http://www.osnews.com/story/17859/Ion3_RC1_Released Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:01:46 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread?237755 http://osnews.com/thread?237755 I love this little wm. Sun, 06 May 2007 18:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (pllb) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?237771 http://osnews.com/thread?237771 There was some discussion about a week ago on the misc@openbsd.org mailing lists where the decision of the developer to change the license to Ion may result in it being removed from the OpenBSD ports tree. I don't know the details, but if this is true, I wonder if it will result in problems with other OS's?

License change notice:
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.window-managers.ion.general/770...

OpenBSD thread:
http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/openbsd/2007-04/2159.html Sun, 06 May 2007 19:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jackson) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?237794 http://osnews.com/thread?237794 Let me get this straight: The author wants the name of the WM to refer to his codebase with no additions like Ion3v462007. And any off shoots are either not to use the name or to clearly spell out they are not Ion3. Okay, seems OK. A little annoying but fair since its his name.

Where the crunch comes in is in when somebody does a patch that changes Ion3 in a significant way. You need the approval of the author to do this since, in this theory, makes it not purely Ion3. This seems to take things a bit far and this is what OpenBSD is adjecting to. Sun, 06 May 2007 21:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (zizban) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?237809 http://osnews.com/thread?237809 I laid my ion it. Sun, 06 May 2007 23:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (hhcv) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?237817 http://osnews.com/thread?237817 I like Ion, and I use my keyboard a lot (hooray, Quicksilver!). That being said, here's a little something from the Ion manifesto:

"So-called 'modern desktop environments' converge on total unusability ... "

Somehow, I managed to point and click my way to posting that. Mon, 07 May 2007 00:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (paperfrog) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?237818 http://osnews.com/thread?237818 So it's IceWeasel all over again? Mon, 07 May 2007 00:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Michael) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?237821 http://osnews.com/thread?237821 I think he means, and I could be wrong, that its not the GUI that's bad, its the way they're done in some window managers. Obviously, he doesn't think much of KDE, et al, and decided to try his own GUI. Mon, 07 May 2007 00:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (zizban) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?237829 http://osnews.com/thread?237829 ion3 is neat, but the author's blog is a bit over the top. :-) Mon, 07 May 2007 02:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (MobyTurbo) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?237838 http://osnews.com/thread?237838 "I like Ion, and I use my keyboard a lot (hooray, Quicksilver!)."

I tried Ion but came back to WindowMaker, it's because I use the keybpard a lot (IBM 1391403, Sun Type 6) and found that Ion misses some features I learned to need. :-)

But still, Ion is impressing fast, even on older machines. It looks professional and does not seem to have problems managing applications that use different toolkits - still looking professional. Mon, 07 May 2007 03:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Doc Pain) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?237916 http://osnews.com/thread?237916 Same behaviour from Tuomo was apparent on Arch Linux's mailing lists recently as well:

http://archlinux.org/pipermail/tur-users/2007-April/004634.html

It's almost as if he wanted everybody to ignore him and ion.Edited 2007-05-07 11:05 Mon, 07 May 2007 11:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (vegai) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?237918 http://osnews.com/thread?237918 Ion was a very important window manager insofar that it paved the way for other, simple wms, and more innovative layouts.

It is not that important in itself anymore, but it certainly will be remember as an important pioneer. Mon, 07 May 2007 11:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (vegai) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?237922 http://osnews.com/thread?237922 "Same behaviour from Tuomo was apparent on Arch Linux's mailing lists recently as well:"

Wow. Heh. What can you say? It's entertaining in some sick kind of way when people go out of their way to come across as total moronic jerks.
I think the best part was the "timely release" clause he was/is going to put in the license. Is your Ion package lagging? Watch out! Tuomo will legally threaten you!
Heh. Man. This totally made my day.

"It's almost as if he wanted everybody to ignore him and ion. "

I guess everyone does already and that's why he's so irrationally pissed off at FOSS. Mon, 07 May 2007 11:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Soulbender) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?237925 http://osnews.com/thread?237925 Fooled around with it in the past. Didn't have the time/motivation for Lua then. Your pun has motivated me. Thanks. Mon, 07 May 2007 11:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (smitty_one_each) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?237934 http://osnews.com/thread?237934 Nope.

Still don't understand what the heck a(n) "Ion3" is. Don't even know if it is "l" as a small "L" or "I" like a capital "i". Guess it's not for me. Sigh. Mon, 07 May 2007 13:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Network23) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?237944 http://osnews.com/thread?237944 So it's IceWeasel all over again?

Yep, it sure is:

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=422527#10 Mon, 07 May 2007 14:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jackson) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?237955 http://osnews.com/thread?237955 I laid my ion it.

Why the hell has this comment been modded up? This ain't Slashdot, bad puns should not generate good karma. Mon, 07 May 2007 14:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (openwookie) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?237986 http://osnews.com/thread?237986 So what are the names of these "new, even more innovative"?

I liked ION a lot, even though I dumped it as soon,
as I discovered that author will never add a hack that would make it interoperable with GIMP and Gnome applets... Mon, 07 May 2007 16:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (mgajda) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?238005 http://osnews.com/thread?238005 It's actually really simple to understand. Various distributions distribute ion3 packages with unsupported patches. When said ion3 package doesn't work, they go to Tuomo bitching about it.

He has made it exceedingly clear that he will not support patched versions of ion3, and yet the package maintainers continue to distribute these patched versions and make no mention of the fact that it is unsupported by the author. They also continue to distribute ancient versions of ion3 with the same consequence.

All the package maintainers had to do was mention the fact that their package was non-standard and unsupported. They refused to do so; you can't really blame Tuomo for being a tad bit irritated about it. Mon, 07 May 2007 17:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (rajj) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?238034 http://osnews.com/thread?238034 Did you even read the OpenBSD/Arch linux mailing lists?
This Tuomo guy made a total ass out of himself.
What a dick, no wonder his windowmanager is superseded by about 5 alternatives already. Mon, 07 May 2007 18:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jang) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?238050 http://osnews.com/thread?238050 If you like (or think you might like) ion, I recommend that you check out wmii/dwm:

http://www.suckless.org/wiki/wmii

It's way simpler and way better, and while the author might be arrogant, he isn't a jerk. Mon, 07 May 2007 19:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (schala) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?238304 http://osnews.com/thread?238304 Got it, tried it (writing from it now) and its very interesting. Its a completely get out of the way WM. No desktop, every app when open is full screen with a tab at the top. After only a couple of minutes the keyboard shortcuts start to seem like a quicker and simpler way to do things. Very very fast.

The desktop metaphor, overlapping windows, and then the need for multiple desktops to manage all the clutter, and the constant presence of the open file manager on the desktop whether you need it or not - well, its really a revelation to see how little all that stuff is actually needed and the extent to which it just gets in the way of seeing what you are doing.

I'm fond of fluxbox because its more minimal than the majors, but this takes less is more to a new level and could really grow on anyone who gives it a chance. Also, if you ever spend any time setting up 'appliances' - basically one app installations - this could be a perfect solution.

Very very interesting. Have to check out wmii now! Tue, 08 May 2007 10:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (alcibiades) Comments