Muti-Desktop Icons-Bob?

fpirrone fpirrone at localnet.com
Fri Aug 29 14:14:26 EDT 2003


Robert Meyer wrote:

>As far as I can tell, the only thing that you can change between desktops is
>the background since the icons are part of the theme itself.  I think that this
>is for a very good reason.  Imagine a new user that is on a system where the
>icons keep changing everytime they click on that funny looking thing in the
>task bar :-)
>
>Cheers!
>
>Bob
>--- "Joshua R. Altemoos" <joshua at navyjosh.us> wrote:
>  
>
>>Hey,
>>
>>In kde on mandrake 9.1 is there a way to make it so each desktop has differnt
>>
>>icons? If so how?
>>
>>Thanks Much
>>-- 
>>Best Regards,
>>
>>Joshua R. Altemoos
>>joshua at navyjosh.us
>>    
>>
>
>
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>  
>
I briefly read through this thread and thought I'd contribute a quick 
comment hoping not to sound like a fanatic:  I have been using the 
window manageer FluxBox since last year and absolutely love its 
simplicity, cleanness, usability, and performance.  It's a small 
download and compile, and completely coexists with all your desktops. 
 I'd be glad to share my scripts for launching it separately from 
switchdesk and startx, as well as custom theme and settings.

Anyway, Flux has no icons and no program launcher button.  There is a 
bar on the screen with a clock, pager button, and names of running apps 
(these change with workspace) and a few other cool things like tabbed 
and nesting windows (drag a tab from one window to another and they 
merge into one tabbed frame - you can even configure an app to launch 
tabbed like Ardour's editor and mixer windows), a slit, etc. but the 
real power and phenomenal convenience is the right-click root menu.  

Wherever you are, a right click brings up an extremely easy to configure 
cascading menu.  Any submenu can be torn off an placed where its related 
contents are directly accessible.  Menus persist above application 
windows, and nothing is ever obscured requiring minimizing or moving to 
get at what you need.  Factor in sloppy-focus and a few keybindings 
(also absolutely simple - like the menu which is ~/.fluxbox/menu, it is 
~/.fluxbox/keys, in fact all configuration is plain text in this 
directory, with /usr/local/share/fluxbox the only other place where 
styles and default versions of these files are found), and you have an 
environment that is elegant and productive.  You cannot match this speed 
and efficiency with icons and a start menu button.

Rather than assume the familiar model of Desktop-Icons-Taskbar-Start 
Menu-etc. is optimal, I was delighted to discover how strongly I 
preferred this radical departure.  Years ago when I began using Linux, 
and even when I began using it exclusively, I tried the popular desktop 
environments - fvwm, nextstep, windowmanager, gnome, kde, etc. liked 
them all but pretty much settled on the two that felt the most like 
Windows, however I really have become an evangelist for BlackBox/FluxBox 
and the other few that look/work like this.

Help is available for anyone interested in taking a look at using a 
window manager that can be configured with a few text files instead of a 
complex desktop with components all over your /usr and home directory, 
and one that seems to support simply getting work done (one last comment 
- I have a borderless, transparent terminal running in at least one 
workspace all the time, and still get a kick out of the CLI and text 
floating above a graphic workspace - but don't get me started on the 
command line...).

Frank





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