Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on July 29, 2004 09:03 PM
First off, no mention is made of <A HREF="http://www.xfce.org/" title="xfce.org">Xfce </a xfce.org>which is the up-and-coming new star of Linux desktop environments/window managers. Also, no mention is made that Gnome can run off different window managers, most notably metacity and sawfish both of which can give it a quite different feel. (Nearly all of its components, such as the Gnome panel, can be run alone with any window manager of choice. In fact the same is true of many KDE components such as kicker, the KDE taskbar.)
Next, Enlightenment has been included, although no real development has gone on with Enlightenment in years and it appears that v.17 will never be released. Also, v.16 has a permanent bug (with its handling of Epplets) which for technical reasons cannot be repaired.
Inexcusably, the popular *box window managers have been totally left out. Two readers here comment about Fluxbox, and mention should at least be made of BlackBox which really made big advances in the minimalist desktop trend, and the newest derivative of Fluxbox called Openbox which many now prefer.
Also, one final aspect of minimalistic desktops has been overlooked: that of interchangable components. For example, the window manager can be viewed as a totally independent application from the taskbar. So someone can run pypanel, fbpanel, or any other panel of choice configured as they like along with their compliant window manager.
Finally, IceWM is a minimalist window manager but is also quite ugly. I wouldn't mention it in an article enticing new users.
I think this article is incomplete and lacks good information about minimalist alternative window managers for Linux. Go check out <A HREF="http://icculus.org/openbox/" title="icculus.org">Openbox</a icculus.org> and <A HREF="http://fbpanel.sourceforge.net/" title="sourceforge.net">fbpanel</a sourceforge.net>.
Learn about Linux
Download Linux
Get Linux help
Hmm?
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on July 29, 2004 09:03 PMNext, Enlightenment has been included, although no real development has gone on with Enlightenment in years and it appears that v.17 will never be released. Also, v.16 has a permanent bug (with its handling of Epplets) which for technical reasons cannot be repaired.
Inexcusably, the popular *box window managers have been totally left out. Two readers here comment about Fluxbox, and mention should at least be made of BlackBox which really made big advances in the minimalist desktop trend, and the newest derivative of Fluxbox called Openbox which many now prefer.
Also, one final aspect of minimalistic desktops has been overlooked: that of interchangable components. For example, the window manager can be viewed as a totally independent application from the taskbar. So someone can run pypanel, fbpanel, or any other panel of choice configured as they like along with their compliant window manager.
Finally, IceWM is a minimalist window manager but is also quite ugly. I wouldn't mention it in an article enticing new users.
I think this article is incomplete and lacks good information about minimalist alternative window managers for Linux. Go check out <A HREF="http://icculus.org/openbox/" title="icculus.org">Openbox</a icculus.org> and <A HREF="http://fbpanel.sourceforge.net/" title="sourceforge.net">fbpanel</a sourceforge.net>.
#