Please Excuse My Ignorance

[Miner49er]

Thread link please. I don't remember the team mentioning this, especially as it's a massive change really...

Forum search "xfce" yields:
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/50218-kde-on-arm/page__st__15__p__768617__hl__xfce__fromsearch__1&#entry768617

I'm really pleased about XFCE4 being used instead of enlightenment. I never really got on with enl. XFCE4 does everything you need - I use it on my server at home, icewm etc didn't quite do all I needed (or wanted I suppose...)

 

[joseluisjazz]

I still don't know how I'll do it, but I intend to use openbox (webpage). Simple, fast and versatile, useful for a small screen.

Now, there's one comment that left me thinking:

(...) since you're going to load GTK+ into memory anyway if you use, say, Firefox or Pidgin, you're not saving any resources by going with a lighter WM.

Anyway, I'll keep on using openbox if I see that everything works as it should.

 

[juniorm33]

I'm really pleased about XFCE4 being used instead of enlightenment. I never really got on with enl. XFCE4 does everything you need - I use it on my server at home, icewm etc didn't quite do all I needed (or wanted I suppose...)

Could you give some details please?

 

[sebt3]

Could you give some details please?

It's a matter of word.
icewm etc are window manager as in it manage window, you can launch program that's it. console wil be required.
Enlightement is call by its developper an desktop shell. It's between a window manager and a desktop environnement. Very customisable but not enough application integrate well.
XFCE is a light destop environnement, It should have most feature available within it's GUI. you may rely occasionnally on console or the dev will have a few things to code to put the pandora full user friendly without any console use.
KDE and gnome are full blown destop environnement.

 

[Miner49er]

I'm really pleased about XFCE4 being used instead of enlightenment. I never really got on with enl. XFCE4 does everything you need - I use it on my server at home, icewm etc didn't quite do all I needed (or wanted I suppose...)

Could you give some details please?

Well, it's difficult. It's a matter of opinion I suppose. I like the fact that XFCE4 appears to be more like gnome, and a bit more functional than openbox etc. I never managed to setup Alt+F2 to run a command with openbox...YMMV though.

 

[Etinin]

XFCE is very good. I changed to it after KDE 4 ruined all my KDE 3 settings and I found it as functional as KDE.

 

[Aninhumer]

Yes, xfce is the current target with E17 as fallback.

I forget if QT libs are in the target image build, but I'll find out. We want lots of libs in there of course, to make porting easier and less load on the .pnd's.

jeff

Thread link please. I don't remember the team mentioning this, especially as it's a massive change really...

The little curved arrow on the quote header links to the original post.

 

[juniorm33]

Thanks I didn't actually realise that!

 

[ThaDSman]

It's a good question what does each WM bring to the table compared to the one before it.
I've never asked before because I just felt I could google it and read up on them if I was really that interested. But since it's now out there, anyone with preferences and knowledge on them like to enlighten us? Sounds like an obvious point but especially where Pandora is concerned.

Yes it would be nice if someone could shed some light on all the Window Managers available for Pandora and their capabilities. Is there something more for the few of us that like a lot of eye-candy?

ps. Woah I feel dumb,after some googling I just learned that Desktop Environments are not the same as Window Managers.

 

[atomicthumbs]

I might use ion3

 

[Dead1nside]

Targeting XFCE is a good idea in my opinion. For the novice user it'll provide more functionality and perhaps a greater chance of applications being properly integrated like NetworkManager and Blueman (that are quite essential for the Bluetooth 3G-phone tethering).

Although having the option of an even lighter-weight desktop environment would be good too. Although I think there's going to be a lot of unofficial guides on how to get various desktop environments up and running once these are in devs and users' hands.

 

[rv6502]

Please excuse my ignorance, but I was just wondering if the pandora will be able to run desktop effects and widgets like these nice effects? I obviously know nothing about linux, but I was just curious if these beautiful effects were something that are possible on the Pandora without slowing it down or consuming too much resources.

its possible but its likely to run really slow.
the PowerVR gpu is very fast as long as you don't do (render to textures / frame buffer capture) operations during rendering of the video frame.
some of those effects require this technique and will need to be tweaked or disabled for the Pandora.

by default there's 16MB of VRAM afaik, I don't know how much more the GPU can access but that's not much VRAM to do compositing of multiple windows and virtual desktops.

and soon the bus will get saturated with memory transfers.
a PC's 3D card has its own separate texture memory so a PC's CPU can tell the video card to do its work without much impact on overall system performance, but the Pandora's GPU shares memory with the CPU.

 

[Gary13579]

Lol, wow really!? And here I was thinking I'm missing the bigger picture!
Why did they focus on xfce over e17 anyway? Is it more stable? Uses less resources maybe?

Probably not. XFCE uses GTK+, which many consider a somewhat resource-heavy toolkit. Yeah, XFCE is still lightweight in comparison to KDE or Gnome, but other WMs like E17, Matchbox, IceWM, or Sawfish have it well beat for resource consumption.

The major advantage of XFCE is that it feels fully featured, so that migration from gnome/kde/windows is less of a big change. And since you're going to load GTK+ into memory anyway if you use, say, Firefox or Pidgin, you're not saving any resources by going with a lighter WM.

This, exactly. Most people will probably be using a GTK+ application, so it isn't as big of a con for XFCE unless you're aiming to avoid GTK.

One of the applications I am working on will run in the toolbar on GNOME/XFCE, so it is awesome to know it will work on Pandora out of the box (and it will be a really useful application! can't say much else at this point, wait and see ).