“A while ago Thomas Leonard wrote about Ubuntu integration and asked the question ‘Can we get rid of ROX-Session?’. This inspired me to attempt to replace it with the Xfce session manager and it turns out that it is both easy to do and works very well.”
Xfce and ROX had the possibility of being properly integrated. If this has happened maybe xfce4.4.1 would possibly be a better desktop today, but I suspect XFCE have grown beyond ROX now. When I started using Xfce the desktop file manager was so poor you had to use ROX file manager. ROX’s file manager is still the best file manager I have *ever* used, but Thunar xfce4’s file manger simply fits better. XFCE is pretty good at mixing and matching desktop elements from outside the base desktop, but it has grown into a full blown desktop. The only thing that I can think of as missing are “lasso selection on the desktop” and “use of Xorg menu specification”. So why bother?
I think it’s sort of an example for anyone who wants to integrate rox filer into their session, be it xfce or not
“So why bother?”
If you had read both mine and Thomas article you’d have known why and who it’s for.
I did read both articles, and again I’m lost as who its for and why. The closest thing I saw was the xfce is better on old computers. I don’t even think that is true. The advantage of XFCE is it gives you everything you need, and nothing you don’t, and it does use less memory, but seriously http://www.xubuntu.org/ and again rox/xfce integration why bother.
Funny you should mention Xubuntu, it is a good example of why.
Lets you want to run (X)ubuntu for the nice extras (network-manager, updates etc) but you prefer ROX to Xfce. While you could use ROX-Session for this you would lose a lot of the integration work that has been done and you’d have to set autostart up manually for a lot of things etc.
By using xfce-session instead of ROX-Session you can take advantage of the integration work that Xubuntu has done while still using the ROX Desktop.
Of course, if you like Xfce better then this means nothing to you and is not likely to change your mind but then you’re not the intended target for this article anyway.
Edited 2007-05-17 09:56
IMO using ROX-destop and its baggage along with XFCE and its baggage is sort of pointless.
If anything grab sawfish and rox desktop or something…
I guess I am not the intended audience, not sure who is though.
“IMO using ROX-destop and its baggage along with XFCE and its baggage is sort of pointless. ”
The ROX desktop doesnt really have a lot of baggage and the only components of Xfce you really need is xfce-session and xfwm4.
“If anything grab sawfish and rox desktop or something…”
Or OroborROX and ROX-Session. However, the entire point of this exercise was to NOT use ROX-Session.
“I guess I am not the intended audience, not sure who is though.
”
Obviously people who use the ROX desktop and is interested in it’s integration with existing systems.
I really didnt expect this to be linked from Osnews though since it’s a pretty niche topic.
I don’t understand what this is about? If I want to use rox-filer then I simply install rox-filer. No rox-session involved….????
I like ROX-filer but I find that I like other file managers better.
Well, yes, the whole point is that ROX can be more than “just” a file manager :-).
My guess is that the ROX team should make their attempt at integration with <something>. I have tried ROX Filer myself a few months ago, and, while I did appreciate the Risc OS “part” of it, it could be fairly more successful (and, I guess, have an even better usability) if it could be painlessly integrated with a desktop suite like XFCE.
So is ROX – all by itself – really a complete desktop? I was going to try rox on my debian box, but I could only find rox-filer. I tried installing that, but it didn’t get me anything except the filer.
Debian don’t package most of ROX, but it doesn’t matter because you can get it all through Zero Install anyway:
http://rox.sourceforge.net/desktop/ROX-All
As for being a “complete” desktop, it depends what you mean. The goal is to get the desktop you want, not avoid GNOME and Xfce components on some kind of religious basis.
Free software is about being able to mix-and-match components. The Free licenses provide the legal system for this; what we need now is the architecture to make it technically possible.
And it looks like we’re getting pretty close, thanks to the common standards coming out of freedesktop.org and similar groups.
Just as you should be able to install any program on any distribution (http://0install.net etc), you should be able to run any desktop application with any session manager. It’s just good architecture.
>>As for being a “complete” desktop, it depends what you mean.<<
I’m not sure how to be more clear. If I install icewm, or xfce, then I have a WM. I don’t need to install anything else (except x11) to run the gui. Is ROX like that? Or is ROX something that runs on top of another WM?
>>The goal is to get the desktop you want, not avoid GNOME and Xfce components on some kind of religious basis.<<
I’m not trying to “religious” about it. I’m just trying to understand what ROX is.
I’m not sure how to be more clear. If I install icewm, or xfce, then I have a WM. I don’t need to install anything else (except x11) to run the gui.
Well, Xfce depends on GTK, for example. So I’m not sure what you mean by it not needing anything else. You need to install Xfce along with all of its dependencies, just as with any other software.
ROX and Xfce are both fairly modular and have similar dependencies. They also tend to interoperate well, as lots of people use components from both. Many of the ROX applications require Python, though.
is ROX something that runs on top of another WM?
ROX is mainly a particular style of application. It favours small programs that are used together, often through drag-and-drop. The filer (ROX-Filer) provides the basic infrastructure of the desktop (rather as the shell does for a command-line user).
ROX has a window manager (OroboROX), but it works fine with most other window managers too.