Date: 02 Feb 1999 00:16:16 +0100 From: Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@flood.ping.uio.no> To: "Jason C. Wells" <jcwells@u.washington.edu> Cc: W Gerald Hicks <wghicks@bellsouth.net>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Lets Endorse KDE Was: some slashdot thread Message-ID: <xzpaeyxsojj.fsf@flood.ping.uio.no> In-Reply-To: "Jason C. Wells"'s message of "Mon, 1 Feb 1999 17:46:03 %2B0000 (GMT)" References: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9902011726110.3728-100000@s8-37-26.student.washington.edu>
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"Jason C. Wells" <jcwells@u.washington.edu> writes:
> Again, making KDE a default will help new users. Thos of us who know how
> to swing our X configs to and fro don't need or necessarily like KDE.
> Don't judge this issue on the fact that KDE is not a 20 year development.
> Judge this issue on the help KDE will provide newbies. Put yourself in a
> non-cs degreed non-programmer non-unix users shoes and then look at the
> issue.
I mostly agree with Jason on this point. Making KDE an easily-
installable option, if not the default (remember, even XFree(& isn't
installed by default), and having somebody look after KDE to make sure
it works out of the box, may (will?) do wonders for FreeBSD's
popularity with the "masses".
I am considering switching to KDE myself (I've used twm / tvtwm so
far, but it has a few annoying bugs which I haven't been able to fix;
its greatest strength is simplicity). It's either that or Windowmaker;
if I end up using KDE, I'll certainly be willing to help maintaining a
"newbie's KDE package".
These are the features I personally require of a window manager:
1) It must have virtual desktops.
2) It must allow binding viewport switching to keys
3) It must allow binding the usual window operations (delete, kill,
maximize, iconify, horizontal / vertical zoom) to keys
4) it must allow binding mouse movement or at least window hopping
to keys. If possible, it should allow binding mouse clicks to
keys (fvwm2 can do that).
tvtwm has 1, 2 and 3, and I've hacked it to do 4 (mouse movement, no
clicks unfortunately; my knowledge of XLib programming is rather
limited). fvwm2 has all four, but looks like shit and is untrivial to
configure.
I didn't include configurable root window menus in the list since
practically all window managers have that. One more thing I didn't
mention is: the window decorations mustn't get in the way (I like thin
handle-less black borders and simple twm-style title bars)
Check out http://flood.ping.uio.no/~des/snap.gif for a snapshot of my
current tvtwm setup.
DES
--
Dag-Erling Smorgrav - des@flood.ping.uio.no
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