Win98/2000-ish) and putting up a nice backdrop. I'm not tied to my desk at the part-time, as I'm the only IT support staff and I'm always on the move during the work day.

On my personal machines, especially the laptop, I find that the time spent customizing in my off hours greatly improves my morale sitting in front of the machine for long periods of time. I do most of my side work on the laptop, and that consists of mostly web design and development, and the occasional VNC support session. I do all of that from Arch, as I am most comfortable working in that environment. Having a low-eyestrain theme and a logical window arrangement with good keyboard shortcuts makes my workflow quite fluid. The Windows 7 side is pretty much all entertainment, so it is appropriately Spartan.

It looks like the link is not working anymore:

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6184/6108288223_b8b8300419_b.jpg

You are not alone
I'm still using it in an old computer running Linux 2.4.

http://i.imgur.com/7kiZL.jpg

that shot was taken some years ago though.

http://ompldr.org/vOXp0cg

Edited 2011-09-02 13:09 UTC

Excellent. One thing I miss with Win7 is having bb4w work correctly.

Thanks for posting the wallpaper, I am so stealing that!

(god that sounded like a Facebook post...sorry)

I also have my window borders set to a size of 1. No fat there.

Also, I keep the apps I use most often on my explorer bar...

In order:

Console2 (starting PowerShell)
Postbox
Explorer
IE 9
A script for building/compiling our company website
A script to start JBOSS

I am in flux with editors right now. I have used UltraEdit forever, but am liking Sublime and have E installed as well. UltraEdit will probably win in the end, but I love some of the simple but useful features of Sublime and E, like multi-select/edit.

Other apps I regularly use would be BeyondCompare, TortoiseSVN, FileZilla, RDC, and Putty.

Edited 2011-09-02 16:32 UTC

"Bad command or filename."

(You forgot the greater-than sign at the end.) :-)

Nice!

Reminds me, I better go see what's new with freedos.

#

Can you post your conky config?

The low RAM/CPU usage is a side effect, although a welcome one when I'm doing Java programming for my university courses or running multiple VMs with GUIs. I just like that I can open a bunch of windows on a given virtual desktop, and they'll automatically arrange themselves well, optimizing screen space. It's very keyboard-oriented, to the point where I can completely shut off my touchpad and nub-mouse and still be completely productive.

TBH I find it pretty mental as well. Don't get me wrong I like a nice responsive system ... but these days even Win7 tricked out runs pretty well on a £250 desktop.

I have some older systems (SGI Indy, Sun Blade 100) and even those can run KDE 3.5 with OpenBSD perfectly fine ... not too much lag.

I think it is more of a hobby trying to configure the environments themselves than anything else. It is a bit involved.

Edited 2011-09-02 18:41 UTC

I'm actually a lot more productive with Window Maker than with anything else. In the past I've run XFCE, KDE (1.1.2 on Mandrake all the way to 4.2), maybe others, but I'm always more productive in Window Maker. The reason behind it is that I always know exactly where to look for everything I need, no matter how many monitors I have (far right is the dock, second block down is the date/time, below that is Docker, below that is the screen locker, no surprises). When I gave XFCE a shot a couple months ago, I gave it up after a couple hours because it just doesn't work for me on dual-head, while WM is still perfect.

You do realize that there are other reasons for using xmonad, openbox etc than resource usage, right?
Personally I find it more funny when people with quadcore and heaps of ram overlock and watercool their systems "to make them faster".

Indeed, I have a Core i5, 4gb ram but I use Openbox because I find it fast and comfortable and would use it even if it was heavier on resources.

That said it's certainly not a bad thing when the system does all you want of it and is also very lean, as it means you have alot or ram available to that which you really boot into the system for: applications. (and I regularly use alot of memory hungry apps)

My Arch 64-bit system uses 129mb ram when fully booted into x, that's less than XP used on this machine and that was 32-bit (64-bit code is ~30% larger).

In short, I find it doubtful that with the hardware standards of today people are using lean window managers because of resource usage, but the small memory footprint is still a nice side-effect.

Running my i7 930 at the default 2.93ghz and running it at 3.21ghz is the difference between having to close my *nix VM before emulating the PS2/GCN and not having to close my VM before emulating the PS2/GCN.

It's not that ridiculous, it's not as if web browsing and email are the only use case.

I find it funny when people make statements like "there is all that cool XYZ, why would anyone use ABC", as if all that flamewars passed by in a far far far away galaxy...

Really nice. But the nicest thing is that you are using the latest version of Amiga OS.

Awesome wallpaper!

How come your taskbar doesn't look like a standard Win7 taskbar? Is it themed?

Wish they had xstatbar for Linux

Cwm rocks, btw. I'm back on EvilWM for floating duty on the netbook nowadays (ScrotWM for tiling), but here's a Cwm shot from a few months ago.

http://ompldr.org/vN2RpZg

I read it.