Your ideas for WM/DE
 

Hello everyone,
with all the new desktops that are coming out (Unity, Gnome3, Cinnamon and others) I find it difficult to get used to them. Currently I am switching distributions and desktops like crazy trying to find something I can be comfortable with (to replace the good old gnome2).
Now I'm sure that a lot of people complain about features they don't like and ask for the ones they want, and it is obviously not easy for developers to combine all of the ideas and make a perfect desktop.
It would be great if everyone had the skills to create their own desktop (some people do, using a window manager like fluxbox as far as I have noticed), but most of us don't.
As a way of expressing some of my ideas I made this thread, and anyone is welcome to contribute.

I will start, in attachment (hopefully, as I am experiencing some internet issues) is a quick sketch of an idea I got while waiting for hal to compile on a netbook.
It might look unpolished, since I have no gimp skills whatsoever, but I like it.

Also just to avoid confusion with it, on the right, the tilted windows would move when passed over with the mouse cursor, just as a pretty effect. Same thing with contacts.
I am planning to add widgets (conky-like calendar and weather) in the middle, but this is it so far. Hope you like it.

Since you've asked about our contributions, I'll contribute by expressing my HONEST opinion about the project you've attached:

It's a big waste of screen space. Icons/widgets are WAY to big. As far as I'm concerned, a user's desktop is not about eye-candy. it's about efficiency. There's nothing wrong with having a visually pleasing desktop, but your project is neither practical nor particularly aesthetically designed. It belongs to the "let's make a christmas tree out of our desktops" category of desktops, and it's not even a beautiful christmas tree (MHO)

Sorry if my words are too harsh but I hope you don't take it personally. I just really don't like your design in terms of both functionality and aesthetics. Obviously, it's all very subjective and I might be talking rubbish:)

I appreciate the input, and honestly I also noticed that the icons are too big, but only after finishing it, and my gimp skills/will to do it all over again are not up to the task.
Also, I would mainly use it on the netbook.

And an addition to the thread, for people who are happy with their custom setups, feel free to post them too, as I said, many people such as myself are in-between desktops right now, so any suggestions (especially well visually advertised ones) are welcome. :)

My personal wish for my WM: A tiling WM with features that are a mix of i3wm (very easy to configure, very flexible), wmii (IMHO more intuitive handling of tiles) and xmonad (applications can run in fullscreen mode within their tiles, saves a lot of space when you have multiple browser running simultaneously). Sadly enough, I am not a good programmer, so I am neither able to extend one of those WMs to my likings nor to write a new one from scratch.
I think that is not quite what you expected, but that is what I would like. Also, even if I am not using a tiling WM, I am not a fan of desktop icons and sidebars. IMHO, sidebars are just a waste of space and desktop icons are useless from that point on you opened a window, just because the icon you need will every time be under a window, so that you have to first to move it away to click on the icon. I like a panel at bottom or top with status information and quicklaunch icons (not to speak from simple keyboard shortcuts) much more.

During the days of w98/ME used explorer replacement with features as widgets and hidden panels. I love to have max screen space useful and access system shortcuts/panels only when mouse in special spot or hotkey,for widgets if you really need one you can use stick on top behavior + full compiz functions like transparency etc. OnScreen elements useful(imho) only in case of touch screen enabled devices. Quite happy with gnome3(best imho,missing hidden panels in mouse areas tho),unity(except topline status bar always visible), apps like mac doc(except design failures/ergonomics in themes).

My gut feeling is you would be much better off helping a project like Fluxbox or Enlightenment or some that Tobi mentioned. Your screen shot is beautiful, I mean it, but unusable. Something like Fluxbox with the widgets you mention would do the exact same thing.

I guess these threads may give you ideas.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...2/#post4555059

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...esktop-725754/

Here's my desktop. I'm using Cairo-dock, KDE as my DE, and wish I was using Kubuntu as my distro. Hope you like it!

I have some WM ideas: on the fly configurable auto-tiling, and selecting windows without giving them focus (mass move to other desktop etc.).
It's funny what sycamorex says. I used to prefer small icons. Some time ago I realized that with the small amount of icons I have on my desktop, there's actually only a very small area of my desktop (background) that is usable. Now I have huge icons, arranged at the edge of the desktop. There's a smaller chance a window obscures an icon completely, and usually the cursor movements to get to a particular icon are smaller.
I prefer light ugly desktops, in the knowledge
Making my own window manager is definitely on my wish-I-could-do list.

Hi,

I've used FVWM for some years, but the time I needed to configure the WM was too much compared with the time I could really work with it. I had FVWM configured in a way that I didn't for example need the mouse to change between the virtual desktops.

Now I'm using dwm, a tiling WM which is very small and fast. The advantage of a tiling WM is, that it combines some features of working with or without X. I don't have to use the mouse as long as I'm only working with a terminal (or several terminals). Otherwise I'm able to view pdf-files or websites without having to start X.

As you know, the most inconvenient procedure when working on a computer is to change between keyboard and mouse frequently. This is very timeconsuming. Or should I say: a keyboard has about 105 keys, a mouse only two and a wheel, why use the mouse ;)

As of icons, I prefer a program-menu which is available via the right mouse-button. I've used this in the old days of KDE-3.5 and with FVWM. On FVWM I had the pager (which showes the virtual desktops and changes between them) on the left mouse-button, so I needed no icons at all.

Markus