Accidentally making windows vanish in my old-fashioned Unix X environment
1–10 of 27 posts
Re: Accidentally making windows vanish in my old-fashioned Unix X environment
#2I also used those windows managers around 1990, iconify to desktop and no task bar. I use a heavily customized GNOME 3 desktop now, with an autohiding task bar that appears when I move the pointer to the bottom edge. My desktop is an empty solid color image that sometimes appears between windows. I don't keep anything there, even when it was still possible by default. Too much clicking but I don't like that defaults get more and more opinionated. Let people do whatever they want.
Re: Accidentally making windows vanish in my old-fashioned Unix X environment
#3"old-fashioned"... oof
Re: Accidentally making windows vanish in my old-fashioned Unix X environment
#4I did this to myself 15 or 20 years ago, and ever since have put a collection area for iconified windows on a panel.
In XFCE, it's easy to create a completely transparent panel running Window Buttons with "show minimized windows only" ticked, which emulates putting the icons on the desktop but corrals them to always show up in one location. Typically, if I have more than one minimized window, I've made a mistake -- but that's what the corral is for, saving me from mistakes.
Re: Accidentally making windows vanish in my old-fashioned Unix X environment
#5I like this quirkiness of X window managers also. Some (like fvwm) will do exactly what you tell it to do, no more, no less.
Sad to see these type quirks will go away when Linux moves completely to Wayland.
Re: Accidentally making windows vanish in my old-fashioned Unix X environment
#6I like this quirkiness of X window managers also. Some (like fvwm) will do exactly what you tell it to do, no more, no less. Sad to see these type quirks will go away when Linux moves completely to Wayland.
Yes. Some of them are are only a couple thousand lines of code[1]. No background "activities", no keyboard shortcut stealing from other apps.
Re: Accidentally making windows vanish in my old-fashioned Unix X environment
#7I like this quirkiness of X window managers also. Some (like fvwm) will do exactly what you tell it to do, no more, no less. Sad to see these type quirks will go away when Linux moves completely to Wayland.
Yes. Some of them are are only a couple thousand lines of code[1]. No background "activities", no keyboard shortcut stealing from other apps. 1: https://git.suckless.org/dwm/files.html
XGrabKey?
Re: Accidentally making windows vanish in my old-fashioned Unix X environment
#8On Windows, there is "Move" menu item in shift+right click context menu on taskbar icons. Selecting this item, then pressing left/right/up/down key brings window immediately into closer edge of valid desktop area, with mouse pointer sent to that window titlebar. This item existed since at least OS/2, and although it was not found in early version of Windows 11 new taskbar, it has since been re-implemented.
I know because I needed it while it had been missing :p
Re: Accidentally making windows vanish in my old-fashioned Unix X environment
#9I like this quirkiness of X window managers also. Some (like fvwm) will do exactly what you tell it to do, no more, no less. Sad to see these type quirks will go away when Linux moves completely to Wayland.
> Sad to see these type quirks will go away when Linux moves completely to Wayland.
I started using Linux when I was 25 or so. I'm 51 now. I do believe there's a far from zero probability that X is going to outlast me... Even if I live until 80!
P.S: and the day X dies, in decades, I do also think it's possible that, at long last, Wayland shall be as customizable and allows to do all the amazing thing X allows to do.
Re: Accidentally making windows vanish in my old-fashioned Unix X environment
#10Never understood the point of "a desktop" because of this. Why bother to have programs you only use on-demand just sitting there? The same thing, that I find more useful, can be achieved by actually running the programs you need (through a run menu) and just having them exist. Windows are my desktop icons, I don't need what I don't use.
(I use fluxbox with rofi)