From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Nov 7 20:57:22 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 170DE1065695 for ; Sun, 7 Nov 2010 20:57:22 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from perrin@apotheon.com) Received: from cpoproxy1-pub.bluehost.com (cpoproxy1-pub.bluehost.com [69.89.21.11]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id D3EC38FC1F for ; Sun, 7 Nov 2010 20:57:21 +0000 (UTC) Received: (qmail 31832 invoked by uid 0); 7 Nov 2010 20:57:21 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO box543.bluehost.com) (74.220.219.143) by cpoproxy1.bluehost.com with SMTP; 7 Nov 2010 20:57:21 -0000 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=default; d=apotheon.com; h=Date:From:To:Subject:Message-ID:Mail-Followup-To:References:Mime-Version:Content-Type:Content-Disposition:In-Reply-To:User-Agent:X-Identified-User; b=h3M8KYhCktuSP5PB3scPfGNmcnIca1C4E8RKaeY8hCy3D+oH4niGnoI57EiRmNg+1jTUV5P+ijdfLE8+5nyufkzdO1u4oHxWGfe3nLiZkL/ufmOq9axoZISw74L+lwav; Received: from c-24-8-180-234.hsd1.co.comcast.net ([24.8.180.234] helo=kukaburra.hydra) by box543.bluehost.com with esmtpsa (TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256) (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1PFCIi-00086C-48 for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Sun, 07 Nov 2010 13:57:21 -0700 Received: by kukaburra.hydra (sSMTP sendmail emulation); Sun, 07 Nov 2010 13:51:22 -0700 Date: Sun, 7 Nov 2010 13:51:22 -0700 From: Chad Perrin To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Message-ID: <20101107205122.GE17565@guilt.hydra> Mail-Followup-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org References: <20101106190934.GB67566@libertas.local.camdensoftware.com> <20101106200239.00004b64@unknown> <20101106203213.GC13095@guilt.hydra> <20101106225446.GC67566@libertas.local.camdensoftware.com> <20101107101750.00006bd2@unknown> <20101107174106.GB77433@libertas.local.camdensoftware.com> <20101107185845.66745df2.freebsd@edvax.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="J4XPiPrVK1ev6Sgr" Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20101107185845.66745df2.freebsd@edvax.de> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.3i X-Identified-User: {2737:box543.bluehost.com:apotheon:apotheon.org} {sentby:smtp auth 24.8.180.234 authed with ren@apotheon.org} Subject: Re: Tips for installing windows and freeBSD both.. anyone?? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 07 Nov 2010 20:57:22 -0000 --J4XPiPrVK1ev6Sgr Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Sun, Nov 07, 2010 at 06:58:45PM +0100, Polytropon wrote: > On Sun, 7 Nov 2010 09:41:06 -0800, Chip Camden wrote: > > I'm not here to bash desktop environments, I seriously want to know you= use them to > > improve productivity. >=20 > Yes, would be interesting to know. Not that I deny it - I just have > no evidence from my experience and observations on how this could > be achieved. I think that, in most cases, the people who use KDE and GNOME are just taking the trade-off opposite to the one I take. I choose a little up-front learning curve for massive efficiency and productivity enhancements down the road. The increased efficiency of a minimal, composable toolset driven by the keyboard can be a huge win in long-term productivity for one motivated to learn how to use it, as well as a major savings on system resources (and hardware costs, since upgrades do not need to happen as often, nor be as cutting-edge). Others choose some inefficiency in the long run to avoid having to learn anything new up front. The increased discoverability, at least for simple tasks, of a point-and-click interface tends to seem more "intuitive" and familiar to people just coming to a new system for the first time, makes task completion easier to figure out the first time (and the thirtieth, since point-and-click interfaces tend to require figuring out the same tasks over and over again). >=20 > > Now I find that any time I reach for the mouse, I'm slowing myself down. >=20 > A TrackPoint (the little joystick-like pointing device located > in the middle of the keyboard) seems to be a good repacement > for a regular mouse, and in any case for fingerslime glidepads. I use a ThinkPad regularly. Sometimes, it's nice to have a separate mouse. Even when using the TrackPoint, though, I'm still much slower than when using a well-designed keyboard driven interface. It takes longer for me to swing my mouse pointer from the side of the screen to a given link on-screen, then left click it, than it does for me to type "f37" in Firefox+Vimperator, "fas" in Chromium+Vimium, or "fl37" in uzbl. Also of interest, Chromium loads the page on the other side of that link in about 75% of the time it takes Firefox to load it, and uzbl loads it in about 33% of the time it takes Chromium to load it. >=20 > > It's more efficient to use the keyboard even to switch focused windows > > or to follow links in a browser (provided that the window manager and > > browser are equipped with usable shortcuts). >=20 > Important point! But in reality you see keyboard support more > and more left out for the GUI programs - allthough they COULD > provide good keyboard support. WindowMaker (as a window manager) > and Opera (as a web browser) are, in my experience, examples > of how to combine good keyboard support with good mouse support. Vimperator and Vimium do much better jobs of combining those capabilities in my experience (for Firefox and Chromium, respectively). While uzbl does not do as good a job of combining those approaches, it does a good enough job at the keyboard-driven stuff that it is a very rare case when using the TrackPoint would make more sense -- and, when it does make more sense, uzbl's mouse-driven interface support works fine. I used to use WindowMaker all the time. I switched to Sawfish when I disocovered that it required less configuration to fit my particular needs, though WindowMaker had been "close enough" that making the requisite configuration changes was not a huge burden. I switched to AHWM when I discovered it, because it required almost zero configuration to make it suit my needs pretty much exactly. I have experimented with a couple of other window managers since adopting AHWM, but nothing has quite served to entice me away. >=20 > > I use a tiling wm (xmonad) to maximize visibility, real estate usage, a= nd > > navigability. No overlapping windows unless I say so. >=20 > Tiling window managers, as I've often seen, seem to be the choice > of the advanced / professional users. Sadly, their magic didn't > open up to me yet. :-) If you're inclined toward minimalism, productivity enhancement, and efficiency, and do not mind editing configuration files by hand, but have not really clicked with tiling window managers, you might want to give AHWM a try. It's in FreeBSD ports. >=20 > Coming back to your initial statement: For users EXPECTING something > to act in a specific way, KDE and Gnome really "boost" their > productivity, as it doesn't force them to question or relearn > things they take for granted. That's a pretty good summary, minus some of the implications, of what I said at the beginning of this email. --=20 Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ] --J4XPiPrVK1ev6Sgr Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.14 (FreeBSD) iEYEARECAAYFAkzXEUoACgkQ9mn/Pj01uKXq4QCgzVQmfu/+XsPqJJERU+YfvA9E h6gAoNuhq3zcJBd2zklg6ZQuPhAGW2yd =/4d+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --J4XPiPrVK1ev6Sgr--