Almost five years after I wrote my first post in that thread and over one year after I updated that first post for the last time I decided to publish my current Slackware desktop for the next time.
Since 1997 I use exclusively
Window Maker (window manager based on the very elegant and efficient classic UNIX NeXT GUI). Slackware 14.0 is provided with Window Maker 0.95.3.
The traditional supplement of Window Maker are
dockable applications or dockapps. In the past I used a lot of different dockable applications. Since 2011 I use just one: wminfo. Thanks to that my desktop fulfills the K.I.S.S. rule.
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A few weeks ago I bought secondhand Lenovo ThinkPad T61. It’s great machine – the same as all IBM/Lenovo ThinkPads that I owned in the past or I own now. Thanks to the big 1680×1050 wide screen I managed to put on the desktop of my newest ThinkPad fifteen dockable applications. For the comparison: my older ThinkPads use 1024×768 screens and hold just eleven dockable applications (
see the first post in the present thread).
Here’s the default Window Maker screen (1024×768):
Here’s my current Window Maker screen (1680×1050):
On the left side there are fifteen instances of just one dockable application: wminfo. These instances of the wminfo run fifteen different plugins. The working plugins from top to bottom are:
● timezone.wmi
● date-pl.wmi
● conky.thinkpad.wmi
● conky.sysmon.wmi
● conky.top.wmi
● conky.diskmon.wmi
● conky.uptime.wmi
● df.wmi
● conky.netmon.wmi
● biff-cmk.wmi
● conky.forecast.wmi WROCLAW, PL
● conky.weather.wmi EPWR
● sun-moon.wmi
● slackware-patches.wmi
● wrapper-currencies-pl.wmi
They monitor the system, the machine, and display the other useful data got from Internet or created with the help of the different programs.
On the right side there are four icons of the running programs. I use the first workspace for Firefox and Thunderbird, the second for the user’s xterms, the third for Apache OpenOffice.org, LibreOffice, ydpdict, kydpdict+, StarDict, and NKFD, the fourth for GIMP, Geeqie, Skype, mocp, VLC, etc., and the fifth for the root’s xterms, SSH sessions, Wicd, and VirtualBox. Of course I don’t run all those programs simultaneously all the time.
To the left from the center there’s applications launcher. I don’t use it. I defined the applications for the flat launcher in order to define the keyboard shortcuts. So to run the programs I use the keyboard shortcuts rather than the applications launcher or the commands.
To the right from the center there’s Gnuplot window that displays the dates of Slackware Linux releases (I put it here just to fill the empty space on the published desktop – the graph is derived from the interesting thread that I stole in the
post #28 and then changed its direction).
On my main user’s desktop I use white wallpaper with Slackware logo by pwc101 from LinuxQuestions.org. On my other users’ desktops appears the same logo on the backgrounds made of the different shades of gray.
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Most of the mentioned above wminfo plugins have regular dockable applications counterparts such as: wmtz, wmCalClock, wmpower+ (wmpower), wmsm, wmtop, wmUpMon, pywmhdmon, netmon, WMnet, WMBiff, wmweather or wmweather+, wmSun, and wmMoonClock.
There are three main differences between these classical dockable applications and wminfo:
1. Some of the mentioned dockable applications weren’t maintained for a long time and as a result they don’t work now – wminfo is still maintained so it works (I’m the maintainer of wminfo).
2. Most of the dockable applications display some data using graphical representation – wminfo plugins display in most cases more data that their classical counterparts but they don’t use any graphical data representation (except for the simple progress bars).
3. To write your own dockable application you should know at least C and dockable applications libraries – to write your own plugin for wminfo it’s enough to know bash and a few Linux commands (although wminfo accepts the plugins written in any languages).
If you need some elegant and efficient window manager try Window Maker. If you need some standardized and universal dockable application try wminfo.
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Some time ago I submitted wminfo 4.1.1. The current wminfo version includes 195 ready to use plugins. Some of them are the mutual counterparts or serve just for the demonstration purposes so the number of the useful plugins is significantly lower but you can always write your own wminfo plugin as well.
You’ll find the wminfo package here:
http://dockapps.windowmaker.org/file.php/id/367
http://freecode.com/projects/wminfo
http://linux-bsd-unix.strefa.pl/index.en.html#wminfo
http://slackbuilds.org/repository/14.0/desktop/wminfo/
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From April 2 to 3, 2013 I changed my desktop to align it with my brand new personality. It’s the same as before now and completely different at the same time. Maybe some day I’ll publish my newest desktop as well.
