Xfce 4.6 / Linux DE Thoughts
The latest version of my Desktop Environment of choice, Xfce 4.6, was released. It certainly isn’t a huge revolution, much more of an evolution release. It’s not something that’s going to cause longtime KDE or gnome users to switch because of. But for longtime Xfce users, it’s a nice progression and improves upon stability considerably. The installer they have is fantastic (making it almost pointless to use your package manager), and the entire upgrade went without problems. Hats off to the Xfce team.
In a similar vein, I had to use Windows (Vista) today for the majority of the day because it’s the only thing I had on me. Windows has some catching up to do. I’m not talking about the whiz-bang factor. I think I’ve had compiz installed on my machines for all of about 10 minutes in total. I’m talking about usability.
Sure, Linux is still lacking in the unified “control panel” type configuration, although all of the major DE’s are making major steps in that regard. But on usability things, concepts like (and I’m going to use the Xfce names as that’s what I’m most familiar with) snap to border, focus stealing prevention, smart window placement, heck, even multiple workspaces. I get on a windows box and it just drives me nuts when I go to stick a window in the corner and I just ever-so-slightly miss, and part of the app is hidden offscreen until I notice. Or when I open up a new mail window in thunderbird in a dual monitor setup and, for some reason, it sticks the new mail window in the completely different monitor that I’m using. And don’t get me started on focus stealing. And why can’t I maximize a window horizontally with a keyboard command?
The more I’m away from Windows, the more convinced I become that Microsoft’s edge and “ease of use” comes more from its marketplace advantage than technical prowess.
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Yeah, Windows’ window management is a little too simplified. I’d trade off some of its smoothness for that. OSX is just as bad, though. I really wonder sometimes why they don’t have sticky windows, or why I can’t just have a solid border for them to bang into.
I guess one thing I like is that I can pretty much bang the mouse to the top or bottom of the screen, and then just slide left to right to click on what I want. I remember when Gnome lacked that in Metacity, and people were bugging out. I didn’t even notice or appreciate it until they pointed it out. I guess it’s also nice that Vista also finally has an Alt-tab to the desktop.
It’s also pretty annoying setting up keyboard shortcuts. I still can’t get putty to launch, for some unknown reason under Vista. Stupid black-box OS.
Agreed on pretty much everything you said. The lack of simple keyboard launches mystifies me. I try use the mouse as little as possible.
I finally got putty to launch. I had it set for Ctrl+Alt+T, which does nothing. Set to Ctrl+Alt+P after putting the shortcut in the Start Menu, and works perfectly. wtf, mate.