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Date:      Thu, 7 Mar 2002 06:49:27 -0600
From:      "Matthew D. Fuller" <fullermd@over-yonder.net>
To:        Stephen McKay <mckay@thehub.com.au>
Cc:        chat@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Browser wars (was Re: Taming Netscape Navigator?)
Message-ID:  <20020307064927.I3880@over-yonder.net>
In-Reply-To: <200203061331.g26DVFe15485@dungeon.home>; from mckay@thehub.com.au on Wed, Mar 06, 2002 at 11:31:15PM %2B1000
References:  <Pine.LNX.4.43.0203011634360.2796-100000@pilchuck.reedmedia.net> <3C7FB956.18428.510B414@localhost> <20020301201318.C3880@over-yonder.net> <200203051407.g25E7WF10805@dungeon.home> <20020305105330.H3880@over-yonder.net> <200203061331.g26DVFe15485@dungeon.home>

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On Wed, Mar 06, 2002 at 11:31:15PM +1000 I heard the voice of
Stephen McKay, and lo! it spake thus:
> 
> I haven't yet seen a current generation window manager I can stomach,
> and vtwm is good for a couple dozen windows, not hundreds.  Actually,
> even so-called modern window managers are poor at handling 100 windows.

Frankly, I despise all those "modern window managers"   :P

ctwm works very well for me.  I've got a seperate icon manager on the
right side of my screen for Netscape windows.  I currently have 15 open
on this desktop, and by my hand-estimate, that's taking up just a touch
over 1/3 the height available to it.  So, call it 35-40 per desktop with
room to spare.  I have 6 virtual desktops split up by function (one is
for working on programs, one is for managing systems, etc), which gives
a reasonably good distribution.  So, if we take 20 windows per desktop,
that gives 120 total (presuming, of course, that NS would live long enough
to open that many ;), while taking up maybe half of the available space
to manage 'em.  Other stuff like xterms has the other icon manager on
the left side of the screen.


> Maybe more of my peculiar habits are relevant: I run a virtual desktop
> and Opera gets 100% of one of them (ie it runs in full screen mode).
> Within Opera, I only look at one page at a time, so it gets all the
> screen minus the tab list.  At 1600x1200 with 100 windows open you
> still have lots of visible window left.  Interleaving my browser
> windows with other windows is not of interest to me.

When I'm working on a web front-end in 2 xterms (with a third for
referencing other bits), and have 1 NS windows open on the PostgreSQL
docs, 1 on the PHP docs, 1 looking up bits in the HTML spec I manage to
forget, and 1 testing the output, interleaving is kinda a necessity.

I don't have ANYTHING full-screen.  I run 1280x1024, my Netscape windows
are set to 840x695 (there's no magic reason for those dimensions, it's
just what I've gotten used to).  I very much treasure being able to see
more than one thing at a time.

I s'pose in the end, as always, it comes down to individual preference.
At least we use an environment that gives us choices.


> >But in a X11 environment, when you can pick and choose among a number of
> >WM's with great configurability and scalability...   what's the point?
> 
> I await your recommendation for a window manager that will do all the
> things I like as well as these new fangled things you like.

Er, what new-fangled things?
Using a 5-year-old piece of festering crap web browser?   ;)


> I'd rather not *pay* for a dual 1400.  Regardless, it is an interesting
> idea to hard limit all processes to at most 1/2 the cpu.  I don't know of
> anyone who has done this already.  And I don't know how much of the feel
> of a real dual cpu box this would have.  Maybe one of us will have to
> code up a hack and find out.

It does make you curious.

On the one hand, the context switch overhead would hurt.  On the other,
though, you don't have to worry about inter-processor synchronization or
bus arbitration.

The context-switch is part of the problem; I keep NS nice'd down, but
even then you'll still have a problem, because you have to wait for it to
finish its quantum before the scheduler is ready to schedule another
process, even once you hard-limit it to 50% of the cycles.  (the "even
nice'd processes get CPU" problem is obliterated when you set the limit).


-- 
Matthew Fuller     (MF4839)     |    fullermd@over-yonder.net
Unix Systems Administrator      |    fullermd@futuresouth.com
Specializing in FreeBSD         |    http://www.over-yonder.net/

"The only reason I'm burning my candle at both ends, is because I
      haven't figured out how to light the middle yet"

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