[sf-lug] SF-LUG meeting Sunday 2011-10-02

[Bobbie Sellers]

On 10/06/2011 11:50 AM, Rick Moen wrote:
> Quoting Bobbie Sellers (bliss-sf4ever at dslextreme.com):
>
>> I demoed the late distro, Koppix 6.7 which was the DOM for
>> Linux Pro issue 130 and which I had put on an 8 GiB usb stick on
>> my old Compaq CQ60-215DX.   It uses LDXE as a window manager.
> Quibble:  LXDE is _not_ a window manager, but rather a desktop
> environment (DE).  The window manager almost always used _within_ LXDE
> is Openbox -- but you can use any other window manager, e.g., icewm,
> metacity, fluxbox, etc., and it'd still be LXDE.

     	Thanks for the clarifications.
	Sorry if the list is seeing this late but when I
do too much, I make mistakes such as sending this original
reply only to Rick Moen.

> The difference between a DE and a WM is worth understanding, I think.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_Environment
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_manager
>
> Let me illustrate further:  I generally prefer Window Maker as a window
> manager.  Window Maker is generally compiled with hooks to let it
> function smoothly within the GNOME desktop environment as its WM
> (instead of the GNOME WM du jour, which these days tends to be metacity
> or Compiz).  However, nothing forces the five-course meal down your
> throat:  You can have the WM a la carte, instead.  (Basically, all you
> need to do is turn off the X11 session manager, and restart.)

	Actually the Windows Manager on the Knoppix 6.7 is Compiz.
	It has a desktop effect when closing a Window that fractures
the Window into fragments that seemed to wow Jim a bit.  I suppose
there is a way to turn off that effect but don't want to reboot
to make sure of that until later in the week due to other activities.

>
> A useful taxonomy of DEs and WMs:
> http://xwinman.org/
>
> Of the common DEs, LXDE is by far the most lightweight (relative to
> GNOME, KDE, and Xfce).  I like Xfce because it's relatively sparse and
> doesn't launch a forest of mostly unwanted processes the way KDE and
> GNOME do, but have to admit that it sucks RAM about as much as GNOME
> does.

	I think that the search for a less memory intensive
Desktop Environment which can handle the adaptations that users
may require and handle multiple screens/virtual desktops
et al is rather self-defeating.   The improved KDE is
very demanding of memory and of processor cycles but is
supposed to be less memory intensive than KDE 3.5.9.
One point where the old KDE was ahead was the user's
configuration tools.

	  The plasma workspaces act as they please.
I reboot and I end up with widgets on the main part of
the screen as well as the task bar.   Sometimes though
the task bar disappears from all but one screen and
I can expect to spend an hour or so cleaning up the
mess.  Part of the cleanup will be generating a new
task bar that will automatically appear on all
virtual desktops and deleting the old task bar.
	I don't like to reboot my computer much
preferring to suspend to disk aka "Hibernate".
A problem with this is that the system comes
up without requiring any log in.

         bliss