I say use alt + ~ to switch windows for a single program. The tilde is right above the tab and can be done while keeping the other hand on the mouse (without awkwardly stretching one's hand to the F6 key while holding alt with the left thumb).I think Apple's window manager uses that key combo.
Beagle definately had it's problems..but it's the same issues faced with such indexing applications. And they've improved it quite a bit. I'm using it right now and it has long stopped having any noticable impact on my desktop performance.Or look at it this way.. They had the same problem with OS X and their desktop search for people that did a upgrade from a older version of OS X. With the search engine going through and indexing everything it takes a large chunk of harddrive time. People who upgraded initially complained of poor performance, but after a while it settled down.With .NET and Longhorn remember them talking about all this managed code and having the entire Explorer shell rewritten? Most people don't.. but the idea was that since so many problems were caused by bad old code with buffer overflows and such then replacing all that with lovely managed code made with modern secure programming techniques would be wonderfull.Microsoft spent a lot of time and money on that and eventually dumped the whole thing when they realised it will be a long time (2+ years) before computer would be able to handle that effectively. They weren't just going to have the GUI portions of applications be high level.. they were doing the ENTIRE THING in managed code.So of course they dumped the whole thing. Microsoft's failure doesn't nessicarially mean the same thing will happen for Gnome. The low level stuff, the graphical libraries and things that get used over and over again by many different programs will all still be C.
@JonForTheWinYeah but the tolde key is only there on some keyboard setups like en_US. In many other keyboard layouts it is beside the return key. I think it would make sense to use a different modifier rather that replacing the tab key. That would be more in the spirit of related shortcut keycombos.
Xcompmgr is dog slow, and pretty buggy. Either XGL or AIGLX would make more sense, as the desk will render quicker. Hopefully Xegl makes good progress and we should really see something good then.@SimonGray, that's only if you take the update for Gnome-Terminal which is the same one as in 2.16. I run Ubuntu and I have the true transparency, but the SUSE box I run hasn't got that patch yet.
'Real Transparency' as supporting a seperate alpha layer...Yes Linux has supported this for a while now. It's always been disabled by default though as the Linux 2d acceleration driver model didn't allow for it to be very fast.And it hasn't been around for 'years and years' though. Composition extention (which allows for 'real' transparency) was one of the first features introduced by X.org when they forked the code from XFree86 project, which wasn't too long ago. (although from the pace of development X is seeing now it would seem to be years and years ago).I don't think any terminal application took advantage of it though. You could use 'xcompmgr' to make the ENTIRE window translucent, but since it wasn't realy that nice nobody used it.Now though with the possibility of OpenGL accelerated composition features you'll start to see more and more of it. Despite what the naysayers say it's actually been a desirable feature for a long time.Realy, having a nice looking desktop is nice. It's like a nice picture or whatever. How many people here leave a gray background for themselves?AND having 3d acceleration will actually make your system more efficient (as long as you don't go full bore with the eye candy), using the 3d portion of the video card for 2d acceleration is actually much more efficient nowadays then using the 2d portion. In ATI and Nvidia the 2d portions of the cards are holdovers since the Geforce 1 days and they haven't improved performance much, but the 3d portion is a supercomputer compared to what it was like back then.back on transparencies...Windows on the other hand has supported alpha channels for forever and a day. Probably since Win9x days. Nobody used it there either for about the same reasons. Although Windows 2-d acceleration was actually decent very much unlike Linux's.That's why you see in Windows it's called '32bit' color and with Linux the same is called '24bit'. 32 bits is 8 bit per channel RGBA. The 'A' stands for 'alpha'. While 24bit is 8 bit per channel RGB.
I always hated the bar at the bottom. I prefer to have one at the top.That way the open/close/minimize/maximize stuff is all close together as well as the application menu and window/desktop selectors. I find that it makes everything much more natural as I am not always moving from top to bottom.It's a lot about personal taste. I don't think that there is one Linux user that I know that leaves things at their default settings.For instance another thing I like to do is get rid of the ~/Desktop directory and use ~/ as my default desktop. I use the command line very often and it is much more natural for me. Also you can add, remove the trash, change the name of 'my computer' and all sorts of other little things.There is the gtweak-ui utilities which are a gui front end for some changes in gconf (Gnome equivelent of the Windows registry, except it's all xml based and uses a real directory/file system instead of a database). Kinda neat.Also most key accelerators (key combos) are easily customizable. Check out your desktop preferences menu stuff. Lot of tweaking you can do in there.if you want to get into avanced stuff though it takes a bit more research then just gui hunt-n-peck games.Linux is all about the customizability.Think about it..Which do you prefer?A custom fit (ie. tailored suit) or One-size-fits-all (ei. tube socks and sweat pants)?The default Gnome is designed to be as newbie-friendly as possible. It doesn't have to stay that way though. If you mess up you can always wipe out your ~/.??* files and start over. (figure that one out)(but you'd probably want to back up your email and bookmarks and other important things first)
jonforthewinAug 24, 2006
I say use alt + ~ to switch windows for a single program. The tilde is right above the tab and can be done while keeping the other hand on the mouse (without awkwardly stretching one's hand to the F6 key while holding alt with the left thumb).I think Apple's window manager uses that key combo.
dragAug 24, 2006
Beagle definately had it's problems..but it's the same issues faced with such indexing applications. And they've improved it quite a bit. I'm using it right now and it has long stopped having any noticable impact on my desktop performance.Or look at it this way.. They had the same problem with OS X and their desktop search for people that did a upgrade from a older version of OS X. With the search engine going through and indexing everything it takes a large chunk of harddrive time. People who upgraded initially complained of poor performance, but after a while it settled down.With .NET and Longhorn remember them talking about all this managed code and having the entire Explorer shell rewritten? Most people don't.. but the idea was that since so many problems were caused by bad old code with buffer overflows and such then replacing all that with lovely managed code made with modern secure programming techniques would be wonderfull.Microsoft spent a lot of time and money on that and eventually dumped the whole thing when they realised it will be a long time (2+ years) before computer would be able to handle that effectively. They weren't just going to have the GUI portions of applications be high level.. they were doing the ENTIRE THING in managed code.So of course they dumped the whole thing. Microsoft's failure doesn't nessicarially mean the same thing will happen for Gnome. The low level stuff, the graphical libraries and things that get used over and over again by many different programs will all still be C.
sumadartsonAug 24, 2006
Yes, xcompmgr, whose latest version in the ubuntu repositories is from 2004! What's the problem with either XGL or AIGLX and compiz?
bigtomrodneyAug 24, 2006
@JonForTheWinYeah but the tolde key is only there on some keyboard setups like en_US. In many other keyboard layouts it is beside the return key. I think it would make sense to use a different modifier rather that replacing the tab key. That would be more in the spirit of related shortcut keycombos.
simongrayAug 24, 2006
If you're using Quinn's Compiz packages it's already available on Dapper.Just go to Edit -> Preferences in Gnome Terminal.
bigtomrodneyAug 24, 2006
Xcompmgr is dog slow, and pretty buggy. Either XGL or AIGLX would make more sense, as the desk will render quicker. Hopefully Xegl makes good progress and we should really see something good then.@SimonGray, that's only if you take the update for Gnome-Terminal which is the same one as in 2.16. I run Ubuntu and I have the true transparency, but the SUSE box I run hasn't got that patch yet.
bkorAug 24, 2006
sumadartson: Part of GTK 2.10, so GNOME 2.16 has it.
bruce89Aug 25, 2006
Brown has nothing to do with Gnome, that's Ubuntu's choice.Gnome's default theme is blue, but at least it is not cartoon like.
dragSep 7, 2006
'Real Transparency' as supporting a seperate alpha layer...Yes Linux has supported this for a while now. It's always been disabled by default though as the Linux 2d acceleration driver model didn't allow for it to be very fast.And it hasn't been around for 'years and years' though. Composition extention (which allows for 'real' transparency) was one of the first features introduced by X.org when they forked the code from XFree86 project, which wasn't too long ago. (although from the pace of development X is seeing now it would seem to be years and years ago).I don't think any terminal application took advantage of it though. You could use 'xcompmgr' to make the ENTIRE window translucent, but since it wasn't realy that nice nobody used it.Now though with the possibility of OpenGL accelerated composition features you'll start to see more and more of it. Despite what the naysayers say it's actually been a desirable feature for a long time.Realy, having a nice looking desktop is nice. It's like a nice picture or whatever. How many people here leave a gray background for themselves?AND having 3d acceleration will actually make your system more efficient (as long as you don't go full bore with the eye candy), using the 3d portion of the video card for 2d acceleration is actually much more efficient nowadays then using the 2d portion. In ATI and Nvidia the 2d portions of the cards are holdovers since the Geforce 1 days and they haven't improved performance much, but the 3d portion is a supercomputer compared to what it was like back then.back on transparencies...Windows on the other hand has supported alpha channels for forever and a day. Probably since Win9x days. Nobody used it there either for about the same reasons. Although Windows 2-d acceleration was actually decent very much unlike Linux's.That's why you see in Windows it's called '32bit' color and with Linux the same is called '24bit'. 32 bits is 8 bit per channel RGBA. The 'A' stands for 'alpha'. While 24bit is 8 bit per channel RGB.
dragSep 7, 2006
I always hated the bar at the bottom. I prefer to have one at the top.That way the open/close/minimize/maximize stuff is all close together as well as the application menu and window/desktop selectors. I find that it makes everything much more natural as I am not always moving from top to bottom.It's a lot about personal taste. I don't think that there is one Linux user that I know that leaves things at their default settings.For instance another thing I like to do is get rid of the ~/Desktop directory and use ~/ as my default desktop. I use the command line very often and it is much more natural for me. Also you can add, remove the trash, change the name of 'my computer' and all sorts of other little things.There is the gtweak-ui utilities which are a gui front end for some changes in gconf (Gnome equivelent of the Windows registry, except it's all xml based and uses a real directory/file system instead of a database). Kinda neat.Also most key accelerators (key combos) are easily customizable. Check out your desktop preferences menu stuff. Lot of tweaking you can do in there.if you want to get into avanced stuff though it takes a bit more research then just gui hunt-n-peck games.Linux is all about the customizability.Think about it..Which do you prefer?A custom fit (ie. tailored suit) or One-size-fits-all (ei. tube socks and sweat pants)?The default Gnome is designed to be as newbie-friendly as possible. It doesn't have to stay that way though. If you mess up you can always wipe out your ~/.??* files and start over. (figure that one out)(but you'd probably want to back up your email and bookmarks and other important things first)