A New Window Manager For Xfce ?

[loup-vaillant]

I saw the last videos, which show the use of XFCE with the Pandora. It doesn't work well with the stylus and the small screen. Currently, the only real alternative I am aware of is Pmenu. This is certainly a great choice for casual users, but I see the Pandora as a full computer (minus a few FLOPS).

So, I'd like to propose the use of Xmonad with Bluetile. Xmonad is a tiling window manager, which minimizes the use of the mouse, and fits tiny screens very well. Bluetile makes Xmonad suitable for users more used to Metacity, or other classic window managers. Their use doesn't mean you have to drop XFCE. I myself use it with GNOME with all the bells an whistles.

Of course, we must overcome some problems:

1. Xmonad is written in Haskell, and requires GHC (Glasgow Haskell Compiler). Compilation for ARM may not be trivial.
2. Xmonad is configured in Haskell, so user configuration would require either building Xmonad from the desktop (requiring an easy to use cross compilation facility) or putting GHC directly in the Pandora (requiring (too) much memory). There may be a way however, to make Xmonad partially configurable (key bindings, launchers) through a simple text file that won't require any recompilation.
3. We need a suitable mod key. Of course, Bluetile makes Xmonad usable with the mouse only, but eventually, when you get the habit, key bindings are best, especially with the intuitive gaming keys the Pandora is blessed with. The "Windows" key would have been ideal, but it may not be practical for the Pandora to have one.

Anyway, the ultimate solution may come from another window manager. I just felt Xmonad was the right one, because, well, I am using it right now.

Note: I'm not the first one to mention Xmonad in this forum. I just wanted to formalize the proposition. So, what do you think?

 

[lulzfish]

I'm fine with whatever the OP team likes, though I want to try "awesome" window manager as well, I believe it's configured / written in Lua, which is clearly several times cooler than Haskell, and easily portable wherever a GNU C compiler lives.

But if OP thinks this is usable, and they can make it work.. go for it.

 

[skeezix]

You can try any WM/DM you want; we're just going to ship with xfce as its stable and useful and pretty good, without being too heavy; we ran into a lot of instability in WMs over the development period, so settled on xfce.

As its trivial to build apps for the machine, you're certainly encouraged to try 50 different environments on yours however, and package 'em up for everyone else

jeff

 

[Tempel]

1. Xmonad is written in Haskell, and requires GHC (Glasgow Haskell Compiler). Compilation for ARM may not be trivial.
2. Xmonad is configured in Haskell, so user configuration would require either building Xmonad from the desktop (requiring an easy to use cross compilation facility) or putting GHC directly in the Pandora (requiring (too) much memory). There may be a way however, to make Xmonad partially configurable (key bindings, launchers) through a simple text file that won't require any recompilation.
3. We need a suitable mod key. Of course, Bluetile makes Xmonad usable with the mouse only, but eventually, when you get the habit, key bindings are best, especially with the intuitive gaming keys the Pandora is blessed with. The "Windows" key would have been ideal, but it may not be practical for the Pandora to have one.

GHC is not in the Angstrom repositories, but I managed to find it compiled for ARM in the Debian repositories, and some googling came up with a few mentions of cross-compilation, so it seems technically possible. And I recall seeing Xmonad running on an OpenMoko phone, so power to run it should be fine (though I don't know how it was for space or compiling new configurations).

I think the real challenge is in usability. Haven't tried Bluetile, but what makes me enjoy Xmonad is efficient screen usage and keyboard control. Pandora, however, has a small screen, making me want to just use one window at a time; most any WM can do that, so there goes the first benefit. It also has a keyboard that's tailored more towards thumb-typing, so it's not going to be very quick to use, or easy to enter the key combinations used in Xmonad (Mod-Shift-Enter is a little impractical with two thumbs, or even a whole cramped-up hand); there goes the other benefit.

You mention that xfce doesn't appear to work well with the small touchscreen, but I really think the solution to that is just some GTK tweaking. Larger buttons and adjustments to what registers as clicks will probably be all it takes to make it wonderful.

But, y'know, if someone gets Xmonad working, I'll still be first in line to try it.

 

[atomicthumbs]

The problem with tiling window managers is that most people don't have experience with them.

 

[loup-vaillant]

The problem with tiling window managers is that most people don't have experience with them.

That is precisely why I mentioned Bluetile. It makes Xmonad suitable for even a Windows® Newbie. The problem is that it wastes a bit of the screen while doing so.

 

[loup-vaillant]

As its trivial to build apps for the machine, you're certainly encouraged to try 50 different environments on yours however, and package 'em up for everyone else

jeff

OK, so that settles it.
I'll probably do that, though not before the second batch (which I hope will be out before next summer (?)). Most probably, someone will get quicker.

 

[mali]

You can try any WM/DM you want; we're just going to ship with xfce as its stable and useful and pretty good, without being too heavy; we ran into a lot of instability in WMs over the development period, so settled on xfce.

As its trivial to build apps for the machine, you're certainly encouraged to try 50 different environments on yours however, and package 'em up for everyone else

jeff

I didn't follow the discussion recently and I have a question:
Why was matchbox dropped?

 

[cosurgi]

I use sawfish everywhere. It's written in lisp, and I'm one of its maintainers I tell ya, sawfish is the best wm on the World

 

[dflemstr]

Guys...
I'm sorry to have to cut it to you. KWin is the best WM in the world.
(With tiling support AND figgin tab support it beats 'em all)
If this came as a surprise to you, well, I guess there's nothing else to do but to get used to it. Oh, and you all have to install KWin the first thing you do on your Pandoras now, of course, considering that it's the best...
Again, sorry if you lived under the illusion that your favorite window manager was better.

 

[grasshoppir]

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Comparison_of_Tiling_Window_Managers#Comparison_Table

xmonad is great and all, too bad about the haskell thing dwm or scrot perhaps?

 

[Sphinxter]

Not buying the basic premise for this thread, 'It doesn't work well with the stylus and the small screen.', XFCE should work fine with a banana and a few adjustments.

 

[dentrado]

PyTyle is a possibility, it's not a wm in itself, it's just a tiling manager that works togheter with any EMWH compliant wm, like xfwm (xfces wm). It's written in python so it should be easy to get it running. You can turn on and off tiling per workspace, it has similar behavior to Xmonad, and many tilling options. I have used it a little on xfce and it seems to work good.

 

[renwils]

I had given some consideration to using a tiling window manager on the pandora, but I don't really see the benefit on such a small screen.

 

[Sphinxter]

The thing about all those is they're window managers, XFCE is a desktop.

 

[Tempel]

The thing about all those is they're window managers, XFCE is a desktop.

Which is why it's trivial to swap it in with almost no changes to the system. I, and apparently the OP, use Xmonad (WM) within Gnome (DM), by simply editing a config file to use a different executable as the WM (instead of the Gnome default, Metacity). This is very possible within XFCE too; Xmonad even includes some easy config settings to work well with it.

 

[Etinin]

XFCE FTW.
I use it even on my Core 2 Quad box.

 

[second exodous]

I'm trying out Bluetile on a x86 Ubuntu 9.10 install. To install it I found a guide here. The guide is pretty straight forward, I just copied and pasted into a terminal.

I've tried tiling window managers before, but I think this one is by far the easiest to use. You do loose a sliver of screen on the left of your screen though, I really don't like that. It wouldn't be that bad if you could dock it in the tool bar or something. I think you still need the tool bar also, I need to play around with it more.

 

[atomicthumbs]

Tabbed windows are awesome and I wonder why nobody had the idea before KDE.

 

[dentrado]

Tabbed windows are awesome and I wonder why nobody had the idea before KDE.

They have, there are several windowmanagers that support tabs. Pekwm, fluxbox, and compiz are the ones I can remember now, but there are others too I think.

edit: the first to use tabs was PWM.