> I guess it would also be possible
> to just resize the windows so that they don't overlap,
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Re: [BLUG] Alternative focus
On Wednesday 03 June 2009 11:18:13 pm Gillis, Chad wrote:
> I guess it would also be possible
> to just resize the windows so that they don't overlap,
> I guess it would also be possible
> to just resize the windows so that they don't overlap,
Re: [BLUG] Alternative focus
On Thu, Jun 04, 2009 at 03:18:13AM GMT, Gillis, Chad [rcgillis@indiana.edu] said the following:
>
> >I thought Chad was talking about "No raise window on mouse focus" at
> >first, but then he mentioned that he wants to be able to paste into a
> >window using middle mouse button or whatever without raising the window.
> >Is that right Chad? I'm not sure what setting that would be. FVWM no
> >doubt would let you do something like that, but I've never seen it on
> >Gnome. Of all things, I think twm lets you do that too.
>
> >I thought Chad was talking about "No raise window on mouse focus" at
> >first, but then he mentioned that he wants to be able to paste into a
> >window using middle mouse button or whatever without raising the window.
> >Is that right Chad? I'm not sure what setting that would be. FVWM no
> >doubt would let you do something like that, but I've never seen it on
> >Gnome. Of all things, I think twm lets you do that too.
Typing and clicking are still two different things. In Gnome, typing
in a window won't raise it, but clicking on it does.
> It might sound pointless if you've never used it, but now that I've
> been using it for a while I've gotten used to it. Ben mentioned that
> he likes to watch some video and let it stay above the window that he's
> working in. Today I was listening to some audio in a small window and
> was periodically rewinding and pausing the audio while I took notes in
> the window below. Also sometimes I like to copy from one window on top
> and paste into the one below without switching back and forth using
> alt-tab. In fact sometimes I have three layers of windows, one on top
> of the other, and they all stay put. I guess it would also be possible
> to just resize the windows so that they don't overlap, but like you say
> Mark sometimes we get used to some particular way of doing something,
> and then we can get picky if we can't find it somewhere else.
Unless you have more than 2 window layers that you need to keep
organized at their respective layers, you can still accomplish what you
want using the "Always on top" function in Gnome and many other window
managers and environments. I've had the same requirement where I want a
movie top remain on top of other windows, etc. So this is equivilent
functionality for what you are doing.
If you have some case where you want 3 windows open, all overlapping and
you can click on any of them and they will stay at their respective
level, then this might be in the realm that developers would tell you
that
Its really too bad that sawmill/sawfish didn't remain the defacto WM for
Gnome, because it would have allowed you to do this with some LISP.
Actually, you might be able to get sawfish working with Gnome (haven't
tried it in years) and then you could have a lot of functionality that
FVWM has that metacity lacks.
You might also look into Devil's Pie, which provides some of the
window matching functionality that Sawfish had:
http://burtonini.com/blog/computers/devilspie
--
Mark Krenz
Bloomington Linux Users Group
http://www.bloomingtonlinux.org/
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Re: [BLUG] Alternative focus
Quoting Mark Krenz <mark@slugbug.org>:
> I thought Chad was talking about "No raise window on mouse focus" at
> first, but then he mentioned that he wants to be able to paste into a
> window using middle mouse button or whatever without raising the window.
> Is that right Chad? I'm not sure what setting that would be. FVWM no
> doubt would let you do something like that, but I've never seen it on
> Gnome. Of all things, I think twm lets you do that too.
Yeah that's right Mark. I was talking about the sort of thing that Ben
mentioned, where you can type into or paste into or click on a button
in a window that's below another window, without the window that you're
clicking on raising to the top. To get this to work in FVMW you can use
the command :
Style * SloppyFocus, MouseFocusClickRaisesOff
So you're right Steven, the focus following the mouse is called
SloppyFocus in FVWM. Then what I'm talking about has the added
MouseFocusClickRaisesOff feature.
It might sound pointless if you've never used it, but now that I've
been using it for a while I've gotten used to it. Ben mentioned that
he likes to watch some video and let it stay above the window that he's
working in. Today I was listening to some audio in a small window and
was periodically rewinding and pausing the audio while I took notes in
the window below. Also sometimes I like to copy from one window on top
and paste into the one below without switching back and forth using
alt-tab. In fact sometimes I have three layers of windows, one on top
of the other, and they all stay put. I guess it would also be possible
to just resize the windows so that they don't overlap, but like you say
Mark sometimes we get used to some particular way of doing something,
and then we can get picky if we can't find it somewhere else.
Anyway, thanks everyone for all the replies. I didn't know if I'd even
get one :) If people on this list haven't come across it in the big
desktop managers, then I'm satisfied that it probably doesn't exist or
is at least extremely well hidden. Not that something like this is
actually a reason to not use KDE or GNOME since there are clearly other
features that exist beyond MouseFocusClickRaisesOff :D
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Re: [BLUG] What have you done with Linux lately?
Have you installed Linux on the Asus Eee PC? I just bought one for yet another project at work, and I was wondering if the thing would run Linux.
On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 5:14 PM, Beartooth <beartooth@beartooth.info> wrote:
On Wed, 3 Jun 2009, Barry Schatz wrote:Wine has recently become able to install, launch, and run certain proprietary topo map software; Garmin MapSource and Maptech Appalachian Trail, but not Delorme nor Topo.com. Most recently, at long, long last, it finally managed also to get both to talk to a GPS.
Well, I know we have members. (174 officially on the list and most
replied to my spam)
We need discussions! What have you done with Linux or other free software lately? Any reinstalls? Who switched distros in the last six months and why? Was it worth it? Even if you only have time for a couple sentences, we all can benefit from your experiences.
Sometimes, that is. It does it under Fedora 10 on my desktop; but I have yet to get it to under Fedora 11 Preview on my laptop.
I made the mistake of buying one of the first of the ASUS EeePC machines -- which has long since proven too small for my eyes and fingers. I'll upgrade to a somewhat larger machine when I can afford it; meanwhile, I fiddle occasionally with installing one distro or another, trying to get one that not only runs well, but boots quickly enough to be worth using in waiting rooms, the only place the machine itself seems to have any promise for me.
There an amazing number of minimalist distros out there, some designed specifically for the EeePC and its ilk, some cultivating minimalism for its own sake -- such as Puppy and Mint, for instance. There are Parsix and DreamLinux and EasyPeasy, Moblin and TinyCore -- and versions of Fedora and Ubuntu ....
--
Beartooth Implacable, Curmudgeonly Codger Learning Linux
On the Internet, you can never tell who is a dog --
supposing you care -- but you can tell who has a mind.
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Re: [BLUG] What have you done with Linux lately?
So I may be joinging this thread late, and it has probably been a couple of years since my last post to this list. Oh well, I'm back.
I have been doing way more with linux than ever before, but nothing really all that spectacular. Here is a rundown from the last few months (this is all on virtual servers -- no desktop stuff for me).
Since work bought me a Mac laptop, I have not run a Linux desktop. However, that itch is starting to come back, so maybe someday soon. Anyone know of any new promising looking distros? Maybe something with E17?
Last thing. I have also been toying with the idea of an LFS system. Has anyone ever done it?
Kirk
I have been doing way more with linux than ever before, but nothing really all that spectacular. Here is a rundown from the last few months (this is all on virtual servers -- no desktop stuff for me).
- I replaced our mail platform at works. We moved from CommunigatePro running on OS X to Zimbra running on Zimbra. I was (am) excited about the change. The users were less so.
- We are in the process of revamping our CRM system, and migrating from Act! running on Windows to SugarCRM. RIght now our testing of Sugar is on a linux server, but that will likely change (too much advantage to having the CRM database in SQL Server).
- Last July we cut from a trditional PBX with POTS lines to 100% SIP based Asterisk.
- I just finished installed laconica microblogging service on a Linux host for a pilot program at work.
- We are working on implementing document management using OSS with a Linux backend.
Since work bought me a Mac laptop, I have not run a Linux desktop. However, that itch is starting to come back, so maybe someday soon. Anyone know of any new promising looking distros? Maybe something with E17?
Last thing. I have also been toying with the idea of an LFS system. Has anyone ever done it?
Kirk
On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 2:34 PM, Barry Schatz <sorbetninja@gmail.com> wrote:
Well, I know we have members. (174 officially on the list and most
replied to my spam)
We need discussions! What have you done with Linux or other free
software lately? Any reinstalls? Who switched distros in the last six
months and why? Was it worth it? Even if you only have time for a couple
sentences, we all can benefit from your experiences.
I'll start.
My current adventure is upgrading my tower (desktop) to Kde 4.2. I use
Kde 4 on my laptops because I don't mind if I experimental packages
break them, but my tower is strictly Debian testing. Except for
Ktorrent, I didn't use any Kde4 apps on my tower until a couple nights ago.
Due to a very custom setup, I had to use a combination of apt-get,
deborphan, and apt-show-versions to get to where Kaboom would import my
settings. Even with my configuration migrated to Kde4, it needed a lot
of tweaking. Settings optimized for Kde3 won't feel right in Kde4. I
ended up going through all the config screens anyway. The defaults are
perfectly usable, but I like to configure everything to work best for /me/.
I didn't save a screenshot before the migration, and I wish I did (I
would like to compare old and new). The layout of everything was simple
and intuitive (for me). The new layout is nice too, though. Everything
feels clean and fresh. Desktop effects work better than before, and
transparency doesn't have gross memory leaks. I lost my convenient app
launchers in the transition, but krunner is so slick now that I don't
feel like recreating them.
If you're interested in Kde4, I recommend it highly. The 4.0 and 4.1
releases were rough, but 4.2 is ready for human consumption. If you want
more detail on using Debian's apt tools (or using Debian in general),
I'm happy to help.
-Barry
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Re: [BLUG] Alternative focus
On Wed, Jun 03, 2009 at 10:23:06PM GMT, Steven Black [blacks@indiana.edu] said the following:
>
> What Chad's talking about is generally called "Focus Follows Mouse".
> There are a number of variations upon this theme. Some of them have
> similar names but different meanings.
>
> For instance, in KDE (4, at least), this is configured through the
> "Window Behavior" settings panel, in the "Window Behavior" section
> the first tab is called "Focus".
>
> There's a number of options here including:
>
> Focus stealing prevention level: (none, low, normal, high, extreme)
> Policy: (Click to Focus, Focus Follows Mouse, Focus Under Mouse,
> Focus Strictly Under Mouse)
> (checkbox) Raise, with the following delay: XXX ms
> (checkbox) Delay focus by: XXX ms
> (checkbox) Click raises active window
>
> I think what KDE calls "Focus Follows Mouse" is called "Sloppy Focus"
> by FVWM. (It has been a long time since I used FVWM.) What FVWM calls
> "Focus Follows Mouse" would be closer to "Focus Under Mouse", or "Focus
> Strictly Under Mouse". -- I'm not sure how these are different in KDE.)
>
> How is it different? The biggest difference is the behavior when the
> mouse is on the Desktop. FVWM doesn't use the Desktop much, and when
> it does, it doesn't really have things that can use the keyboard on
> the desktop.
>
>
> What Chad's talking about is generally called "Focus Follows Mouse".
> There are a number of variations upon this theme. Some of them have
> similar names but different meanings.
>
> For instance, in KDE (4, at least), this is configured through the
> "Window Behavior" settings panel, in the "Window Behavior" section
> the first tab is called "Focus".
>
> There's a number of options here including:
>
> Focus stealing prevention level: (none, low, normal, high, extreme)
> Policy: (Click to Focus, Focus Follows Mouse, Focus Under Mouse,
> Focus Strictly Under Mouse)
> (checkbox) Raise, with the following delay: XXX ms
> (checkbox) Delay focus by: XXX ms
> (checkbox) Click raises active window
>
> I think what KDE calls "Focus Follows Mouse" is called "Sloppy Focus"
> by FVWM. (It has been a long time since I used FVWM.) What FVWM calls
> "Focus Follows Mouse" would be closer to "Focus Under Mouse", or "Focus
> Strictly Under Mouse". -- I'm not sure how these are different in KDE.)
>
> How is it different? The biggest difference is the behavior when the
> mouse is on the Desktop. FVWM doesn't use the Desktop much, and when
> it does, it doesn't really have things that can use the keyboard on
> the desktop.
>
I thought Chad was talking about "No raise window on mouse focus" at
first, but then he mentioned that he wants to be able to paste into a
window using middle mouse button or whatever without raising the window.
Is that right Chad? I'm not sure what setting that would be. FVWM no
doubt would let you do something like that, but I've never seen it on
Gnome. Of all things, I think twm lets you do that too.
We've talked about a number of different and perhaps advanced features:
* How a window gets focus when the mouse moves over it.
* Whether a window is raised when the mouse moves over it.
* Whether a window is raised when the moue clicks on it.
* Whether an application can give itself focus.
* Whether an application can change your desktop to give itself focus.
* Whether an application can warp your mouse to the position of the
application and give itself focus.
This may seem tedious, but because some WMs and environments have let
users configure these things individually in the past, some users get
picky when they are not available.
--
Mark Krenz
Bloomington Linux Users Group
http://www.bloomingtonlinux.org/
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Re: [BLUG] Alternative focus
On Wednesday 03 June 2009 18:23:06 Steven Black wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 03, 2009 at 04:16:05PM -0400, Barry Schatz wrote:
> > Officially, it's called "Focus stealing prevention" and it's an option
> > in most major window managers. I couldn't tell you where to find it, but
> > it should be there. Well, I can find it in Kde, but only because that's
> > what I use. I'd be happy to help you get set up on one of the heavy
> > desktop environments if you like.
>
> Focus stealing prevention is a specific work-around for some
> applications.
>
*SNIP*
>
> What Chad's talking about is generally called "Focus Follows Mouse".
> There are a number of variations upon this theme. Some of them have
> similar names but different meanings.
> On Wed, Jun 03, 2009 at 04:16:05PM -0400, Barry Schatz wrote:
> > Officially, it's called "Focus stealing prevention" and it's an option
> > in most major window managers. I couldn't tell you where to find it, but
> > it should be there. Well, I can find it in Kde, but only because that's
> > what I use. I'd be happy to help you get set up on one of the heavy
> > desktop environments if you like.
>
> Focus stealing prevention is a specific work-around for some
> applications.
>
*SNIP*
>
> What Chad's talking about is generally called "Focus Follows Mouse".
> There are a number of variations upon this theme. Some of them have
> similar names but different meanings.
And that's why we have a mailing list. Thanks for the correction. :)
-Barry
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Re: [BLUG] What have you done with Linux lately?
On Wed, Jun 03, 2009 at 05:37:31PM -0500, Sidarth Dasari wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 4:14 PM, Beartooth <beartooth@beartooth.info> wrote:
> On Wed, 3 Jun 2009, Barry Schatz wrote:
> We need discussions! What have you done with Linux or other free
> software lately? Any reinstalls? [...]
>
> There an amazing number of minimalist distros out there, some
> designed specifically for the EeePC and its ilk, some cultivating
> minimalism for its own sake -- such as Puppy and Mint, for instance. There
> are Parsix and DreamLinux and EasyPeasy, Moblin and TinyCore -- and
> versions of Fedora and Ubuntu ....
> On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 4:14 PM, Beartooth <beartooth@beartooth.info> wrote:
> On Wed, 3 Jun 2009, Barry Schatz wrote:
> We need discussions! What have you done with Linux or other free
> software lately? Any reinstalls? [...]
>
> There an amazing number of minimalist distros out there, some
> designed specifically for the EeePC and its ilk, some cultivating
> minimalism for its own sake -- such as Puppy and Mint, for instance. There
> are Parsix and DreamLinux and EasyPeasy, Moblin and TinyCore -- and
> versions of Fedora and Ubuntu ....
> I was wondering about Mint myself actually. Has anyone used it and found it to
> be noticeably better/bad/different than ubuntu?
After reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Mint I have to say
I don't quite understand it.
It seems to be more like a community-based rebranding of Ubuntu (on par
with Kubuntu, or Xubuntu, or Gobuntu), except with some private tools
(which you'd expect with a community release that hasn't gotten folded
in to the official repository yet) than a real distribution.
The goal of being elegant and easy to use is hitting a road-block in my
head which reads "I thought Ubuntu was elegant and easy to use. This
seems like it is only adding maintenance complexity."
> (I hope gmail is formatting this right for bottom posting)
It turned it in to HTML. You should be able to tell it to only do HTML
when replying to HTML email.
I've mutt configured to automatically turn HTML email back to plain text
for presentation. I don't abide with HTML email. HTML email doesn't work
for the visually impaired. I'll be able to use Mutt even if I go blind
and need a Braille TTY.
--
Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu> / KeyID: 8596FA8E
Fingerprint: 108C 089C EFA4 832C BF07 78C2 DE71 5433 8596 FA8E
Re: [BLUG] What have you done with Linux lately?
Sidarth Dasari wrote:
>
> I was wondering about Mint myself actually. Has anyone used it and found
> it to be noticeably better/bad/different than ubuntu?
>
> I was wondering about Mint myself actually. Has anyone used it and found
> it to be noticeably better/bad/different than ubuntu?
Mint is a fine distro, especially for newbies. I call it Ubuntu with
spit and polish. It has most of the proprietary media stuff included
that Ubuntu requires the user to pull in after install. I personally use
neither, but recommend it (along with MEPIS and PCLinuxOS) to Windows
users willing to look at alternatives.
And if I may make a plug for my favorite, I'd encourage anyone to take a
look at SimplyMEPIS. Debian Lenny based, KDE 3.5, custom tools for
various configuration tasks, all put together with some of the best "fit
& finish" I've ever seen in a desktop distro. Also has excellent
hardware compatibility out of the out-of-the-box, and is flat out quick
compared to the *buntus, including the Xfce version.
--
Mark Warner
MEPIS Linux
Registered Linux User #415318
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Re: [BLUG] Alternative focus
On Wed, Jun 03, 2009 at 10:39:04PM +0000, Mark Krenz wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 03, 2009 at 10:23:06PM GMT, Steven Black [blacks@indiana.edu] said the following:
> >
> > Some applications think this is a good idea to do with
> > their error dialogs.
>
> That's not cool. Sounds like Windows or something. What programs or
> desktops are you talking about because I remember encountering this?
> On Wed, Jun 03, 2009 at 10:23:06PM GMT, Steven Black [blacks@indiana.edu] said the following:
> >
> > Some applications think this is a good idea to do with
> > their error dialogs.
>
> That's not cool. Sounds like Windows or something. What programs or
> desktops are you talking about because I remember encountering this?
I think Netscape did this at one time. (Back before it became Mozilla,
and then Firefox.) You'd get a timeout message that would crop up out of
nowhere and grab your focus.
Part of the benefit of common toolkits in X is that they can broadly
control the user experience. This means that application behaviors that
result in poor user experience can be explicitly unsupported in the
toolkits.
--
Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu> / KeyID: 8596FA8E
Fingerprint: 108C 089C EFA4 832C BF07 78C2 DE71 5433 8596 FA8E
Re: [BLUG] Choosing a Window Manager at login
On Wed, Jun 03, 2009 at 05:20:36PM -0400, Gillis, Chad wrote:
> Okay thanks. That'll make it easier now that I know what term to
> google. Thanks for the offer for the help too. Since I'd have more
> than one window manager installed, I can foresee maybe some difficulties
> on telling X which one to use. In my ~/.xsession, the final command is
> "exec fvwm". Maybe it's just a matter of changing the fvwm in that line
> to something else, and back again if I want to switch back?
> Okay thanks. That'll make it easier now that I know what term to
> google. Thanks for the offer for the help too. Since I'd have more
> than one window manager installed, I can foresee maybe some difficulties
> on telling X which one to use. In my ~/.xsession, the final command is
> "exec fvwm". Maybe it's just a matter of changing the fvwm in that line
> to something else, and back again if I want to switch back?
You're talking about exploring some of the other window manager options.
The canonical way to do this in the past was to change the 'exec fvwm'
to 'exec xterm', then from within that Xterm, start up different
window managers. That really only works when dealing with true window
managers, as it is less effective when dealing with full desktop
"environments". (The 'E' in both GNOME and KDE stand for 'environment'.)
These things consist of a number of separate processes that all have to
be started/stopped cleanly.
There have been tools you can use to pick the window manager at login. I
don't remember any names off-hand, but I've seen mention of such things
in the past.
Both KDM and GDM support a concept of a "default window manager",
and allow you to pick your new window manager at login time. They'll
remember the last setting, but allow you to pick a new one quickly and
easily. They also both properly handle all of the processes involved in
starting up GNOME, KDE, or another complete desktop environment. (Such
as XFCE.)
My recommendation is actually to install GDM. Even though the name is
"GNOME Desktop Manager", it really only has requirements on GTK. It
is richly themable, so you can customize the appearance regardless of
the specific window manager you decide to use. If you have the Gimp or
Firefox installed, you already have requirements on GTK, so it doesn't
really increase your disk resources by much.
Then you can install and try out other environments and window managers.
If you do not already use a Debian-derived distribution, you may want to
consider switching. Debian-derived distributions which include the full
set of Debian packages (this includes Ubuntu) have an insane list of
window managers and desktop environments available, all of them install
quickly and easily. Some of them may depend upon toolkits you've never
heard of (such as FLTK). Unless you *really* like compiling things by
hand, it is easy to restrict your choices to those that ship with the
distro, and know that they'll "just work".
While I'm a big fan of Ubuntu and KDE, for a desktop system with fewer
than average resources I highly recommend Debian. You have lighter
weight versions of almost every tool available. (While these same tools
are available in Ubuntu, some tools are expected norms in Ubuntu, and
changing/removing them may harm your ability to upgrade in the future.)
Cheers,
--
Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu> / KeyID: 8596FA8E
Fingerprint: 108C 089C EFA4 832C BF07 78C2 DE71 5433 8596 FA8E
Re: [BLUG] Alternative focus
On Wed, Jun 03, 2009 at 10:23:06PM GMT, Steven Black [blacks@indiana.edu] said the following:
>
> Some applications think this is a good idea to do with
> their error dialogs.
>
> Some applications think this is a good idea to do with
> their error dialogs.
That's not cool. Sounds like Windows or something. What programs or
desktops are you talking about because I remember encountering this?
--
Mark Krenz
Bloomington Linux Users Group
http://www.bloomingtonlinux.org/
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Re: [BLUG] What have you done with Linux lately?
On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 4:14 PM, Beartooth <beartooth@beartooth.info> wrote:
I was wondering about Mint myself actually. Has anyone used it and found it to be noticeably better/bad/different than ubuntu?
(I hope gmail is formatting this right for bottom posting)
On Wed, 3 Jun 2009, Barry Schatz wrote:Wine has recently become able to install, launch, and run certain proprietary topo map software; Garmin MapSource and Maptech Appalachian Trail, but not Delorme nor Topo.com. Most recently, at long, long last, it finally managed also to get both to talk to a GPS.
Well, I know we have members. (174 officially on the list and most
replied to my spam)
We need discussions! What have you done with Linux or other free software lately? Any reinstalls? Who switched distros in the last six months and why? Was it worth it? Even if you only have time for a couple sentences, we all can benefit from your experiences.
Sometimes, that is. It does it under Fedora 10 on my desktop; but I have yet to get it to under Fedora 11 Preview on my laptop.
I made the mistake of buying one of the first of the ASUS EeePC machines -- which has long since proven too small for my eyes and fingers. I'll upgrade to a somewhat larger machine when I can afford it; meanwhile, I fiddle occasionally with installing one distro or another, trying to get one that not only runs well, but boots quickly enough to be worth using in waiting rooms, the only place the machine itself seems to have any promise for me.
There an amazing number of minimalist distros out there, some designed specifically for the EeePC and its ilk, some cultivating minimalism for its own sake -- such as Puppy and Mint, for instance. There are Parsix and DreamLinux and EasyPeasy, Moblin and TinyCore -- and versions of Fedora and Ubuntu ....
--
Beartooth Implacable, Curmudgeonly Codger Learning Linux
On the Internet, you can never tell who is a dog --
supposing you care -- but you can tell who has a mind.
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I was wondering about Mint myself actually. Has anyone used it and found it to be noticeably better/bad/different than ubuntu?
(I hope gmail is formatting this right for bottom posting)
Re: [BLUG] Alternative focus
On Wed, Jun 03, 2009 at 04:16:05PM -0400, Barry Schatz wrote:
> Officially, it's called "Focus stealing prevention" and it's an option
> in most major window managers. I couldn't tell you where to find it, but
> it should be there. Well, I can find it in Kde, but only because that's
> what I use. I'd be happy to help you get set up on one of the heavy
> desktop environments if you like.
> Officially, it's called "Focus stealing prevention" and it's an option
> in most major window managers. I couldn't tell you where to find it, but
> it should be there. Well, I can find it in Kde, but only because that's
> what I use. I'd be happy to help you get set up on one of the heavy
> desktop environments if you like.
Focus stealing prevention is a specific work-around for some
applications.
Focus stealing is when an application written without FFM in mind steals
focus when a window is created. In the worst examples of this, it steals
focus from the current application and then locks focus within that
application. Some applications think this is a good idea to do with
their error dialogs.
Even when using traditional click-to-raise/click-to-focus focus-stealing
becomes a pain in the ass when some application you're not currently
using on Workspace 3 decides to raise an error dialog, stealing your
focus, automatically causing you to switch from Workspace 1, and now
you've not only hit the space bar, closing the error dialog, you're also
typing in a totally different application.
What Chad's talking about is generally called "Focus Follows Mouse".
There are a number of variations upon this theme. Some of them have
similar names but different meanings.
For instance, in KDE (4, at least), this is configured through the
"Window Behavior" settings panel, in the "Window Behavior" section
the first tab is called "Focus".
There's a number of options here including:
Focus stealing prevention level: (none, low, normal, high, extreme)
Policy: (Click to Focus, Focus Follows Mouse, Focus Under Mouse,
Focus Strictly Under Mouse)
(checkbox) Raise, with the following delay: XXX ms
(checkbox) Delay focus by: XXX ms
(checkbox) Click raises active window
I think what KDE calls "Focus Follows Mouse" is called "Sloppy Focus"
by FVWM. (It has been a long time since I used FVWM.) What FVWM calls
"Focus Follows Mouse" would be closer to "Focus Under Mouse", or "Focus
Strictly Under Mouse". -- I'm not sure how these are different in KDE.)
How is it different? The biggest difference is the behavior when the
mouse is on the Desktop. FVWM doesn't use the Desktop much, and when
it does, it doesn't really have things that can use the keyboard on
the desktop.
In traditional Desktop-styled systems, you can have files and folders on
the desktop, and a number of keyboard-initiated actions are available --
for instance F2 to rename. Now, in KDE if you're using "Focus Follows
Mouse", and you move your mouse to the Desktop, the focus doesn't change
from the last window it was in. If you were using "Focus Strictly Under
Mouse", as soon as you moved to the Desktop, the focus would be the
Desktop, and not your previous window.
I'm a fan of Focus Follows Mouse. To get the best bang-for-the-buck, I
make sure I can raise and lower windows without activating them. (In
KDE, this is the 'Titlebar Actions' and 'Window Actions' tabs in the
earlier mentioned 'Window Behavior' settings.)
I've taken to keeping Click Raises Active Window turned on. It makes
things a little less weird if someone else needs to access my computer,
and it also prevents me from being totally useless in other OSes. It
means I can flip between two apps and type in to them easily, and if
I need to do clicking, I see the whole window. With the way I use my
system, that's generally what I want.
Cheers,
--
Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu> / KeyID: 8596FA8E
Fingerprint: 108C 089C EFA4 832C BF07 78C2 DE71 5433 8596 FA8E
[BLUG] Console-based podcatching and script-based dialogs
Relatively recently I migrated to a console-based podcatcher.
This is due, in part, to the current state of Amarok 2. Amarok has seen
a lot of changes in the migration to KDE 4.2. It's a complete rewrite,
and it promises to be really nice. However, right now it has zero
podcatching capabilities. (Truthfully, Banshee had better podcatching
capabilities than the Amarok 1.x line. However, that's GNOME.)
I wanted something light-weight. I wanted something with a near
transparent list of the URLs, as I expect to migrate back to Amarok when
it is ready.
There are two main contenders for this feature available in my distro's
package repository: hpodder and podget.
These are both similar to the 'bashpodder' podcatcher, except that's not
in my distro's package repository. I know it's a simple small script,
but by using tools that ship with my OS, I never need to deal with
updates. I consider it a security issue, as well as a laziness issue.
'hpodder' does all the work with a set of command-line options. The list
of podcasts are stored internally in a database. While it may work well,
it wasn't transparent enough for me. Some commands required running
first other commands to get the right values. It just seemed far too
over-complicated.
'podget' uses a plain-text 'serverlist' file to list the podcasts.
'podget' has a comment character in this file, so it is possible to
activate and deactivate podcasts. This allows me to find a podiobook
(audiobook sent by podcast), mark it as something I want to listen to,
and only activate it when I have the time to listen to it, and the space
on my laptop for it.
In Amarok 1.x I used a similar feature. There were podcasts for which I
never downloaded media, and which I didn't check for updates. They were
basically notes waiting for space and time.
This meant that 'podget' met my requirements better.
It's a nice text-based podcatcher. While I could put it in a crontab,
I'm usually tight enough on space that I prefer to run it manually.
Then I was left with no integration with Firefox, leaving me to copy
the URL by hand. That wouldn't do, so I whipped up a little script.
This leads to the second part. I wanted what I thought was a fairly
standard set to script-based dialog features for the script. It wasn't
supposed to be a fire-and-forget script. I needed things confirmed.
I needed dialogs.
I explored the following script-based dialog tools:
* X-based dialog tools:
* kdialog
* Xdialog
* zenity
* gtkdialog
* Console-based dialog tools:
* dialog
* whiptail
* tcdialog
* bash
Additionally, the script does have support for a blind hands-free mode.
This happens when there is no DISPLAY and the input is not a TTY. I call
this "auto" mode, and it can be explicitly requested. Auto mode takes
the default values and plugs it in to the serverlist with no feedback.
It doesn't activate the podcast, so the settings can be tweaked by hand
later.
I thought what I wanted out of a dialog tool was fairly
straight-forward.
kdialog is the dialog tool bundled with KDE. I used the version
included in my kdebase-bin package (which is KDE 4.2). As KDE is my
desktop of choice, it was what I started with. This impacted some of my
expectations with the other dialog tools.
My script asks questions, and expects the user to respond with yes/no
responses. It turns out, 'zenity' doesn't support this. 'zenity' only
has ok/cancel, and you can't change the button text to turn it in to
yes/no.
I could have rewritten my questions to fit with ok/cancel, except I
actually use yes/no/cancel when I ask about activating the podcast.
'Yes' activates it, 'No' adds it in an inactive state, and 'Cancel' does
not add an entry for it at all.
'zenity' just grew worse from there. I suppose if you explicitly wrote
a script planning to support zenity you could have your expectations
reasonably met with other dialog tools. If your expectations are that of
any other dialog tool, though, you'll find 'zenity' doesn't meet them.
Yes/no/cancel is problematic for a number of dialog tools. Most that
don't have an explicit button do support the feature by closing the
window explicitly.
I used kdialog's --error and --sorry message dialogs to generate message
boxes with an appropriate icon. This was frequently not available in
other options, but could be worked around by prefixing "Error:" or
"Sorry:" to the dialog message.
Most script-based dialog tools rely upon the command line to set things
up. Even when there is a config file feature, it is rarely the primary
mechanism used to configure the tool. The exception to this is 'gtkdialog',
which exclusively uses XML for configuration. (It does, however, support
reading the XML from an environment variable.)
'gtkdialog' clearly can not be a transparent drop-in relacement for any
other dialog-like tool. However, when you start looking at them, except
for very simple use cases, none of them can be transparently swapped
in/out. I use a support function to map my internal expectations to the
appropriate dialog commands.
'gtkdialog' has the capacity to produce some really complex, nice
looking dialogs. It has the capacity to use "stock images" for the
error and sorry icons, so even that could be handled. Unfortunately, it
expects you to source its output to get the variables in your script,
and it does not properly escape them. All it does is wrap double-quotes
around the string values, allowing for arbitrary command execution by
entering a string value like '" ; evil-command ; true "' (That is, you
type what is within the single-quotes.)
Needless to say, I take the 'gtkdialog' output and stuff it in a
variable which either gets grepped for explicit strings (in cases of
simple message boxes), or passed through sed (in cases of choices and
string input). The worst thing that can happen to me if I get bogus
input is my variable will be empty. -- If they enter double-quotes, I'll
get them. If they manage to enter a NL character (the only character
I treat as special, and it shouldn't be possible to enter), I get
whatever preceeded it.
This reminds me, those of you unfamiliar with BASH's <<< "$VAR" feature
should check it out. It is relatively new, but allows you to do things
like 'sed ... <<< "$VAR"' where otherwise you would need to do 'echo
"$VAR" | sed ...'.
For those unfamiliar with shell scripts and TTY-based dialog tools, some
dialog tools allow you to send the displayed screen to stderr, and the
dialog output to stdout. This allows constructs like VAR=`somedialog`
to work. This isn't supported on all UNIX-like operating systems, so it
should be avoided. (In addition to not being available for all dialog
tools.) These constructs work well for X-based tools, which have no
other use for stdout, but can bite you in the portability-ass if you
expect them to work everywhere for console-based tools.
This means you need to use a temporary file. I hate temporary files, but
it is the canonical method. You also need to be making your temporary
file in a safe manner. /tmp/$APPNAME.$$ is unsafe. I use tempfile, then
mktemp, then fallback to $APPNAME.$$.`hostname` if neither of those
tools are available. (The last is known unsafe, but also known to exist
everywhere.)
I use wget and sed to do an initial download of the feed to scoop the
title out of it, presenting it to the user.
Podget has a concept of grouping the podcasts by group or genre. I've
relatively recently started implementing support for presenting a menu
of the currently used genres, with the option of specifying a new one.
(They're pulled from the directories, so genres which have completed
titles sitting in them get found, but new genres which have never been
downloaded in to do not.)
The original 'dialog' command has a super sweet 'progressbox'
feature. (This is different than the 'gauge' feature which shows a
progress gauge. 'zenity' conflates these, calling its 'gauge' feature
'progress'.) Basically, it is a stdin tailbox that quits cleanly
when the pipe breaks. (Example: Using a command like `$PROG | dialog
--progressbox ...` 'dialog' displays the output of $PROG within a nice
looking 'dialog'-styled window and quits cleanly when $PROG finishes.)
Unfortunately, few other dialog tools seem to support this feature. It
allows me to offer to run 'podget' (if they activated the feed) and show
the output within a 'dialog'-style window. (I can just show the output
within a terminal, sure, but it isn't as pretty.)
Oh, 'tcdialog' appears to be a stripped down version of 'dialog' which
is bundled with TeX Live. (On my system it is in the 'texlive-base-bin'
package.) It is basically worthless, having fewer working features than
it actually documents in the --help.
In the end, I decided I could not support 'tcdialog' or 'zenity'.
My particular use case found Xdialog, while having all the core
features, generally was uglier than kdialog or gtkdialog. (In
particular, it lacks support for icons for sorry and error message. It
also has an unnatural fondness for fixed-width text.)
I really wanted to support 'whiptail'. I looked at it at some point,
and I distinctly remember it handling unknown screen sizes better than
dialog. That's no longer the case, though. I do support it, but 'dialog'
results in a better looking display. 'whiptail' favors text wrapping at
the max column size possible, while 'dialog' balances width and height
to generate a more visually appealing display.
Now, I know you saw me mention 'bash' as a supported option, and you may
be wondering what features are missing from it. In fact, it is easier
to support 'bash' than it is to support 'zenity'. I only ask questions
one at a time, so 'read' functions well there. And, for the selection of
group/genre, 'select' works well (it also includes the ability for the
user to type a new group/genre not present in the list). What it doesn't
do is any line-wrapping. This is pretty much a non-issue in the BASH
use-case, though. It means it supports all sizes of terminals equally,
and only relies on minimal termcap/terminfo support. Best of all, it
means it is serious when it says it only relies upon BASH.
Once I finish polishing it up, I intend to contribute it to the podget
folks.
... and here I thought I hadn't done much in Linux recently outside of
work...
--
Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu> / KeyID: 8596FA8E
Fingerprint: 108C 089C EFA4 832C BF07 78C2 DE71 5433 8596 FA8E
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Re: [BLUG] What have you done with Linux lately?
Quoting Barry Schatz <sorbetninja@gmail.com>:
> Gillis, Chad wrote:
>> Quoting Barry Schatz <sorbetninja@gmail.com>:
>>> My current adventure is upgrading my tower (desktop) to Kde 4.2.
>>> -Barry
>> Does anyone have settings in their window manager/desktop so that it
>> doesn't raise a window when the window gets focus? In other words,
>> whichever window's on the top stays on top even if you go and click on
>> another window or start typing in another window.
> Officially, it's called "Focus stealing prevention" and it's an option
> in most major window managers. I couldn't tell you where to find it, but
> it should be there. Well, I can find it in Kde, but only because that's
> what I use. I'd be happy to help you get set up on one of the heavy
> desktop environments if you like.
Okay thanks. That'll make it easier now that I know what term to
google. Thanks for the offer for the help too. Since I'd have more
than one window manager installed, I can foresee maybe some
difficulties on telling X which one to use. In my ~/.xsession, the
final command is "exec fvwm". Maybe it's just a matter of changing the
fvwm in that line to something else, and back again if I want to switch
back?
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Re: [BLUG] What have you done with Linux lately?
On Wed, 3 Jun 2009, Barry Schatz wrote:
> Well, I know we have members. (174 officially on the list and most
> replied to my spam)
>
> We need discussions! What have you done with Linux or other
> free software lately? Any reinstalls? Who switched distros in
> the last six months and why? Was it worth it? Even if you only
> have time for a couple sentences, we all can benefit from your
> experiences.
Wine has recently become able to install, launch, and run
certain proprietary topo map software; Garmin MapSource and
Maptech Appalachian Trail, but not Delorme nor Topo.com. Most
recently, at long, long last, it finally managed also to get
both to talk to a GPS.
Sometimes, that is. It does it under Fedora 10 on my
desktop; but I have yet to get it to under Fedora 11 Preview on
my laptop.
I made the mistake of buying one of the first of the ASUS
EeePC machines -- which has long since proven too small for my
eyes and fingers. I'll upgrade to a somewhat larger machine when
I can afford it; meanwhile, I fiddle occasionally with installing
one distro or another, trying to get one that not only runs well,
but boots quickly enough to be worth using in waiting rooms, the
only place the machine itself seems to have any promise for me.
There an amazing number of minimalist distros out there,
some designed specifically for the EeePC and its ilk, some
cultivating minimalism for its own sake -- such as Puppy and
Mint, for instance. There are Parsix and DreamLinux and
EasyPeasy, Moblin and TinyCore -- and versions of Fedora and
Ubuntu ....
--
Beartooth Implacable, Curmudgeonly Codger Learning Linux
On the Internet, you can never tell who is a dog --
supposing you care -- but you can tell who has a mind.
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Re: [BLUG] What have you done with Linux lately?
On Wed, Jun 03, 2009 at 09:06:55PM GMT, Gillis, Chad [rcgillis@indiana.edu] said the following:
>
> Okay that's good. I haven't come across it when using another computer,
> but I probably just didn't know how to go in and adjust the settings
> properly. I have come across where the window gains focus if you move
> the mouse over it, but then usually the window raises if you click on
> a button or click to insert the cursor somewhere.
>
>
> Okay that's good. I haven't come across it when using another computer,
> but I probably just didn't know how to go in and adjust the settings
> properly. I have come across where the window gains focus if you move
> the mouse over it, but then usually the window raises if you click on
> a button or click to insert the cursor somewhere.
>
Oh ok, maybe I misunderstood. If you want it so that it doesn't raise
the window when you click on it (first or middle mouse button) then you
may have a lot more trouble finding a desktop that supports that. As
far as I know, Gnome doesn't support doing that. But that doesn't mean
its not in some gconf setting somewhere or there isn't a hack.
That's the problem with using FVWM, you get used to being able to do
ANYTHING with your WM and that makes it hard to switch.
--
Mark Krenz
Bloomington Linux Users Group
http://www.bloomingtonlinux.org/
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Re: [BLUG] What have you done with Linux lately?
Quoting Mark Krenz <mark@slugbug.org>:
> Not sure about KDE, but Gnome has this feature. Its actually set by
> default to not raise the window if it gets focus, but you have to turn
> on "give window focus when mouse moves over it" for it to work the way
> you expect it too. Its a pretty popular feature so I'm guessing KDE and
> others will have it too.
Okay that's good. I haven't come across it when using another computer,
but I probably just didn't know how to go in and adjust the settings
properly. I have come across where the window gains focus if you move
the mouse over it, but then usually the window raises if you click on
a button or click to insert the cursor somewhere.
> I can't believe you're still using FVWM. There isn't anything wrong
> with that, but I figured almost everyone had migrated.
No worries :)
> I migrated once
> virtual desktop support was good in the desktop WMs. Do you still have
> to restart the window manager in order to update your config file
> settings with FVWM?
I actually started using FVWM after virtual desktop support for the big
desktop managers came along, and I started using FVWM a couple years
after I started using Linux. So it's doubly backward :) I do restart
FVWM whenever I change the config file. Maybe there's a better way, but
it just takes a second and it's never disturbed anything that's running
in the windows. In other words, it's not like having to restart the X
server or anything. And, as it turns out, I actually change it pretty
rarely.
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Re: [BLUG] What have you done with Linux lately?
On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 4:02 PM, Gillis, Chad <rcgillis@indiana.edu> wrote:
> Quoting Barry Schatz <sorbetninja@gmail.com>:
>>
>> My current adventure is upgrading my tower (desktop) to Kde 4.2.
>> -Barry
>
> I think this question is a ways out in left field, but we're on the topic of
> desktops, and this is something I've been wondering.
>
> Does anyone have settings in their window manager/desktop so that it doesn't
> raise a window when the window gets focus? In other words, whichever
> window's on the top stays on top even if you go and click on another window
> or start typing in another window.
>
> I have that set up in my window manager right now and have kind of gotten
> used to it. The window manager I'm using right now is fvwm. I originally
> thought it would be fun to learn and customize for the heck of it but I do
> it rarely enough that in the gaps between doing it I forget what I've learnt
> so I haven't gotten very far. I'm thinking of trying out one of the big
> desktops, but was wondering about this doesn't-raise-on-focus feature.
> Quoting Barry Schatz <sorbetninja@gmail.com>:
>>
>> My current adventure is upgrading my tower (desktop) to Kde 4.2.
>> -Barry
>
> I think this question is a ways out in left field, but we're on the topic of
> desktops, and this is something I've been wondering.
>
> Does anyone have settings in their window manager/desktop so that it doesn't
> raise a window when the window gets focus? In other words, whichever
> window's on the top stays on top even if you go and click on another window
> or start typing in another window.
>
> I have that set up in my window manager right now and have kind of gotten
> used to it. The window manager I'm using right now is fvwm. I originally
> thought it would be fun to learn and customize for the heck of it but I do
> it rarely enough that in the gaps between doing it I forget what I've learnt
> so I haven't gotten very far. I'm thinking of trying out one of the big
> desktops, but was wondering about this doesn't-raise-on-focus feature.
Kind of.
I have mine set up to switch focus when the mouse moves over a new
window, and when it switches focus *that* way, the newly focused
window is not raised. It still raises windows when focused if I
*click* on them. (it takes a while to get used to this, but it lets me
do a lot of multi-window stuff more comfortably).
On GNOME, that's under System -> Preferences -> Windows.
Simón
P.S. My latest project has been writing some rocket-launcher array
controlling software in Python that uses pyrocket as its backend.
(Think cheap, kinda crappy Dream Cheeky rocket launchers, of the ilk
woot was selling recently; they've been discontinued from thinkgeek,
but they were the original rocket launcher you could find there. We've
got 11 launchers altogether between 4 of us.)
A couple of FWLUG members (including my boss) got a SOAP server
infrastructure set up so that an arbitrary number of rocket launchers
plugged into an arbitrary number of networked computers can be
controlled from one central place. I personally have been working on
leveraging that infrastructure and, by describing the rocket launchers
spatially and doing some simple trig, be able to have arbitrarily
large arrays of launchers aim semi-intelligently in unison.
Imagine a half-dozen USB rocket launchers (arbitrary formation; it
could be a line of them, a cluster of them, even individual ones
scattered around the room) all moving to aim at the same spot in the
room in unison. Now imagine an unsuspecting cat lying there. Then, for
effect, imagine that cat jumping about 3 feet straight up. ;-)
Next, we're going to work on a GUI; probably with Python's turtle
graphics library partly because it's ideally set up for the types of
things we want to do and partly because I'll need to wrap my head
around that library to be able to teach with it next year.
Simón
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Re: [BLUG] What have you done with Linux lately?
On Wed, 3 Jun 2009, Gillis, Chad wrote:
> Does anyone have settings in their window manager/desktop so that it doesn't
> raise a window when the window gets focus? In other words, whichever
> window's on the top stays on top even if you go and click on another window
> or start typing in another window.
in icewm you can right click on the title bar and set 'layer' to one of:
menu
above dock
dock
on top
normal
below
desktop
this is useful for example for watching a movie in the corner of the
screen while you do your business, or looking at one window and typing in
another on a small monitor.
there's also a global setting in prefs
RaiseOnFocus=1 # 0/1
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Re: [BLUG] What have you done with Linux lately?
On Wed, Jun 03, 2009 at 08:02:29PM GMT, Gillis, Chad [rcgillis@indiana.edu] said the following:
> Quoting Barry Schatz <sorbetninja@gmail.com>:
>
> Does anyone have settings in their window manager/desktop so that it
> doesn't raise a window when the window gets focus? In other words,
> whichever window's on the top stays on top even if you go and click on
> another window or start typing in another window.
>
Not sure about KDE, but Gnome has this feature. Its actually set by
default to not raise the window if it gets focus, but you have to turn
on "give window focus when mouse moves over it" for it to work the way
you expect it too. Its a pretty popular feature so I'm guessing KDE and
others will have it too.
> Quoting Barry Schatz <sorbetninja@gmail.com>:
>
> Does anyone have settings in their window manager/desktop so that it
> doesn't raise a window when the window gets focus? In other words,
> whichever window's on the top stays on top even if you go and click on
> another window or start typing in another window.
>
Not sure about KDE, but Gnome has this feature. Its actually set by
default to not raise the window if it gets focus, but you have to turn
on "give window focus when mouse moves over it" for it to work the way
you expect it too. Its a pretty popular feature so I'm guessing KDE and
others will have it too.
I can't believe you're still using FVWM. There isn't anything wrong
with that, but I figured almost everyone had migrated. I migrated once
virtual desktop support was good in the desktop WMs. Do you still have
to restart the window manager in order to update your config file
settings with FVWM?
Bottom posted for your pleasure.
--
Mark Krenz
Bloomington Linux Users Group
http://www.bloomingtonlinux.org/
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Re: [BLUG] What have you done with Linux lately?
Gillis, Chad wrote:
> Quoting Barry Schatz <sorbetninja@gmail.com>:
>> My current adventure is upgrading my tower (desktop) to Kde 4.2.
>> -Barry
>
> I think this question is a ways out in left field, but we're on the
> topic of desktops, and this is something I've been wondering.
>
> Does anyone have settings in their window manager/desktop so that it
> doesn't raise a window when the window gets focus? In other words,
> whichever window's on the top stays on top even if you go and click on
> another window or start typing in another window.
>
> I have that set up in my window manager right now and have kind of
> gotten used to it. The window manager I'm using right now is fvwm. I
> originally thought it would be fun to learn and customize for the heck
> of it but I do it rarely enough that in the gaps between doing it I
> forget what I've learnt so I haven't gotten very far. I'm thinking of
> trying out one of the big desktops, but was wondering about this
> doesn't-raise-on-focus feature.
>
Officially, it's called "Focus stealing prevention" and it's an option
in most major window managers. I couldn't tell you where to find it, but
it should be there. Well, I can find it in Kde, but only because that's
what I use. I'd be happy to help you get set up on one of the heavy
desktop environments if you like.
> Quoting Barry Schatz <sorbetninja@gmail.com>:
>> My current adventure is upgrading my tower (desktop) to Kde 4.2.
>> -Barry
>
> I think this question is a ways out in left field, but we're on the
> topic of desktops, and this is something I've been wondering.
>
> Does anyone have settings in their window manager/desktop so that it
> doesn't raise a window when the window gets focus? In other words,
> whichever window's on the top stays on top even if you go and click on
> another window or start typing in another window.
>
> I have that set up in my window manager right now and have kind of
> gotten used to it. The window manager I'm using right now is fvwm. I
> originally thought it would be fun to learn and customize for the heck
> of it but I do it rarely enough that in the gaps between doing it I
> forget what I've learnt so I haven't gotten very far. I'm thinking of
> trying out one of the big desktops, but was wondering about this
> doesn't-raise-on-focus feature.
>
Officially, it's called "Focus stealing prevention" and it's an option
in most major window managers. I couldn't tell you where to find it, but
it should be there. Well, I can find it in Kde, but only because that's
what I use. I'd be happy to help you get set up on one of the heavy
desktop environments if you like.
-Barry
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Re: [BLUG] What have you done with Linux lately?
Quoting Barry Schatz <sorbetninja@gmail.com>:
> My current adventure is upgrading my tower (desktop) to Kde 4.2.
> -Barry
> My current adventure is upgrading my tower (desktop) to Kde 4.2.
> -Barry
I think this question is a ways out in left field, but we're on the
topic of desktops, and this is something I've been wondering.
Does anyone have settings in their window manager/desktop so that it
doesn't raise a window when the window gets focus? In other words,
whichever window's on the top stays on top even if you go and click on
another window or start typing in another window.
I have that set up in my window manager right now and have kind of
gotten used to it. The window manager I'm using right now is fvwm. I
originally thought it would be fun to learn and customize for the heck
of it but I do it rarely enough that in the gaps between doing it I
forget what I've learnt so I haven't gotten very far. I'm thinking of
trying out one of the big desktops, but was wondering about this
doesn't-raise-on-focus feature.
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Re: [BLUG] What have you done with Linux lately?
I'll bite. I checked out the latest version (0.10.2) of Stellarium
(Astronomy software) on Ubuntu 9.04 and its much improved over the last
version I used. It now has a better menu system, configuration windows,
etc. Someone basically went in and did a facelift. You should check it
out if you are into stargazing. Also, version 1.5 of Neverball and
Neverputt come with a lot of new levels.
(Astronomy software) on Ubuntu 9.04 and its much improved over the last
version I used. It now has a better menu system, configuration windows,
etc. Someone basically went in and did a facelift. You should check it
out if you are into stargazing. Also, version 1.5 of Neverball and
Neverputt come with a lot of new levels.
I've also been using Wine a lot recently. One interesting thing was
that I bought a MIDI enabled keyboard recently so that I could play it
with software instruments. Not only was I able to run Reason music
software through Wine, but I could route MIDI to it and get the keyboard
to play the virtual instruments in Reason on Linux. I think its really
cool when stuff like that works.
Mark
On Wed, Jun 03, 2009 at 06:34:17PM GMT, Barry Schatz [sorbetninja@gmail.com] said the following:
> Well, I know we have members. (174 officially on the list and most
> replied to my spam)
>
> We need discussions! What have you done with Linux or other free
> software lately? Any reinstalls? Who switched distros in the last six
> months and why? Was it worth it? Even if you only have time for a couple
> sentences, we all can benefit from your experiences.
>
> I'll start.
>
> My current adventure is upgrading my tower (desktop) to Kde 4.2. I use
> Kde 4 on my laptops because I don't mind if I experimental packages
> break them, but my tower is strictly Debian testing. Except for
> Ktorrent, I didn't use any Kde4 apps on my tower until a couple nights ago.
>
> Due to a very custom setup, I had to use a combination of apt-get,
> deborphan, and apt-show-versions to get to where Kaboom would import my
> settings. Even with my configuration migrated to Kde4, it needed a lot
> of tweaking. Settings optimized for Kde3 won't feel right in Kde4. I
> ended up going through all the config screens anyway. The defaults are
> perfectly usable, but I like to configure everything to work best for /me/.
>
> I didn't save a screenshot before the migration, and I wish I did (I
> would like to compare old and new). The layout of everything was simple
> and intuitive (for me). The new layout is nice too, though. Everything
> feels clean and fresh. Desktop effects work better than before, and
> transparency doesn't have gross memory leaks. I lost my convenient app
> launchers in the transition, but krunner is so slick now that I don't
> feel like recreating them.
>
> If you're interested in Kde4, I recommend it highly. The 4.0 and 4.1
> releases were rough, but 4.2 is ready for human consumption. If you want
> more detail on using Debian's apt tools (or using Debian in general),
> I'm happy to help.
>
> -Barry
>
> _______________________________________________
> BLUG mailing list
> BLUG@linuxfan.com
> http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
>
--
Mark Krenz
Bloomington Linux Users Group
http://www.bloomingtonlinux.org/
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[BLUG] What have you done with Linux lately?
Well, I know we have members. (174 officially on the list and most
replied to my spam)
replied to my spam)
We need discussions! What have you done with Linux or other free
software lately? Any reinstalls? Who switched distros in the last six
months and why? Was it worth it? Even if you only have time for a couple
sentences, we all can benefit from your experiences.
I'll start.
My current adventure is upgrading my tower (desktop) to Kde 4.2. I use
Kde 4 on my laptops because I don't mind if I experimental packages
break them, but my tower is strictly Debian testing. Except for
Ktorrent, I didn't use any Kde4 apps on my tower until a couple nights ago.
Due to a very custom setup, I had to use a combination of apt-get,
deborphan, and apt-show-versions to get to where Kaboom would import my
settings. Even with my configuration migrated to Kde4, it needed a lot
of tweaking. Settings optimized for Kde3 won't feel right in Kde4. I
ended up going through all the config screens anyway. The defaults are
perfectly usable, but I like to configure everything to work best for /me/.
I didn't save a screenshot before the migration, and I wish I did (I
would like to compare old and new). The layout of everything was simple
and intuitive (for me). The new layout is nice too, though. Everything
feels clean and fresh. Desktop effects work better than before, and
transparency doesn't have gross memory leaks. I lost my convenient app
launchers in the transition, but krunner is so slick now that I don't
feel like recreating them.
If you're interested in Kde4, I recommend it highly. The 4.0 and 4.1
releases were rough, but 4.2 is ready for human consumption. If you want
more detail on using Debian's apt tools (or using Debian in general),
I'm happy to help.
-Barry
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[BLUG] Re: Ping - Ack
Another linux amateur in the county....
--
Arthur D. Haldeman
IT Consultant - Networks & Security
Lightyear Wireless - Independent Rep
email art.haldeman@gmail.com
phone 812.320.4546
On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 4:32 PM, <blug-request@cs.indiana.edu> wrote:
Send BLUG mailing list submissions to
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When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of BLUG digest..."
Today's Topics:
1. Ping (Barry Schatz)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 16:25:11 -0400
From: Barry Schatz <sorbetninja@gmail.com>
Subject: [BLUG] Ping
To: Bloomington LINUX Users Group <blug@cs.indiana.edu>
Message-ID: <4A1DA1A7.30809@gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
There has been no activity on the list or in the users group in a long
time. How many people are still on the list? If you get this, reply to
the list so I know you're out there.
-Barry
--
Arthur D. Haldeman
IT Consultant - Networks & Security
Lightyear Wireless - Independent Rep
email art.haldeman@gmail.com
phone 812.320.4546
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