Life at the CLI

Xfce started out as a clone of CDE. A lot has changed with Xfce over the years, but you can still see the similarities.

I’ve been playing around with X this week. Xnest was pretty cool, but I can’t do much more than send an Xterm to it. Starting full blown window managers seems to work only half the time, but I’ll get it eventually. I also managed to accidently discover how to start multiple X session. All it takes is a simple startx -- :2 You can then switch between the sessions using CTRL+ALT+F7/F8. I had no idea how usefull this would be! I’ve been trying to get the Synaptics touchpad driver to work, but with little success. By using Multiple X sessions I can have all my website’s open and try out my new X settings in the other. This is also good for multiple user logins and remote X sessions.

I finally decided to register as a Linux user. I like the fact that I actually decide when and what to register as opposed to that stupid WGA that peeks inside my computer every time I need to do anything with Microsoft. I also registered my computer, which of course has Slackware for it’s distro. I guess I have to my hostname now

Feel free to register yourself at The Linux Counter

From wikipedia:

According to Richard Haier, et al. prolonged Tetris activity can also lead to more efficient brain activity. When first playing Tetris, brain function and activity increases, along with greater cerebral energy consumption, measured by glucose metabolic rate. As Tetris players become more proficient, their brains show a reduced consumption of glucose, indicating more efficient brain activity.

That’s awesome! Maybe I should start playing tetris more often…

My last post led me to reading about freedos, which then led me to dragging out my very first computer. It was the only 486 left after the merciless scavenging of the other computers that I had to through out. (Man our neighbors must have been freaked out seeing 5 stripped computer cases piled up on the curb. I wished I’d taken some pictures )

It originally ran at 33MHz (with the turbo button down) and had 8MB RAM with a 270MB-ish hard drive. I thought Windows 3.11 was the coolest thing ever after only seeing ‘95 before. After the scavenging it’s been upgraded to 66MHz and a whopping 40MB of RAM! Windows 95 almost runs at a tolerable speed now!

Good days… Good days.

By the way, I didn’t a sepia filter on. It’s just really bad lighting. (Gives a nice effect though )

I found this really cool site that maintains a very large list of know filetypes. It’s nice if you have a file that you can’t remember what program you used to create it with. (For me it was an old .fig file from deskmate) You may even be able to find another program to open it.

My ultimate goal was a keyboard drive UI

I got rid of the refresh button, because I really don’t need it. A page can be refreshed easy enough with F5 or CTRL+R. I also removed the search bar because I prefer to use the quick search bookmarks that come with a default installation of firefox. I never used the home button, plus there’s a shortcut key for it. (alt + home) I decided to keep the next and previous buttons even though they have shortcut keys. Sometimes I find myself needing the menu that drops down from them. I recently found the shortcut for the stop button, (esc) so I’m still kicking around if I want to keep it or not. The go button has been replaced with the progress indicator. The interface is beginning to look pretty bare.

My biggest problem is contolling focus and navigating through links. Some sites don’t make proper use of tabindex so I can’t completely “say good-bye to the rodent.”

On KDE CTRL+tab is used to switch desktops. This gets really annoying if you are used to changing tabs in Firefox with that same key combo. I’ve been living with this annoyance for about a week, and the CTRL+tab habit isn’t easily broken. Fortunatly I found another key combo that does the exact same thing. CTRL+PgDn will let you cycle through tabs just as easily as CTRL+tab but with an added benifit. CTRL+PgUp cycles through tabs in the opposite direction.

For a full list of Firefox keyboard shortcuts look here.

Don’t get me wrong, Firefox is awesome. I just wanted a change. (and possibly something a little lighter)

The first browser I tried was dillo. I was lightweight, but couldn’t handle the first page I threw at it. (The admin page for my blog) I got some error, and something about trying experimental alpha code. Okay fine, I’ll try again in a year or two. The interface, while unattractive, was streamlined and uncluttered, but it just felt weird having all that screen space! O_o (really it’s only about 30 pixels)

The rest of the other promising browsers required GNOME dependancies.

The solution: a UI mockup and some Firefox trimming. I think I’m going to keep firefox though.

After spending some time on KDE recently I have firmly decided that I’m a GNOME person. This time around I noticed a couple of key differences between KDE and GNOME. The main one was that KDE felt more unified than GNOME, but this may stem from the fact that I don’t really use many “GNOME” apps. Despite the unified feel I really don’t like most apps made for KDE, which is why I like GNOME better. (not to mention the fact that I’m going to need a lot of GNOME libs installed for the apps I do use)

Since Freerock hasn’t released a version of GNOME for Slack 11 yet, I decided to look for a different window manager. I was looking for a window manager that was just a window manager that could be expanded using external tools. After searching I found a couple that fit that description, but they all were lacking in some area or another. Turns out Xfwm had what I was looking for all along. It has good keybinding support, and was “just a window manager.”

Xfce has just about everything I could ask for. Plus I found a cool new key binding out of the whole deal running xfdesktop -menu pops open the desktop menu next to the mouse.