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Linux Desktop Setup

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191–200 of 232 posts

Re: Linux Desktop Setup

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most users have a "consumer" relationship with computers and not a "producer" one. Linus Torvalds avoids Linux distributions like Gentoo or Arch because he believes the whole point of a distribution is to make it easy for the end user to install and use useful apps on top of it. He also doesn't care about trivialities like bash vs zsh. It doesn't (and shouldn't) matter to 99% of people.

> the whole point of a distribution is to make it easy for the end user to install and use useful apps on top of it Ubuntu is hard (not impossible, just harder than Arch) to setup the way I want my computer to be. It's not hard to install useful apps on top of Archlinux (can't speak about Gentoo, never tried it), it's maybe not intuitive at first. Maybe we can recognize different users have different needs, and what'…

>Maybe we can recognize different users have different needs, and what's right for some isn't for others.

Exactly, and that's supposed to be the whole reason we have different distributions in the first place, so that they can cater to people who have different preferences.

>Yeah, when you spend your life in a shell, the choice shouldn't matter, right ? Just like carpenters shouldn't care about saws...

To be fair, I think that on just about any distro it should be pretty easy to set a different shell like zsh for your preference. It's not quite the same as wanting to run i3 on Ubuntu.

Re: Linux Desktop Setup

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've been using Linux as a primary OS since the 90's but I still need to interact with Windows for work. My current job force me to use a Windows computer. You know, it's the company policy. Well it's the last time I take a job witch doesn't let me control my computer and use GNU/Linux. It feel like I m using the wrong tool for my job. Like use a stone to put nail instead of a hammer.

LOL I have a "Don't Want" section on my resume that says no Windows. And I found such a job! I program on a Mac.

This is a really good idea !

Re: Linux Desktop Setup

#193
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i3's "scratchpad" alone is worth switching. You can show/hide a floating window on any workspace with a single hotkey. I use Chrome's app mode to launch dedicated windows for frequently used sites (Calendar, Slack, DevDocs) and I can call them up easily. Works wonderfully for native apps, too, like Spotify. I tried Gnome recently, and although it's very polished, I switched back to i3 because it wasn't nearly as intu…

Honestly, I don't like scratchpad. If you use it on multiple windows, doing `scratchpad show` multiple times causes one window to appear, then disappear, then next window appear, then disappear... and it does this across workspaces. I don't understand when I'd need something like that. It's a weird feature. Instead, something I really wanted was to be able to toggle the hiding and showing of all floating windows per…

> If you use it on multiple windows, doing `scratchpad show` multiple times causes one window to appear, then disappear, then next window appear, then disappear... and it does this across workspaces.

You need to create a keybinding that calls `scratchpad show` using a window class qualifier to target the app you want. That's the key to making the scratchpad useful.

Re: Linux Desktop Setup

#195
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not perfect, but personally I appreciate the better security model of Wayland. Although it can be annoying if you have to do screensharing/recording. On my older laptop, it also feels more responsive.

I'm on Wayland via Fedora, and we use Zoom for company video conferencing. About 2 months ago they released a new version that started supporting screen sharing on Wayland. Works perfectly. Edited for grammar and to add this: My point being is that it's slowly but surely getting better and better.

Which version are you using right now? I have the latest one and it does not allow me to share anything else than a white canvas. Do you launch zoom somehow differently? For me it behaves like a regular XWayland app

Re: Linux Desktop Setup

#196
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i3's "scratchpad" alone is worth switching. You can show/hide a floating window on any workspace with a single hotkey. I use Chrome's app mode to launch dedicated windows for frequently used sites (Calendar, Slack, DevDocs) and I can call them up easily. Works wonderfully for native apps, too, like Spotify. I tried Gnome recently, and although it's very polished, I switched back to i3 because it wasn't nearly as intu…

Honestly, I don't like scratchpad. If you use it on multiple windows, doing `scratchpad show` multiple times causes one window to appear, then disappear, then next window appear, then disappear... and it does this across workspaces. I don't understand when I'd need something like that. It's a weird feature. Instead, something I really wanted was to be able to toggle the hiding and showing of all floating windows per…

bindsym $mod+grave for_window [class=“st-256color”] scratchpad show

Problem solved! Here is your quake terminal toggle.

Re: Linux Desktop Setup

#197
post #40

I'm always kind of amazed at this kind of desktop setups, and I guess they're not suitable for lots of people for the simple reason that most users have a "consumer" relationship with computers and not a "producer" one. My biggest question here for people with this kind of text setup would be: don't you surf the web? Do you use then lynx or another text web browser? What about services and platforms that are designed…

Firefox and a Windows VM are the major reasons for me to reach for my mouse. There's also nm-applet, and obviously gimp and inkscape, but I rarely use those. Oh, and cut'n'paste tends to be easier with the mouse, though xsel can sometimes be useful. Everything else can be controlled from the keyboard. (Like the OP, I use XMonad as well.) For videos in particular, mplayer can be controlled purely by keyboard. There ar…

I mean the idea isn't to never use the mouse, just use it where appropriate and don't do the back and forth of mouse to keyboard which slows you down. (One great aspect of thinkpad's trackpoint is that you never need to move your arm to click something)

I mean it's kinda dumb to reach for the mouse to hit C-c C-p enter then reach for it again to focus your editor.

Re: Linux Desktop Setup

#198
post #29

Everyone here scoring serious brownie points with their advanced setups. And here I am, having used Linux for my personal setup for 15 years, using pre-installed Ubuntu on a practically default GNOME desktop. It's wonderful that I can do that and be satisfied with that, without significantly hampering the possibility of advanced setups like the ones here. Despite all the systemd's, PulseAudio's and whatnot's, the cus…

I've had and seen the coolest desktops on Linux and other unicies. If you're knowledgeable, you have available to you some amazing things. Linux did lag in performance, but features like virtual desktops, notifications, transparency, and other things were easily a decade ahead of OSX and Windows. I remember in 2008 in class, playing World of Warcraft via Wine in a window, while also taking notes, tailing logs, stream…

Compositing was (shortly) after OS X.

Re: Linux Desktop Setup

#200
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for everyone, but I use a tiling window manager with Firefox on a specific tag ("virtual desktop", but not) which I browse mostly using VimiumFF, an extension that gives me vim keybindings for navigation. Pressing "f" puts a small tag over each link with a set of characters (ff, jj, de, df, etc) and typing the characters in that tag opens the link.

This sounds fantastic and I was about to install it, but I paused when I saw the required permissions: Access your data for all websites Read and modify bookmarks Get data from the clipboard Input data to the clipboard Access browsing history Display notifications to you Access recently closed tabs Access browser tabs Access browser activity during navigation ... this seems excessive - especially clipboard and histor…

Those are all necessary permissions since the plugin is basically building a completely new keyboard-driven chrome. It is not simply a skin that remaps a bunch of key bindings.

For example, to open a bookmark from the command line requires read access to your bookmarks in order for the plugin to present you with the list of bookmarks and eventually allow you to search or navigate it somehow. The same applies to opening something from your browsing history or resurrecting a closed tab. Tab switching requires access to the tabs. Clipboard access is for things like copying URLs or the selection in visual mode to the clipboard.

Vimium itself is open source on GitHub and you can see for yourself what it's doing with your data. The Firefox port is by one of the most active project contributors.

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