Dangling the Linux Carrot

Hi,

Dangling the Linux Carrot;

There were seven of us gathered at a local watering hole down on Sixth Street in Austin. Just a few friends and associates who had run into each other and decided to pull a couple of tables together and share some time. A couple of them I knew. One was someone I run into professionally on a regular basis. We all had links to each other, in one way or another by various degrees of separation, but none of those links had much to do with technology or computers. Until then. Several of us had recently gotten off work and had our laptops or minis with us. There were three on the table and one of us mentioned a particular clip on Metacafe. I opened my laptop and opened a browser to the mentioned link. It was to some contentious exchange between help desk technicians that devolved into a pushing match and ultimately into high-pitched screaming. Modern-day warriors in the midst of cubicles. While my Acer was on the table, I absently spun to the next desktop and opened a document I wanted to share with one of my table mates. The guy next to me stopped cold. “What did you just do?”

Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy!

Compiz is not terribly stable, and can be difficult to install and get working properly on some of the more stable distributions.

IT can also be nasty to load on some cutting edge distributions (vsido, on some laptops).
Windows users seem slow to see the value in having multiple desktops at first. Showing them the CDE based plots pulls nice murmers, and the idea grows on them that this could be handy, but the cube grabs them at once.

The SPIN always impressed me as wasted eye candy, until I saw the effect on managers who had never looked impressed with Linux before. Suddenly, they want that on their desktop, NOW, and seem insensed when they discover that Windows cannot do that.

We need "compiz as the WM" desktop option in more distributions. Stable in the stable repos, and the latest build in experimental (Fedora, Sid, Etc.).

How do we help make that happen?

Perhaps strangely as a Linux user I've never seen the attraction of multiple desktops and my current desktop PC setup means that they would be a pain to use anyhow. I have to admit though that the eye candy like the cube switcher do serve to draw people in to the Linux world.

Well, of course, OS/X (Unix ...) has had that sort of thing for many years, called Spaces.

The thing that I find most-impresses Windows-heads is ... XWindows/Xorg. That is, the concept of a true client-server GUI. The ability to connect to a computer that doesn't even have a graphics-card and to merrily conduct a GUI session over a remote-connection with that machine, without the delays associated with what must be done with Windows. At first, it seems impossible for them to understand what Unix/Linux is doing. But then, it becomes impossible for them to understand why Windows never did the same thing.

Originally Posted by wpeckham Compiz is not terribly stable, and can be difficult to install and get working properly on some of the more stable distributions. IT can also be nasty to load on some cutting edge distributions (vsido, on some laptops). Windows users seem slow to see the value in having multiple desktops at first. Showing them the CDE based plots pulls nice murmers, and the idea grows on them that this could be handy, but the cube grabs them at once. The SPIN always impressed me as wasted eye candy, until I saw the effect on managers who had never looked impressed with Linux before. Suddenly, they want that on their desktop, NOW, and seem insensed when they discover that Windows cannot do that. We need "compiz as the WM" desktop option in more distributions. Stable in the stable repos, and the latest build in experimental (Fedora, Sid, Etc.). How do we help make that happen?

years ago, when my brother would use my pc i would come back to it with like 4 firefox's leaking memory (he would move the curser to the edge of the screen and it would automatically flip to a new desktop and he would think that firefox crashed and open a new one). i enabled the rotating cube extension in ccsm and he immediately conceptually understood where each of his desktop sides were.

Originally Posted by 273 Perhaps strangely as a Linux user I've never seen the attraction of multiple desktops and my current desktop PC setup means that they would be a pain to use anyhow. I have to admit though that the eye candy like the cube switcher do serve to draw people in to the Linux world.

years ago, when i was a bugzilla admin on rh-9 multi-desktops helped me stay sane (nautilus on the 1st | firefox / evolution on the 2nd | gnome-terminal on the 3rd | gedit / miscellaneous on the 4th).

also, years ago, a friend of mine was doing a presentation at my house. i booted fedora live-usb and connected my laptop to my tv. the people watching the presentation were more impressed with wobbly windows and rotating cube than his sales pitch.

I live in multiple desktops. Functionality and projects "per" desktop. I don't think I'm excessive about it either, I just have four desktops. I set easy hot keys to make it fast for me to swap the desktop, and turn off animations.

One may have the business stuff, browser/email. The others contain different projects, and it depends what things I'm doing, but usually editors and terminals, or maybe a technical document.

This allows me to just make my windows and stuff close to the max, no worries for me about what is where because if I swap to the wrong one, I can pretty much see that it was for a particular work item and I realize my small error.

For me that's great because I have to deal with multiple projects in various states, thereby requiring terminals, editors, etc for each. I don't prefer to open from one editor the source for more than one project, because then I'll start writing code potentially for the wrong project.

Funnily from home since I don't do work there unless I bring my work computer home, the result there is my home system has one desktop.

Originally Posted by rtmistler Funnily from home since I don't do work there unless I bring my work computer home, the result there is my home system has one desktop.

I think that's likely why I don't see a use for multiple desktops as I only use Linux at home, sadly. I've two monitors set as NVIDIA's "separate X sessions" though meaning while I can't move windows between the two monitors I do get to see full screen video in either or both and both can do full OpenGL (something that most of the other two monitor setups, on NVIDIA at least, can't do).

Originally Posted by 273 I think that's likely why I don't see a use for multiple desktops as I only use Linux at home, sadly. I've two monitors set as NVIDIA's "separate X sessions" though meaning while I can't move windows between the two monitors I do get to see full screen video in either or both and both can do full OpenGL (something that most of the other two monitor setups, on NVIDIA at least, can't do).

That highlights my user preference. I never got into dual monitors and I dislike that. Sort of like I prefer it all on that one screen versus having to choose what goes to each screen. Still technically I have multiple screens, just on that one monitor.

Originally Posted by rtmistler That highlights my user preference. I never got into dual monitors and I dislike that. Sort of like I prefer it all on that one screen versus having to choose what goes to each screen. Still technically I have multiple screens, just on that one monitor.

It also highlights how versatile and customisable Linux is -- though people who don't care about their computer environments perhaps see that as a downside.
I know my Windows machines at work are frustrating to deal with and not only because one is locked down in ridiculous ways in the name of security (to be fair it is XP with IE6).

Originally Posted by 273 It also highlights how versatile and customisable Linux is -- though people who don't care about their computer environments perhaps see that as a downside. I know my Windows machines at work are frustrating to deal with and not only because one is locked down in ridiculous ways in the name of security (to be fair it is XP with IE6).

That's a good point, the workspace switcher is pretty standard in the desktop Linux distros I've used. But also Linux is capable of doing the multiple, or extended monitor configurations. Meanwhile Windows doesn't do multiple desktops as any part of the native set, or anything popular. Someone may cite that there is some utility you can install which does this, but my thinking is that if it's either substandard or I have to invest gobs of time to get it running properly then I'm not too interested.

Therefore I took a quick look and sure enough there are some Windows virtual desktops. One seems to be recommended more highly than others. A 5 year old answer had someone offer a minor rant to the effect that this was a pretty big core lacking which they didn't like about Windows and then cited Linux and OSX, they also stated that there are virtual desktop managers; however they're all third party, some buggy, some not. The main problem is that the OS doesn't provide these services so one has to rely on those added efforts and whatever features they did or didn't provide.

Sad really because although I invested the time to see if they exist, I'm still not going to download and try to run anything on Windows. Why? Because we've been trained to be very untrusting about installing anything on Windows actually. I can't risk the formal Visual Studio that's there and then not be able to make development changes because I accidentally installed Malware.

Hi,

I do like the virtual desktops that are setup using KDE. I keep 8 desktops with a variety of tasks on each. Whenever I move to a MS/Win environment, I feel restricted without having multiple desktops. Real advantage when you are developing something within the environment. Moving to and from without effort to see the status of the job(s) being done is a no brainer. Finding my MS/Win usage is now limited for clients and thankfully my sanity when using Gnu/Linux Slackware continues to be a great experience thus no mental stresses.

If someone does ask about my desktop then I will explain or tell them the advantages of using Gnu/Linux over MS/Win.
Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy!

Originally Posted by onebuck Hi, I do like the virtual desktops that are setup using KDE. I keep 8 desktops with a variety of tasks on each. Whenever I move to a MS/Win environment, I feel restricted without having multiple desktops. Real advantage when you are developing something within the environment. Moving to and from without effort to see the status of the job(s) being done is a no brainer. Finding my MS/Win usage is now limited for clients and thankfully my sanity when using Gnu/Linux Slackware continues to be a great experience thus no mental stresses. If someone does ask about my desktop then I will explain or tell them the advantages of using Gnu/Linux over MS/Win. Hope this helps. Have fun & enjoy!

And don'tcha just HATE the Windows half-visible ALT-TAB renditions?!?! THAT and the Minimize desktop choice which is part of that. To me that is obnoxious beyond belief. One thing I really hate about W7/8. It tries to animate too much. Just quickly show me the applications open. I'm a fast typist and a fast operator here. I know I just want to swap one or two away and I don't want to suddenly have it all get minimized at all.

Don't take your time; don't show me renditions; just do it quickly.

Hi,

As I said, my sanity is important to me and that is a good reason to have a reliable, stable OS. I do not use any eye candy for my desktops in KDE. I do have one running theme to monitor my system, I keep it on one desktop. Otherwise I really use a bare desktop to keep things neat & tidy. MS/Win has always been a pain whenever using multiple apps. Even the integrated applications can be a pain switching in & out. Or sharing data can be a pain when formatting between them.
Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy!

Originally Posted by onebuck I absently spun to the next desktop and opened a document I wanted to share with one of my table mates.

What window manager/desktop environment do you use?

EDIT: Never mind...

I can't function without multiple desktops, and my productivity goes way down without multiple monitors as well. At home one monitor is fine, and I generally only use 2-3 desktops, but at work I have two monitors with separate X sessions and 8 desktops on each, wouldn't have it any other way. I do a lot of software and hardware development though, this lets me, for example, have the datasheet for a part open on one monitor while I program/lay out a schematic on the other. It's also the reason why I have my monitors in portrait mode, awesome for coding.

I also install virtual desktop managers on Windows to get the same functionality. I understand most people are not trusting of 3rd party Windows software, but I've found mDesktop to work very well. It's free, lightweight, doesn't install a bunch of obnoxious crap, and you can run it (or not run it) whenever you want.