Archers - Desktop environment question

SMN

SMN

SMN

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So im getting fed up of gnome 3 in fallback mode, it is falling to bits (the clock on the top bar has disappeared now much to my chagrin).

I tried openbox yesterday and used xcompmgr, but it is so ugly to use and look at. Is there anyway to make it... "nice"?

I also tried LXDE (it wont even boot into it), and elementary (e19) - same issue. I have dual mon's FWIW.

I was reading around about running compiz solely as the DM/WM, is anyone doing this?

Thx,
Sam

PS: In before "im an aesthetics hore".
 
Having used Openbox for a while, I still find making it look nice to be the trickiest part. So tricky, in fact, that I opt for the second-best option of getting it out of the way as much as possible. :p

I used Compiz/Emerald for a while as a standalone setup and it was quite nice, but it is possible to go overboard with the effects. Some of the Emerald themes are really polished and you can achieve some stunning results. Last time I tried it out on my laptop, though, the commands you could set up for key/mouse bindings in CCSM didn't seem to work at all and getting it to play on two screens with the ATI card was no fun. :/
 
SMN said:
I tried openbox yesterday and used xcompmgr, but it is so ugly to use and look at. Is there anyway to make it... "nice"?
Click to expand...
I use openbox with the composite extension disabled in xorg.conf

Don't really care about shadows or transparent menu's etc.
I was using xcompmgr for a while and tried cairo but cairo was buggy, xcompmgr didn't seem too bad but I didn't really see any need for the effects.

my old xcompmgr from autostart
Code: 
xcompmgr -cfF -r7 -o.65 -l-10 -t-8 -D7 &
 
I like the look of Openbox, with a nice GTK2 theme it looks pretty awesome, and using icons on the right-click menu looks nice as well.
 
I was in a similar position to you, but with standard Gnome 3 rather than fallback. Seems the whole thing is falling apart now :p

I went with XFCE. Might look a little complicated at first, but when you realize that there are basically five main things that you can change it becomes a lot easier to make it look really nice. Then you just have to get rid of the awful default toolbar and replace it with your own preference (i went with AWN) and you're set. Just make sure you add dbus-launch to xinitrc, and turn on composting.

It's a lot better than Gnome 3 was for me. But there are a few issues. Most are probably down to having installed Gnome before hand and having residual dependencies and stuff, then there's some weird things going on with mounting but i don't think they are specific to XFCE, i think they'd be there (for me at least) no matter what WM i used. They're not that big of a deal anyway.

I say that... have you considered KDE? I've heard a lot of really good things about 4.8, it looks like it's back on track after 3.5.
 
Thanks guys. Yeah PermaBanned, I think thats my problem too - so much residual stuff on this system causing issues. Tempted to blat it and start from scratch.

I installed MATE desktop as per Jack, amazed that they have ported gnome 2.6! Thats going to be a pig to support - but i was so happy when i saw panels in gnome we can RIGHT CLICK ON again :)

I might give XFCE a go, or try one of lesser knowns again like e17?
 
JimAroo said:
XFCE4 is great.

My only problem with it are those ugly rounded windows, I've looked about but not seen a way to remove them.
Click to expand...

Rounded windows? As in window decorations? It's to do with the theme you use. I use Axiom Dark, which has rounded corners:

FCpvQ.png

But just picking another random one that was there by default you can see that it's possible to have right angled corners if you so wish:

vfpGe.png
 
I'm trying E17 at the moment, and it seems very snappy even with the compositing and effects going on. To be fair there is very little on my system at the moment as I've just reinstalled Arch after using Chakra for a bit (had networking issues so got fed up with it in the end).

I tried Openbox to start with, and while I could get along with that kind of minimalism, I think I need a whole DE right now - I just don't have the inclination to do everything from scratch! Might give KDE a go on Arch as I rather liked it in Chakra, or maybe give good ol' Gnome a go with Openbox as the WM. But as I said, E17 is on here currently and I'll see how I get on with it for a bit...
 
openbox with stiler (https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=64100) is still the best combo I find to run two U2410's in portrait. Gives me standard gui for browsing the web and tiling for when I need it.

I don't want to start a flame war, but if you want the best of both worlds, its worth persevering to get it going. Also no bootup sounds like xorg is not configured right, I assume it drops to a login shell instead and startx crashes
 
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