Does Anyone Else Really Like The Rox Deskop?

[cb88]

here is a xoo screenshot of what rox might look like on the pandora

of course you can add applets to the panel for a clock monitors desktop switchers etc...

programs minimise as icons on the desktop which would be pretty neat on a handheld also i think shortcuts can be setup for key combinations (never done it myself though)

rox handles the wallpaper also

pretty much all file operations even extracting a file can be done via drag n' drop

here is a concept screenshot of rox in xoo with the pandora skin the windowmanager is xfwm4 but something else could be used like blackbox etc....

compared to other desktops like gnome xfce and kde rox still offers a good amount of addons and is way smaller. some people say rox is ugly .... but the fact is that rox is only as ugly as your gtk theme just pick out a nice gtk theme and it looks great


link to rox webpage: http://roscidus.com/desktop/

one more thing rox doesn't need a menu system by default since it has appdirs which are program launchers that you can organise in folders however you want they aren't too hard to make either after you know how it works

 

[TaG]

Now you need to see what the screen would look like real size. The text on Audacious is already small. Take the full screen shot @ 800*480 and feed that through Arialia's app to see it it is still reasonable. As we keep seeing with the various mock ups, the resolution is plenty but the screen size determines what you can read.

 

[desowin]

Yes, I think rox would look very well...

but audacious, hmmm maybe audacious2 default ui (or you could create ui specially for pandora with aud2)...but audacious2 is very early in development.

wa2 skins isn't somehting you would want on pandora screen, I think.

 

[Parkydr]

I like rox, but then I still like the RiscOs desktop on my A3000

 

[Sphinxter]

Rox might be rather excellent. The drag and drop centric nature with the touchscreen... but I'm just repeating myself.

 

[MilanC]

Yup. Seems nice.

 

[cb88]

tried to resize the audacious fonts but.... basically meh...

i think the font there should be pretty readable but arialia's links are down atm so can't check

there are some people who seem to be against rox because it is not gnome or not kde... what i say is what is stoping you from adding say gnome-panel nothing you just add it to your startup script and you have a fast gnome desktop with rox-filer so basically loose some gnome bloat and gain some better drag n' drop support and a neat way to multitask without stealing screen area

what rox is offering here is a best of both worlds scenario where you have a simple interface that is also the advanced interface

all we would have to do is create links on the launch bar for the program categories and put launchers in them and rox automatically uses the smallest size window to display a folder so it defaults to using only what screen space it needs ... and the rox-panel auto hides if you want so it is not an issue

to launch a rom you should be able to just drag it over the launcher in emus that support starting directly from the command line and the same goes for other programs and files too... also files can be given associations to whatever program you want pretty quickly

people keep clamoring for a simple style gui that does loads of stuff (conflict of intrest IMO) or a desktop UI that is severely bloated .... rox solves these issues by being a full desktop (multitasking, file manager, shortcut bar etc...) that is VERY lightweight and offers the launchers that a simple UI (basically just a launch menu) would have

informative links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of...op_environments
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROX_Desktop
http://roscidus.com/desktop/FAQ

 

[ashadocat]

Well I like it. I say we add it as an option. I also suggest multiple gui packages (or something like the session chooser in GDM)

 

[Sphinxter]

I'd forgotten how rox handles zeroinstall and the appdir interface, might be perfect for loading a card with an entire package on it and quickly locating all executables etc.

 

[christo930]

here is a xoo screenshot of what rox might look like on the pandora

of course you can add applets to the panel for a clock monitors desktop switchers etc...

programs minimise as icons on the desktop which would be pretty neat on a handheld also i think shortcuts can be setup for key combinations (never done it myself though)

rox handles the wallpaper also

pretty much all file operations even extracting a file can be done via drag n' drop

here is a concept screenshot of rox in xoo with the pandora skin the windowmanager is xfwm4 but something else could be used like blackbox etc....

compared to other desktops like gnome xfce and kde rox still offers a good amount of addons and is way smaller. some people say rox is ugly .... but the fact is that rox is only as ugly as your gtk theme just pick out a nice gtk theme and it looks great


link to rox webpage: http://roscidus.com/desktop/

one more thing rox doesn't need a menu system by default since it has appdirs which are program launchers that you can organise in folders however you want they aren't too hard to make either after you know how it works



I think it makes it look too much like a computer. I, myself like the UMPC stuff with the Pandora, but other people would probably like more a console look for the default screen? I think the gp2x interface is pretty good (other than file management, which kinda sux). The jxd 301 also looks like (I've never used it) a console type interface. Maybe it would be good as a second screen, after the user decides to use it as a UMPC. Like a simple menu system could come up upon power up that says something like, Play games, Listen to music, View Pictures, Read Books, Watch a movie, Go to desktop
Then go to desktop would take you to the rox desktop.
Does that seem workable and useful?

Chris

 

[cb88]

is there anything preventing us from using the appdirs by default? it shouldn't be too hard to get the simple gui to understand them or at least the important parts

oh and check this out rox + fbpanel from the rox screen shots page :

 

[sindbad]

I tend to be skeptical of anything GTK in a handheld, but ROX may actually be fine. We'll see.

 

[FRZ]

Looks neat.

 

[cb88]

8050 root 20 0 48416 11m 7340 S 0.0 2.2 0:00.28 ROX-Filer

so that means that on my system rox is occupying 11mb of ram

between gnome panel and nautilus gnome is occupying at least 26mb and xfce is not that much lighter than gnome

meh... I am almost sure to switch back to debian when lenny comes out ubuntu stinks when it comes to ram usage

 

[danboid]

rox is the best choice of desktop environment for the pandora, yes. I know because I've tried all the popular desktop and window manager combos out on the Zaurus. XFCE/Thunar was way too sluggish on the Z and I don't think it will be that much better on the Pandora in all honesty. As already stated, GNOME and KDE consume way too much RAM when all you have is 128MB in total- the kernel alone will swallow 16/20MB of that, then you've got X and all that other stuff. The devs can't possibly write a whole new desktop from scratch in a month or two so basically we have 3 choices- ROX, LXDE or E17. A rox/E17 combo could work really well.

2 important things need to be done for this environment to work well though

1- Hack rox so that you can right-click / copy, then right click/ paste files and directories in the way that all windows/mac/gnome/kde users are used to. Dragging stuff between windows on a little touchscreen is awkward at best- I've been there done this on the Zaurus

2- We need a lightweight menu/ toolbar to accompany rox (and fluxbox/openbox/e17 or whatever) that is well integrated with whatever package manager the distro uses so that when you install a new package, a shortcut automatically gets added to the menu, just as is the case with most GUI when you're running GNOME/ KDE on any decent distro.

Good examples of rox based PC distros are crunchbang, antiX and Puppy. Very importantly antiX comes with the wicd wifi connection tool and the handy mepis config centre, which is about the nearest I've seen to Yast / mcc for Debian. All three have room for improvement and would need to be tweaked for Pand of course.

I cannot stress the importance or the above combined with a fast, simple, reliable package manager, wicd for wifi duties, clear fonts and sensible defaults in the file manager and other key apps. Many desktop apps need certain windows tweaked to work well and display properly on these small desktops.

 

[cb88]

there is an xdg-menu app for rox pretty sure it is python based no port needed

rox-desktop scales up very well too... right now i see absolutely no usability issues since i have a system tray taskbar

even compiz and emerald work very well with rox see below not that it will work on pandora (depends on the drivers i guess) it just goes to show the flexiblitiy of rox.

 

[christo930]

there is an xdg-menu app for rox pretty sure it is python based no port needed

rox-desktop scales up very well too... right now i see absolutely no usability issues since i have a system tray taskbar

even compiz and emerald work very well with rox see below not that it will work on pandora (depends on the drivers i guess) it just goes to show the flexiblitiy of rox.





Is there going to be a way to play games without getting involved in all this? The descriptions in this page sound like a desktop computer. Will there be a way to just turn it on and play a game like the gp2x?

Chris

 

[Parkydr]

I tend to be skeptical of anything GTK in a handheld, but ROX may actually be fine. We'll see.

I have GTK apps running on my GP2X, should be no problem on the Pandora.

 

[cb88]

i have been mostly talking about the advanced interface.... the simple one will (going from cragix's comments) be an SDL based app launcher with maybe multitaking switcher ?

so yeah of course it will mostlikely boot up to the simple interface.... I think that would be good anyway

 

[cb88]

my rox taskbar: with the device and tasklist shrunk


the device and tasklist expanded with showing how programs are grouped


on the pandora the fonts would be much larger of course