The Antidesktop
Here's a screenshot of what I see after I type "startx":
Thrilling, no?
Let's go into what you're not seeing behind this simple facade.
The Components
screen
screen has long won my vote for "Most Undercelebrated Unix Tool". I'm amazed at the number of people I've met at LUG meetings who have never heard of it. I'll quote the description of it from our listing:
Screen is a full-screen window manager that multiplexes a physical terminal between several processes, typically interactive shells. Each virtual terminal provides the functions of the DEC VT100 terminal and, in addition, several control functions from the ANSI X3.64 (ISO 6429) and ISO 2022 standards (e.g., insert/delete line and support for multiple character sets).
When you log onto a system and run screen, a window is created with a shell in it. You can create any number of other windows and switch back-and-forth between them. screen stays out of your way unless you hit its control key (^A by default). "^A c" creates a new window. "^A n" and "^A p" move to the next and previous windows. "^A w" gives a list of the current windows and shows which you're in. "^A 3" moves to the third window, etc. ("^A a" gives a literal "^A".)
This is especially useful if, for example, you need to log onto your university's system and perform multiple tasks there. You can read mail in one window, chat on IRC in another, edit your project in other, compile it in another, etc.
Perhaps the best feature of screen is that it lets you detach and reattach sessions. When it's time to leave home, you can hit "^A d" to detach the session, and log out. All your processes will continue to run. Drive to school, log in, type screen -D -R, and your session will reattach itself, and you can continue right where you left off. Log out and go to class, and reattach there. Go over to a friend's house, and reattach there. You can have your text mode "desktop" running all the time, with everything laid out as you like it, and connect to it from anywhere, as GUI people do with VNC.
You can set your desktop up in your ~/.screenrc so you don't have to start all your applications every time. Mine looks like this:
startup_message off
screen -M -t root 0 su -
screen -t mail 1 mutt
screen -t emacs 2 xemacs -nw -e gnuserv-start
screen -t irc 3 epic4
screen -t yahoo 4 centericq
screen -t mixer 5 aumix
screen 6
screen 7
screen 8
screen 9
screen 10
select 1
If I don't already have a screen session running, all I have to do is type screen, and my 11 windows are created for me. I'm dropped into the first one so I can read my mail while my other apps start in the background, log me onto IRC, etc. Depending on your needs, you could have other windows tailing log files (and monitoring them to alert you to activity (-M)), logging you on to other servers, etc.
screen has a huge feature set. It can log windows to files, can split a session between multiple terminals, will let you copy and paste between windows using only the keyboard, and is rumored to be surprisingly effective against the heartbreak of psoriasis. Just take a look at its man page or info documentation to get an idea of its scope.
ratpoison
Now that you understand screen, we can talk about the window manager which unobtrusively displays itself in the screenshot above, ratpoison. ratpoison is:
... a simple window manager with no large library dependencies, no fancy graphics, no window decorations, and no rodent dependence. It is largely modeled after GNU Screen, which has done wonders in the virtual terminal market. All interaction with the window manager is done through keystrokes. ratpoison has a prefix map to minimize the key clobbering that cripples EMACS and other quality pieces of software. All windows are maximized and kept maximized to avoid wasting precious screen space.
As screen handles text windows, ratpoison handles GUI windows. Each window is the same size, the size of the screen. There are no title bars, no minimize buttons, none of the clutter that's needed by a mouse. Mozilla looks like this:
You can do fancier split screens to make several applications visible at once:
, but I don't bother. I want each program to have all the room it can.
ratpoison stays out of the way until you hit its control key (I set it to ^O because "a" and "o" are next to each other in my keyboard layout). "^O w" gives me a list of the current windows. "^O 1" takes me to the first one. "^O ^O" switches me back to the one I used most recently. "^O n" and "^O p" take me to the next and previous ones. "^O k" closes the current window. "^O !" brings up a prompt in which I can type a command to start a program; I find "^O ! cbb" to be much faster than hunting through menus.
As you would expect, ratpoison is lightning fast and perfectly stable.
Applications
My main application is a gnome-terminal running screen. I use gnome-terminal because it's easily configured to use good fonts, a bright color scheme, and no scrollbar, menu bar, etc. Looking at it over my shoulder, you'd think I was running at the console instead of in X.
I put as much of my activity as possible into this single gnome-terminal. Often, I'm running nothing but this, Mozilla, and maybe XMMS (which I only use because I'm too lazy to find a console MP3 player which deals well with my lousy fixed-rate sound card).
I do almost everything in console apps. EPIC4 and centericq handle IRC and instant messaging. mutt handles my mail. The amazing w3m is used for most of my freshmeat work, as it's infinitely better-suited than Mozilla for dealing with text on the Web (typing in Mozilla can't compare with the ability to dump text from a textbox into a real editor for processing). Both use XEmacs[1] through gnuclient. gnuclient allows me to call the already-running XEmacs on screen 2 to edit some text. Using the same XEmacs session over and over again leads to several good features. For example, the kill and yank ring continues across sessions. I can kill text from a text box in w3m, switch to mutt, start a message, and yank the text into the message.
Advantages
Why have I settled into this system, and what benefits do I gain from it? I take advantage of the best of both the X and console worlds. I get the graphical abilities of X without all the clutter that usually attends it, and I can work much more quickly and with less strain on my hands because I don't have to use a mouse.
Simplicity
At any moment, my screen is devoted to only one thing. As I type this, all I see is XEmacs showing this buffer. Since I can only see what I'm working on at this moment, I have to make the choice to go to something else. I can't be distracted by text in an X-Chat window behind this one, or by buddies appearing and disappearing in the Gaim window in the corner. If someone messages me, centericq will play a sound; I don't need to watch IM obsessively. If I'm distracted, it's because my mind is distracted by a thought of something else, not because of a flash of color in the periphery of my vision.
Since there's nothing to tweak, I'm not tempted to endlessly fidget with my windows and reconfigure my window manager, moving this window a bit to the left and that one to desktop two instead of four. I don't get bored with a theme and spend 45 minutes looking for a new one.
Clarity
Every application takes up the entire screen, and I can use large fonts to reduce eye strain. Mozilla has the full width and height of my screen, and if I have to scroll horizontally, it's the site author's fault, not mine.
Flexibility
When I'm home, I do all my work on my laptop, which runs as an xterminal connected to my more powerful desktop machine. I like being able to move the laptop from place to place. The desktop's monitor is only used for watching DVDs.
Since all my processes are running on the desktop, if something goes wrong with my laptop, I can reattach my session on the desktop and go on working. Since I don't rely exclusively on GUI applications, if something goes wrong that prevents me from running X, if I'm placed in an environment in which I can't run X, or if I want to persist in my untested but heartfelt belief that not running X saves battery life, I can be happy with the console.
When I leave home and run my laptop independently, I use the same X system on it. Before leaving, I turn off mail delivery and run a script that rsyncs /var/www and /home/jeff to the laptop. I detach and go. If, while I'm on the road, I want to check the status of a job I left running at home, I can ssh back and reattach my home session. When I get home again, I turn off mail delivery on the laptop, rsync back to the desktop, reattach the desktop session, and push on.
Stability
Given the choice, ratpoison would run forever. I don't worry about my window manager locking up, crashing X, or displaying random strange behavior.
More importantly, it doesn't even matter if X does take a dive. All my applications are still running in screen. I can hit ctrl-alt-bksp, run startx again, type screen -D -R in gnome-terminal, and the session will reattach. I can go on like nothing happened.
In fact, it doesn't matter if the whole computer shuts down. Sometimes, I don't notice that the cat has knocked the laptop's power cable loose again[2], and suddenly see it suspending to disk. No problem; I bring it back up, reconnect it to the server, and reattach the screen session that's happily continued to run there all the time.
If a tree falls on the server, my processes will go down with it, but I can't help that. There has to be some point of failure, eventually.
Obscurity
I won't call it genuine security that would protect from a malicious attack, but there is an element of obscurity to the system that can protect from a friend who wants to play a practical joke when I walk away. I keep xlock on "^O x", but even if I step away from the keyboard without locking it, someone stepping in tends to be confused by a screen that shows no "close" buttons and a keyboard set to Dvorak.
Conclusions
The desktop metaphor has its place. It may even be essential for people who don't want to understand what's happening beneath their computer's GUI surface. If you do know how to use your computer without pointing and clicking, consider that you have the option to dispense with the metaphor, and may find yourself more productive if you do. You can have the ability to run all the graphical applications you need without the clutter of a root window full of icons hidden under layer upon layer of windows.
This isn't for everyone, even among the digerati. An artist may have a genuine need to have several windows of images in view at once. For someone like myself who works in text, I find it an excellent system. If something like this would be a good fit for you, I hope you've found this description useful.
In closing, I'll admit to a certain impish glee in putting this article in the themes area of our articles section. In a sense, it belongs because it's a description of how I "theme" my desktop. In a more legitimate sense, it should be thrown out because there is no "desktop" in my system, and nothing to theme. Try to troll gently in the comments.
Footnotes
- Ummm... Why not just Emacs, if you're not using its GUI mode anyway? I used to use VM to read mail, and there was a time when the then-current version of VM would run on XEmacs but not Emacs. I switched, enjoyed the color support on the console (not a feature of Emacs at the time), and just never got around to switching back.
- I don't have a comment on this; I just don't like having only one footnote.[3]
- There, that's better.
See also "Ion"
Ion (http://freshmeat.net/projects/ion/) is like ratpoison, but more useful and less extreme. Ratpoison may be great if you have a small monitor or good memory but I, at least, prefer to use multiplex my applications spatially as well as temporally.
If even Ion is too weird for you, consider PWM (http://freshmeat.net/projects/pwm/), by the same author.
Screen is ace
I run debugging computational jobs on ~10 dual procs (production is on a larger cluster) so I have a screen session running on each with two terms. Then I have one overall screen which has email etc and contains all of the sessions on the remote machines. I have uptimes as long as the machines ~6 months -- reattaching from home and the office, on holiday etc. With a large history I can look back at the output from all my jobs for the last couple of weeks and with its status-line monitors I can ensure the load average on all the machines stays close to 2.0.
Screen is my effective screen manager. I run emacs (windowless) editting my code and can go home and return to the exact same spot with my kill ring and last modifications intact.
Q.
You aren't fully evolved yet ;)
Hey Jeff,
Your setup sounds quite familiar to mine, however I have xterm configured with a massive scroll buffer and no scrollbars (as opposed to memory hog gnome-terminal).
Most of my stuff is done in the console too, with one exception - vim. gvim built to use GTK, with all it's scrollbars and menus, etc. removed is a really neat editor. Add a few bindings and you have transparent X11<->vim cut-and-paste.
I've run out of steam before finishing this comment. Oh well :). My vim configs (and others) can be found at <http://botanicus.net/dw/conf.html>.
What's wrong with gnome?
I love the applets! Those had to be one of the coolest ideas ever!
I still have one problem, terminals! I have a button in the bar that launches a terminal, so, since most of the time i'm lazy and i dont want to search for a terminal I go and push the button to get me a fresh terminal. This is great, until i see that i have 20 terminals alltogether and i have to start choosing which ones should be closed. Anyone has any idea on how to overcome this? I also dont like programs like powershell because i usually close the window instead of closing a tab.
reduz
*term sux :(
Hey, what a nice article! I've done the same, trying tons of various window managers, currently using massively reconfigured mwm... i'll try ratpoison and teh others someone suggested in comment #3, asap.
Anyway, my No.1 problem with X that there are no working xterm alternatives. I like to use key combos like ctrl+pgdown, shift+F7 etc. and having working DEL and Backspace not even mentioning Ctrl+HOME/END. While on console they work as expected (using RAW mode keyboard access) they don't in xterm and other clones i've tried.
Actually teh ermcap system don't even allow to define these keys, so it isn't a bug of these *term apps but the architecture in general.
The other problem is cut'n'paste between console and X apps...
Very interesting read
Think I might try it seeing as I've been using multi-gnome-terminal, which is similar in functionality in that you can have multiple windows in a window, except that it is in a windowed (not necessarily desktopped) environment. I do get distracted by all the different themes out there although I hardly try any of them.
Re: What's wrong with gnome?
> I still have one problem, terminals! I
> have a button in the bar that launches a
> terminal, so, since most of the time i'm
> lazy and i dont want to search for a
> terminal I go and push the button to get
> me a fresh terminal. This is great,
> until i see that i have 20 terminals
> alltogether and i have to start choosing
> which ones should be closed. Anyone has
> any idea on how to overcome this?
Simply get in the habit of hitting Ctrl-D after you
run your commands, instead of switching back to
your graphical apps.
I've been looking for something like this
Thanks for the article Jeff. I have been looking for something like this for a long time; I used Blackbox for a while but didn't find it "minimalist" enough.
Thanks again
p.s. Links puts w3m to shame :)
Umm...
I like this alot, but probably would/will never use a
setup like this. BTW... what's that XMMS skin?
:P
Re: *term sux :(
> Hey, what a nice article! I've done the
> same, trying tons of various window
> managers, currently using massively
> reconfigured mwm... i'll try ratpoison
> and teh others someone suggested in
> comment #3, asap.
Heh, it looks very nice to me too. I mainly like to do everything with keycodes, the windows are not really bad for me, in the contrary, I don't think I would be able to live without them (that's why I use X, to run xterms, and gaim, I love gaim, I've used centericq, it's really good for sending IM's in the real sence, but not really for chatting, if you ask me) Anyone knows a wm in wich you can do everything with keycodes and still have windows in the normal way?
> Anyway, my No.1 problem with X that
> there are no working xterm alternatives.
> I like to use key combos like
> ctrl+pgdown, shift+F7 etc. and having
> working DEL and Backspace not even
> mentioning Ctrl+HOME/END. While on
> console they work as expected (using RAW
> mode keyboard access) they don't in
> xterm and other clones i've tried.
That's really weird, it works in every terminal I've used, going from xterm, over Eterm and rxvt through powershell. Probably you've got something configured wrong.
> Actually teh ermcap system don't even
> allow to define these keys, so it isn't
> a bug of these *term apps but the
> architecture in general.
>
> The other problem is cut'n'paste between
> console and X apps...
Copy: select with the mouse past with the middle button
cut: impossible I think (if you meant the real console, without X, you have to use GPM, but I don't know if this works between console and X)
Forget X altogether...
I tried using screen in the past and it was nice. I liked it a lot, but I found something that sort of falls between X and using screen and that is twin. Twin is a console window manager but more along the lines of X window managers than screen. Look it up here on Freshmeat. I have mutt running as a rolled up window checking my e-mail, centericq, elinks (enhanced links which is even better), BitchX running in another for IRC and a few others. I might do something along these lines once I have X installed on a decent computer though.
Screen is blinking great...
Thanks for the reminder, I had'nt used screen in a while and youve just reminded how damned handy it was, for anyone stuck on a large shared system at a uni screen can be a real godsend. You can use it to solve all kinds of problems aswell, iirc it has some stuff for sharing consoles with other people, and the detach feature is truly great (it was very handy for running dedicated quake server). Its nice to see that they have the splitvt stuff built in now too.
Great article, incidentally for those of you, like me, who arent so hot with remeber keyboard shortcuts.... ctrl-a ? is your friend.
Re: What's wrong with gnome?
> I love the applets! Those had to be one
> of the coolest ideas ever!
>
> I still have one problem, terminals! I
> have a button in the bar that launches a
> terminal, so, since most of the time i'm
> lazy and i dont want to search for a
> terminal I go and push the button to get
> me a fresh terminal. This is great,
> until i see that i have 20 terminals
> alltogether and i have to start choosing
> which ones should be closed. Anyone has
> any idea on how to overcome this? I also
> dont like programs like powershell
> because i usually close the window
> instead of closing a tab.
>
> reduz
Just use the multi-gnome-terminal (http://multignometerm.sourceforge.net/index.shtml)
It's basically like tabbed browsing only for consoles. Which btw is a real time saver both on the web and in the consoles.
amiwm
Screen is great, no doubt, and ratpoison is nice, too, but my favourite setup is amiwm with two high-res monitors in a multihead setup. I usually keep a browser open on the right screen, and a couple of xterms on the left one; up to 6 fit on the screen without any overlap at all, and there still is enough space for gkrellm, gqmpeg and a few other tools; everything else I use usually runs in an xterm, anyway.
Once you get used to amiwm's look and feel, this is really a great setup, and I cannot recommend it enough to anyone who wants a fast and lean wm and a desktop where you can keep all things that matter visible at once - something I have found to be a huge advantage in day-to-day work.
Interesting setup
I find it great that you introduced screen to some people out there who didn't know it existed. After trying most setups as well, I am generally now running icewm with aterm, in which I run screen. In various screens I run vim (coding alot), epic4, lynx, links and mutt. The yamm icewm theme seems to be the one I'm using the most. I also keep a few sh screen windows, one usually uid 0... What is great about this setup is that although it looks better in X, it works as efficiently when it is not available, and remotely as well.
Re: What's wrong with gnome?
>
> I still have one problem, terminals! I
> have a button in the bar that launches a
> terminal, so, since most of the time i'm
> lazy and i dont want to search for a
> terminal I go and push the button to get
> me a fresh terminal. This is great,
> until i see that i have 20 terminals
> alltogether and i have to start choosing
> which ones should be closed. Anyone has
> any idea on how to overcome this? I also
> dont like programs like powershell
> because i usually close the window
> instead of closing a tab.
>
> reduz
screen is your friend, only a single terminal window is required.
Re: Umm...
> I like this alot, but probably
> would/will never use a
> setup like this. BTW... what's that XMMS
> skin?
> :P
That looks like Orange Juice, by Nathan Baxter. It's based on an excellent Enlightenment theme he made. You can find it here, on freshmeat, I think, or on his homepage (http://babyhead.lostmypants.net/themes.html).
Re: What's wrong with gnome?
> I love the applets! Those had to be one
> of the coolest ideas ever!
>
> I still have one problem, terminals! I
> have a button in the bar that launches a
> terminal, so, since most of the time i'm
> lazy and i dont want to search for a
> terminal I go and push the button to get
> me a fresh terminal. This is great,
> until i see that i have 20 terminals
> alltogether and i have to start choosing
> which ones should be closed. Anyone has
> any idea on how to overcome this? I also
> dont like programs like powershell
> because i usually close the window
> instead of closing a tab.
>
> reduz
Use MGT (multi-gnome-terminal). It has tabs, you can assign commands to them (ssh, su, ...) or split them; and you also have a setting to ask you if you really want to close the window. That saved me a couple of times, because I was so used to having many terms open I always closed it without remembering the other thousand tabs.
screen for X?
From the start of the article, I hoped it would answer my dearest question, but in the end it did not. So here it is, maybe someone knows the answer:
screen is a great tool for the terminal. But is there a similar tool for X - i.e., one that would let detach from an X session and reattach later, even if on a different host? Ideally, it should also be possible to have multiple X terminals attached to a single X session at the same time. Multiplexing multiple X sessions on one physical terminal would be just icing on the cake.
I've had several people suggest VNC when I asked this question before, but everytime I tried, VNC was much too slow for regular work even on a dedicated LAN. I guess grabbing and transferring screen rectangle bitmaps just can't beat (or even match) the native X protocol.
Come on, it can't be that hard! I don't know the X protocol (I guess I should have a look - anyone have a URL handy?), but I suppose that most of the time, it would be nothing but forwarding the connection - sort of a proxy server. Of course, there's the problem of reconnecting the clients back to the new server - replay any initialization, redraw the windows... And one would have to simulate the server's presence all the time so that the clients don't die. And you can't currently change the resolution and color depth on the fly, so they would have to match. And a number of other problems, sure. But I'm sure it can be done! Am I the only one who longs for this?
Re: What's wrong with gnome?
> I love the applets! Those had to be one
> of the coolest ideas ever!
>
> I still have one problem, terminals! I
> have a button in the bar that launches a
> terminal, so, since most of the time i'm
> lazy and i dont want to search for a
> terminal I go and push the button to get
> me a fresh terminal. This is great,
> until i see that i have 20 terminals
> alltogether and i have to start choosing
> which ones should be closed. Anyone has
> any idea on how to overcome this? I also
> dont like programs like powershell
> because i usually close the window
> instead of closing a tab.
>
> reduz
Heh, that's very easy, code on the terminal ;-) Just bind the closing button to a proc that closes the tab rather than the window, I know it's not very hard to do this in TK, but I don't know about gnome. That's what opensource is for ;-)
Re: What's wrong with gnome?
If you are using gnome:
Try add the "Run button" ou the Mini-Commander
applet to the panel.
centericq + screen
I've been running into problems using centericq w/ screen. Every now and then centericq seems to send some bogus escape codes that puts screen into a high-bit mode. I have to ^L in centericq to fix it. Anyone else run in to this?
Re: I've been looking for something like this
> p.s. Links puts w3m to shame :)
Oh, want to flame? Links has more features (JavaScript), but w3m is a much
nicer program in terms of look&feel. Plus, the Links developers are not very
cooperative, to put it mildly... I wouldn't switch for money.
Re: screen for X?
A proxy for X *does* exist, but don't ask me about the details.
Re: screen for X?
> I've had several people suggest VNC when
> I asked this question before, but
> everytime I tried, VNC was much too slow
> for regular work even on a dedicated
> LAN.
Rather than making a direct TCP connection to the VNC server, forward your connection through SSH (make sure compression is enabled (-C in OpenSSH)). This greatly speeds up performance for me.
An alternate VNC distribution, TightVNC, may be what you need. It attempts to use more efficient transmission methods than vanilla VNC.
Very good article
Minimalistic approach is cool. And also helps to stay sharp. The only thing I don't like about "minimalistic" window managers is that most of the time they come with Emacs like key bindings (I guess, following screen) which for some people (i.g. me) are quite cumbersome.
On the other hand fancy titlebars and borders plus nice backgrounds are cool too. Sometimes.
Anyway. Thank you very much for this article.
Re: Umm...
> That looks like Orange Juice, by Nathan Baxter.
That's right. We have a listing for it at http://themes.freshmeat.net/projects/ojxmms/.
Re: *term sux :(
> I've used centericq, it's really good for sending IM's in the real
> sence, but not really for chatting, if you ask me
You probably didn't turn "Chat messaging mode" on.
> Anyone knows a wm in wich you can do everything with keycodes and
> still have windows in the normal way?
Someone in my LUG does this with a 1.x version of AfterStep.
I don't get it.
Ratpoision seems TOO minimalistic. I do everything you do, except with a gnome/sawfish combination. I set up virtual desktops with four terminals side-by-side so I can see several processes going at once, and I still have room to fit in everybuddy and xmms w/ playlist. Having a full screen for something like everybuddy seems rather absurd to me. The only thing I want to run fullscreen is galeon, which I do. I have windowmaker style key bindings to switch between virtual desktops, plus alt+tab bound so I can pretty do whatever I want fast enough. Ratpoison seems less powerful and more like a burden to me.
Re: *term sux :(
>
> % I've used centericq, it's really good
> for sending IM's in the real
> % sence, but not really for chatting, if
> you ask me
>
>
>
>
> You probably didn't turn "Chat messaging
> mode" on.
>
>
>
>
> % Anyone knows a wm in wich you can do
> everything with keycodes and
> % still have windows in the normal way?
>
>
>
>
> Someone in my LUG does this with a 1.x
> version of AfterStep.
>
heh, It was not available in my version of centericq, just installed a new one, great improvement!
Re: screen for X?
> A proxy for X *does* exist, but don't ask me about the details.
It does indeed. It's called XMove (http://www.ensta.fr/internet/unix/misc/xmove.html) and it's a simple apt-get away if you're running Debian.
Random thought on minimalizm, distraction and visual interface
Minimalistic approach is cool, but unfortuantely is not suitable for many activities, for example GUI software development :) Also this particualr article is not a very good illustration of minimalizm, taking on accound the number and size of buttons in mozilla and xmms. Get rid of them all!
No Distraction is dubious advantage of above approach, since when IRC and IM are hidden, one tend to drop out of conversation, miss important ppl, etc. Sound indication does not help, since you tend to ignore them, burried in your current activity. When window is always present on the side of screen, its much easier to stay in sync. Not so when you burry it under other windows or even move it on the second head. Also, ditching computers entirely and going with paper is the only effective way to avoid distraction :)
GUI is not supposed to be simple. It was created mainly to fit as many things as possible on screen. If you start going about having single app on screen at a time, you could just as well stay in text mode.
Consider this: You have lots of gauges on your car's dashboard. Having single app on screen at a time would be similar to having only one gauge on your dashboard at a time.
Now about not having to mess around with config and themes. If you'd move to a barrell, you would not have to worry about decorating your living room.
Most non-minimalistic window managers are complex due to the fact that they attempt to give user flexibility to make interface as convinient as possible - not to put lots of bloat on screen. Most of them features come from real needs of real users, and ditching them on the side, would mean ditching many years of GUI evolution and painfull efforts to make computers as convinient and easy to use as possible.
Re: You aren't fully evolved yet ;)
> Hey Jeff,
> Your setup sounds quite familiar to
> mine, however I have xterm configured
> with a massive scroll buffer and no
> scrollbars (as opposed to memory hog
> gnome-terminal).
You know this, yet you dont know that:
gtk 13550 0.3 0.7 2820 1464 pts/1 S 18:30 0:00
rxvt
gtk 13546 0.2 1.1 4524 2292 pts/1 S 18:29 0:00
xterm
What a shame :)
Thanks for the write-up! Dream setup :)
Wow, you're running my dream setup.
I've been moving towards this for a while; am running most of my apps inside screen, and have been procrastinating trying out ratpoison for about a month now. This write-up does it for me, I'm switching to ratpoison this week!
Thanks!
-at
hell yeah
not tried ratpoison but true enough:
--> screen rocks <--
live your life in a shell
(btw, i'm currently using phpwebhosting.com for my shell = highly recommended).
good article!
Re: Random thought on minimalizm, distraction and visual interface
%You don't get it this guy is tired of IM and BS internet "friends" when your working no distractions is a PLUS.
> Minimalistic approach is cool, but
> unfortuantely is not suitable for many
> activities, for example GUI software
> development :) Also this particualr
> article is not a very good illustration
> of minimalizm, taking on accound the
> number and size of buttons in mozilla
> and xmms. Get rid of them all!
>
> No Distraction is dubious advantage of
> above approach, since when IRC and IM
> are hidden, one tend to drop out of
> conversation, miss important ppl, etc.
> Sound indication does not help, since
> you tend to ignore them, burried in your
> current activity. When window is always
> present on the side of screen, its much
> easier to stay in sync. Not so when you
> burry it under other windows or even
> move it on the second head. Also,
> ditching computers entirely and going
> with paper is the only effective way to
> avoid distraction :)
>
> GUI is not supposed to be simple. It was
> created mainly to fit as many things as
> possible on screen. If you start going
> about having single app on screen at a
> time, you could just as well stay in
> text mode.
>
> Consider this: You have lots of gauges
> on your car's dashboard. Having single
> app on screen at a time would be similar
> to having only one gauge on your
> dashboard at a time.
>
> Now about not having to mess around with
> config and themes. If you'd move to a
> barrell, you would not have to worry
> about decorating your living room.
>
> Most non-minimalistic window managers
> are complex due to the fact that they
> attempt to give user flexibility to make
> interface as convinient as possible -
> not to put lots of bloat on screen. Most
> of them features come from real needs
> of real users, and ditching them on the
> side, would mean ditching many years of
> GUI evolution and painfull efforts to
> make computers as convinient and easy to
> use as possible.
>
Coincidence
I just discovered ratpoison some days ago, and I'm very happy with it.
I have some screenshots (if the server is down try again later).This one (http://kamaitachi.homelinux.net:81/pics/screenshot-151002a.png) shows no windows (root-tail is running thought). This one (http://kamaitachi.homelinux.net:81/pics/screenshot-151002b.png) is a split screen, but just to show off; most of the time I just run everything maximized.
See also micq. I loved it too, and a line
receivescript ratpoison -c "echo incoming icq message"
works like a charm.
konsole full-screen mode
My monitor looks like yours a lot of the time because I run Konsole with mutliple terminals, running full-screen. I love the shift-left-arrow/shift-right-arrow keys for switching, and can set custom backgrounds, etc. Of course this lacks screen's session-handling functionality, so I am going to investigate that. I hope the keys can be reconfigured, though. I don't want to learn yet another set of keys for switching contexts.
Re: You aren't fully evolved yet ;)
>
> You know this, yet you dont know that:
>
> gtk 13550 0.3 0.7 2820 1464 pts/1 S 18:30 0:00 rxvt
> gtk 13546 0.2 1.1 4524 2292 pts/1 S 18:29 0:00 xterm
>
> What a shame :)
And it's a shame that you don't know that any sane xterm isn't linked to gtk:
~/src/www$ ldd `which xterm`
libfreetype.so.6 => /usr/lib/libfreetype.so.6 (0x4001e000)
libXaw.so.7 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXaw.so.7 (0x4005c000)
libXmu.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXmu.so.6 (0x400ae000)
libXt.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXt.so.6 (0x400c3000)
libSM.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libSM.so.6 (0x4010d000)
libICE.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libICE.so.6 (0x40116000)
libXpm.so.4 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXpm.so.4 (0x4012c000)
libXext.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXext.so.6 (0x4013b000)
libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x40149000)
libncurses.so.5 => /lib/libncurses.so.5 (0x40224000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x40262000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)
Re: What's wrong with gnome?
> This is great, until i see that i have 20 terminals
> alltogether and i have to start choosing
> which ones should be closed. Anyone has
> any idea on how to overcome this?
if you use bash, add to your .bashrc a:
export TMOUT=300
this will cause bash to quit after 5 minutes if you dont use it (and close the term windows too i guess)....
i hope this helps
http://freddo.netfirms.com/ (http://freddo.netfirms.com/)
Re: Screen is ace
> weeks and with its status-line monitors
> I can ensure the load average on all the
> machines stays close to 2.0.
Can you explain how you do this?
Re: Screen is ace
Sure. Look at the "hardstatus" capability. I use the following line in my .screenrc_controller:
hardstatus alwayslastline " %d.%m.%y %c \033[42;30m %w \033[m"
which gives the Day.Month.Year Time in blue [sorendition 02 40], and then the name of each "window" in green which I set to the name of the machine with eg:
screen -t lnx21 1 krlogin -t lnx21 screen -D -R -c ~/.screenrc2
which puts window number 1 on the machine called "lnx21", gives it that name, and runs screen with a different configuration .screenrc2. Actually it will re-attach to any previously running screen in case my hosting controller screen dies, and/or create a new screen if one is not found. In that file I have two "windows", so I can run two jobs on the dual proc, with the following status:
hardstatus alwayslastline "%l %n\033[m"
sorendition 06 41
which puts the load average and the window number in magenta with a blue background. The load monitor is 1,5,15 minutes load average so is not all that responsive but good enough for my needs. I recommend using a bold prompt with machine name and current directory which helps a lot with seeing/remembering what is going on. I use /bin/tcsh:
set prompt="%B[%n@%m %c03]%b% "
set ellipsis
Running a screen inside a screen requires lots of ctrl-a's!!
I hope that this helps. If you have any problems or want a screenshot let me know.
Q.
Add my vote for screen
I've been running most of my world inside
screen for a few years now. Even with
its warts, the advantages are a win.
Generally I have two windows: a screen
terminal and a tabbed browser. Sometimes
I forego the graphical browser and use
lynx instead. With emacs, pine, mutt, etc
one hardly needs a heavy GUI for most daily
tasks.
Ratpoison looks like it deserves some
consideration. It seems no matter how fast
of a system I get the latest KDE/Gnome install
is there to make startup run slower than my
previous CPU.
I've owned single-gauge cars
Consider this: You have lots of gauges on your car's dashboard. Having single app on screen at a time would be similar to having only one gauge on your dashboard at a time.
I have owned several cars with a single gauge. My first VW didn't even have a fuel level indicator, which presented no problems in practice - I never ran out of gas once, thanks to the UI design of the vehicle. The Prius gas/electric hybrid I drive now has an LCD screen in the dash, and displays almost all information in a "gauge at a time" mode (exceptions are fuel and speed, but I wouldn't mind if these also had to be selected for viewing).
Your criticisms of the original post are based on your own aesthetics, which is fine as long as you realize that they are not universal. What is "good" for you is not "good" to me - and I do *not* want any sort of pop-ups or IRC junk on my desk, ever!
The screen/ratpoison combination is not really about minimalism in an artistic or aesthetic sense, it's about minimalism in a functional or architectural sense. So stripping buttons out of Mozilla, for instance, is probably not something the author would want to spend time on.
Re: You aren't fully evolved yet ;)
> And it's a shame that you don't know
> that any sane xterm isn't linked to
> gtk:
I never said anything about xterm being linked
to gtk. That was the output from ps and "gtk"
happens to be my username.
I just wanted to point out that rxvt uses less
ram than xterm since less ram usage seemed to be
your goal.
Re: See also "Ion"
% If even Ion is too weird for you,
> consider PWM, by the same author.
If you're a GUI freak like me, but want something more
minimal, consider FluxBox. It's a hack of Blackbox with
some PWM features built in. Blackbox helpers like bbkeys
work just fine, too.
Re: Screen is ace
> Running a screen inside a screen requires lots of ctrl-a's!!
it doesn't have to. try using different escape keys in the different screen sessions (eg. C-z, C-v, ...), for instance.
Re: See also "Ion"
> If you're a GUI freak like me, but want
> something more
> minimal, consider FluxBox. It's a hack
> of Blackbox with
> some PWM features built in. Blackbox
> helpers like bbkeys
> work just fine, too.
Hum, fluxbox is somekind of wmaker less configurable... such as blackbox but under development, unlike blackbox.
Not convinced.
Neither convinced by ratpoison. I was forced to use it several days (no mouse working at that time), it was mostly a pain. I must admit that there are good idea out there, and it works well. But I had to spend to much time typing
C-t c
C-t S
C-t c
C-t s
C-t c
...
I stick with wmaker since many times ago. A simple shortcut to aterm (no strange behavior, unlike gnome term, and transparent scrollbar, no lines limit)... and every windows is placed in a clever way. So easy... so fast.
UI Design with Blinders
what is it with all these "minimalist" window managers that
aren't any different from other windowmanagers? Ratpoison
is the closest I've seen to what I would want, but i don't want
to actually lose the ability to use multiple windows at the
same time and place them where I want. I just want to lose all
the extraneous bs that every wm these days insists on
plastering all over the screen. Title bars, 3d animated borders
to drag, and on and on. All I want is a modern
windowmanager that supports modern features like gnome
and kde but has a theme that's close to my current twm
setup. No title bars, 1 pixel borders that I can drag to move
or resize. Even the minimalist themes for e, sawfish, etc, all
seem to be nothing more than playing with colours and
background tiles and not actually rethinking whether all this
crud is really necessary.
Re: UI Design with Blinders
% Even the minimalist themes
> for e, sawfish, etc, all
> seem to be nothing more than playing
> with colours and
> background tiles and not actually
> rethinking whether all this
> crud is really necessary.
I run sawfish with all frames, decorations, etc. turned off, and move with alt-left-drag and resize with alt-right-drag. alt-middle brings up the WM menu for anything else (mostly the rare force-close op).
;
; resize and move a la WindowMaker
;
(unbind-keys window-keymap "W-Button3-Click1")
(bind-keys window-keymap "W-Button3-Move" 'resize-window-interactively)
;
; remove all window decoration
;
(add-frame-style 'no_frames (lambda (a b) nil-frame))
(custom-set-variable 'default-frame-style 'no_frames)
Re: konsole full-screen mode
> Of course this lacks
> screen's session-handling functionality,
> so I am going to investigate that. I
> hope the keys can be reconfigured,
> though. I don't want to learn yet
> another set of keys for switching
> contexts.
screen's session-handling is a super-fantastic feature, especially if you do your job both at home and at the office. I run a screen session on my NetBSD box in my cube, and when I'm at home I can ssh in and connect to it, and I'm right where I left off! No VPN software needed, no more forgetting what it was that I was up to.
You needn't worry about screen's configurability. It's very configurable, though not as much as, say, sawfish or emacs, which embed script interpreters. If you just want to set custom bindings, you can certainly do that. I have alt-number set to jump to the corresponding screen, to match galeon and gaim's tab-switching bindings. It's super-fantastic. :)
Re: Coincidence
Sorry for the off-topic post, but I just want to thank you all for the two most interesting days (http://kamaitachi.homelinux.net:81/cgi-bin/awstats.pl) of my home server :-) . Until now kamaitachi uploaded more than 150M with these .pngs, for 10 different browsers in at least 17 OSes, including RISC OS, Irix and BeOS.
Watching the logs in root-tail was a geeky fun time!
Re: konsole full-screen mode
> I have alt-number
> set to jump to the corresponding screen,
> to match galeon and gaim's tab-switching
> bindings. It's super-fantastic. :)
>
The .screenrc snippet is as follows, with <alt-char> replaced by the literal character my terminal interprets from that keyboard combo:
# ^T is the escape
bindkey "\024" mapdefault
bindkey "alt-1" select 1
bindkey "alt-2" select 2
bindkey "alt-3" select 3
bindkey "alt-4" select 4
bindkey "alt-5" select 5
bindkey "alt-6" select 6
bindkey "alt-7" select 7
bindkey "alt-8" select 8
bindkey "alt-9" select 9
bindkey "alt-0" select 0
# alt '-'
bindkey "alt--" other
evilwm - another good minimal wm
There's also evilwm (http://freshmeat.net/projects/evilwm/)
which, for some, may well be that 1-pixel border no-nonsense
keyboard-controlled wm you are looking for.
I don't know why Ciaran called it evilwm. He should have called it goodwm. :)
One size does not fit all
ratpoison looks like a neat toy... and if, like the author of this article, you're mostly running non-gui apps, it's fine
i love screen and have used it for many years, but i would never limit myself to it's capabilities. ratpoison sounds like screen with a little extra gui, and for me that's just not nearly enough.
allow me to sing the praises of other, more full featured window managers and gui apps..
first, i like having gui apps opened on the screen at the same time, and seeing them all... for example, i use gkrellm, which gives me cpu/disk/net stats at a glance (no keystrokes necessary)... my volume widget is there, as are my most frequently used apps in a button bar... as with ratpoison, there\'s no need to hunt through menus to get at any of these functions, but there\'s also no need to type any commands whatsoever... they're all just a click away
having a pager on the screen also makes it obvious which apps are where, which is a great improvement on the screen convention of cycling through screens to get to your app, or having to use cumbersome naming and keystroke combinations... screen is all fine and good for a few apps, but when you exceed that number it starts to get a bit unwieldy... which is one of the reasons i also have a couple of terminals open... most of my work is done in the normal, green, user terminal... with the red terminal reserved for root actions. i have no need for these terminals to be the width of my full 1600x1200 screen... i'd rather use the extra real estate to have two or more apps on the screen at the same time, which usually means gvim + 2 terminals (and the gkrellm, buttonbar, volume, pager and icon box which are sticky on each screen, but those take up minimum real estate)
opera takes up nearly a full window, just as you have with ratpoison, as i like to use tabs instead of free-floating windows, but i don't give up the rest of my windowing features to do this
in short, ratpoison may be alright as a lightweight window manager, but it comes up lacking for a power user... now vnc seems to be a much better screen compliment, as it allows you to detach and reattach your window session just as you do with screen itself... and i might just be taking a look at it or tight vnc next
Re: konsole full-screen mode
>
> % I have alt-number
> % set to jump to the corresponding
> screen,
> % to match galeon and gaim's
> tab-switching
> % bindings. It's super-fantastic. :)
> %
I got the chars in the .screenrc using vim, and pressing cntrl-v alt-1 while in insert mode.
I believe the following octal codes will also work:
bindkey "\024" mapdefault
bindkey "\261" select 1
bindkey "\262" select 2
bindkey "\263" select 3
bindkey "\264" select 4
bindkey "\265" select 5
bindkey "\266" select 6
bindkey "\267" select 7
bindkey "\270" select 8
bindkey "\271" select 9
bindkey "\260" select 0
Re: screen for X?
>
> % A proxy for X *does* exist, but don't
> ask me about the details.
>
> It does indeed. It's called XMove
> and it's a simple apt-get away if you're
> running Debian.
>
I have debian. I apt-got xmove. When I ran it everything seemed ok:
$ xmove
Implementing MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 user authentication
XMove 2.0 ready.
Then I tried to start up a simple xterm:
$ export DISPLAY=localhost:1
$ xterm
xmove spits out:
Unable to create connection to server at :0.0.
Is the server dead?
Is the server name correct?
Well, I certainly am running an X server at :0.0, as my normal applications connect there by default.
So what's the deal? Has anyone actually gotten this to work? Is there some magic that I'm missing?
Many thanks!
Oeone
U know what this reminds me of? oeone desktop (oeone.com) except less pretty and with better performance and versatility.
Ratpoison && detaching X11 like 'screen does
Hi..
I read this Parg:
"Since all my processes are running on the desktop, if something goes wrong with my laptop, I can reattach my session on the desktop and go on working. Since I don't rely exclusively on GUI applications, if something goes wrong that prevents me from running X, if I'm placed in an environment in which I can't run X, or if I want to persist in my untested but heartfelt belief that not running X saves battery life, I can be happy with the console."
but I don't think Ratpoison can do this.... as something else, like 'xmove', is required. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
-Mike
GNU Screen user since '98
Re: centericq + screen
> I've been running into problems using
> centericq w/ screen. Every now and then
> centericq seems to send some bogus
> escape codes that puts screen into a
> high-bit mode. I have to ^L in
> centericq to fix it. Anyone else run in
> to this?
Hi, I've run into that as well, I didn't realise what it was, so thanks for the information (and the quick fix ^L). Have you found any further information on this issue? is it just screen<>centericq related?
Re: *term sux :(
> Anyway, my No.1 problem with X that
> there are no working xterm alternatives.
> I like to use key combos like
> ctrl+pgdown, shift+F7 etc. and having
> working DEL and Backspace not even
> mentioning Ctrl+HOME/END. While on
> console they work as expected (using RAW
> mode keyboard access) they don't in
> xterm and other clones i've tried.
> Actually teh ermcap system don't even
> allow to define these keys, so it isn't
> a bug of these *term apps but the
> architecture in general.
One thing that has fixed that for me was adding this line to my .Xdefaults file:
xterm*backspacekey: ^H
eschewing X altogether
I never knew so many people thought the same way as I do about desktops until reading this article and its comments! screen sounds like a must-have app.
My current setup eschews X altogether. I use svgatextmode to set my text-mode linux console to be 180 lines by 80 columns. And I modify inittab to spawn 15 terminals.
At that point ALT-F1 to ALT-F12 switch quickly between all my terminals. I also use ALT-left and ALT-right to get to 13-15 (which are used for less-often accessed apps).
w3m for web browsing, groovycd for cd's and splay for mp3's (mpg123 has problems with some mp3's). emacs for editing. mutella for gnutella p2p. lftp for ftp.
copy-and-paste is handled with gpm.
I've had the same experience of switching from desktop to desktop, with WindowMaker and BlackBox being the most favored. But I'd say this configuration has been my most productive.
Not for everyone, but...
After reading about this setup, I was intrigued enough to give it a try for myself. Overall I think it's a good option if you work primarily with console applications (although in that case, why you'd want to use X at all is something of an open question) or if you like to have your apps full-screen.
There are a few things about ratpoison that I don't particularly care for, unfortunately. One is that EVERY window that can be resized, is automatically set to full-screen - even transient ones such as GTK file selectors. The GIMP is rendered all but unusuable, because you have to switch to the full-screen toolbox (which looks as awkward as it sounds). And even applications that can normally be moved without need of a window manager's titlebar, such as XMMS, are forever stuck dead-center in the screen.
On the other hand, if you don't normally use GUI apps such as these, this setup can be just the no-frills desktop you're looking for. The combination of screen, ratpoison, and gnome-terminal gives the console fan the economy sized, mouse-enabled workspace he or she has been craving, without having to dicker with messy SVGATextMode and gpm configurations. And since it is running under X, it isn't necessary to sacrifice the ability to use GUI apps when the need or mood strikes. In that respect, it's a best-of-both-worlds approach.
Although I'm typing this right now using Galeon, most of my work in this setup is done using the console apps running under screen. I use mutt for mail reading, jstar for text editing (I'm *really* getting to love the WordStar command set!), epic4 for IRC chatting, links for browsing (though I'm thinking of trying w3m just to see what the fuss is about), TinyMUCK for those rare times when my travels take me to MU* territory, mpg123 for tunes, slrn for Usenet, and sc (a nice console spreadsheet program) for various mathematical chores. Graphically, Galeon is my GUI browser of choice, and I also use OpenOffice, gqview, pan, and evolution for various purposes - all of which work very well as fullscreen apps. However, when I have to use something like The GIMP, it's back into Fluxbox I go; the way ratpoison handles GIMPing is just plain not for me.
This combination certainly isn't for everyone, but if you find yourself using xterms more often than not for certain tasks, you may find it a fun change of pace. I consider myself a confirmed "GUI junkie," but this setup may convert me to the Dark Side yet... ;^)
Re: Not for everyone, but...
> TinyMUCK for those rare times
> when my travels take me to MU*
> territory,
Oops. I meant to say TinyFugue, not TinyMUCK (which is a Windows MU* client). Sorry 'bout that... I'm always getting the two program names mixed up.
Re: Ratpoison && detaching X11 like 'screen does
> but I don't think Ratpoison can do
> this.... as something else, like
> 'xmove', is required. Please correct me
> if I'm wrong.
>
Ratpoison, nor any window manager can do this. X clients connect directly to the server (i.e. your screen). If the screen detaches, all clients loose their connection thus are terminated.
The (only) solution is to use a special X server. vnc is one such server, that offers a remotely controllable desktop on one side (for your screen) and an X server on the other side. Thus if your screen detaches, the X server with all its X clients continues to run. See tightvnc (http://www.tightvnc.com/).
Re: Not for everyone, but...
> However, when I have to use something
> like The GIMP, it's back into Fluxbox I
> go; the way ratpoison handles GIMPing is
> just plain not for me.
how about making a few basic shellscripts which contain
something like:
start Xnest (or gdmXnest);
export DISPLAY=Xnest number;
fluxbox;
gimp;
sort of thing, and then gimp will, or should, apear to start up correctly within a fluxbox (or other light windowmanager) session within a "screen" or "fullscreen-window".
Ralph
Re: UI Design with Blinders
> to drag, and on and on. All I want is a
> modern
> windowmanager that supports modern
> features like gnome
> setup. No title bars, 1 pixel borders
> that I can drag to move
> or resize. Even the minimalist themes
> for e, sawfish, etc, all
> seem to be nothing more than playing
> with colours and
> background tiles and not actually
> rethinking whether all this
> crud is really necessary.
e.g. the k10k theme for enlightenment (could be found on deviantart) have a border type called small, that is what you need a pixel width border with that you can move, resize even shade your windows, and every e them has the borderless option where with the help of the Alt + Mouse buttons you can have the menu, the resize and the move options.
Re: *term sux :(
>
> vs lbh pna ernq guvf, lbh'er n trrx.
%
heh, I can read it :)
ICE Window Manager + GNU Screen + full screen
"At any moment, my screen is devoted to only one thing. As I type this, all I see is XEmacs showing this buffer. Since I can only see what I'm working on at this moment, I have to make the choice to go to something else. I can't be distracted by text in an X-Chat window behind this one, or by buddies appearing and disappearing in the Gaim window in the corner. If someone messages me, centericq will play a sound; I don't need to watch IM obsessively. If I'm distracted, it's because my mind is distracted by a thought of something else, not because of a flash of color in the periphery of my vision."
I just wanted to say that I agree COMPLETELY. I find distractions very annoying, as I am easily distracted.
I use ICE Window Manager, and in it's new versions it has a fabulous full screen feature, which I use on all apps except for ones that need to be small (e.g. XMMS and The GIMP), all others are given their own desktop ... much in the same way that GNU Screen works. I also live in screen, I often have dozens of windows open in my screen session, and I attach it at work and friends places constantly (I use screen -x so it is open in both places at the same time). In XFree86 I use a full screen aterm with transparency and changing wallpapers from edenpics.com, cycling every 40 seconds. I find it very relaxing.
Most of my important work is done in screen, and for everything else I have a desktop for it ... works fabulously. And when someone else sits down at my computer to try something out I am showing them, I just un-fullscreen my apps and they can click on the desktop icons to switch programs, so on and so forth.
I have tried to leave ICE Window Manager a few times, but nothing I have tried comes close to it's feature set and EXTREME speed (doesn't take any time to load, even on a slow PC, and only 700KB to 2.5MB RAM, with all the GUI it has).
Oh, and I use the aeteria theme, one damn fine theme.
Re: screen for X?
By default, Debian's Xf86 config attaches to a unix domain socket (not a tcp socket) -- look at /etc/X11/xinit/xserverrc, remove "-nolisten tcp", and bounce X.
Make sure you understand the security ramifications of opening this port.
>
> %
> % % A proxy for X *does* exist, but
> don't
> % ask me about the details.
> %
> % It does indeed. It's called
> XMove
> % and it's a simple apt-get away if
> you're
> % running Debian.
> %
>
>
> I have debian. I apt-got xmove. When I
> ran it everything seemed ok:
> $ xmove
> Implementing MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 user
> authentication
> XMove 2.0 ready.
>
> Then I tried to start up a simple
> xterm:
> $ export DISPLAY=localhost:1
> $ xterm
>
> xmove spits out:
> Unable to create connection to server at
> :0.0.
> Is the server dead?
> Is the server name correct?
>
> Well, I certainly am running an X server
> at :0.0, as my normal applications
> connect there by default.
>
> So what's the deal? Has anyone actually
> gotten this to work? Is there some
> magic that I'm missing?
>
> Many thanks!
Re: centericq + screen
Try using:
screen centericq -a
>
> % I've been running into problems using
> % centericq w/ screen. Every now and
> then
> % centericq seems to send some bogus
> % escape codes that puts screen into a
> % high-bit mode. I have to ^L in
> % centericq to fix it. Anyone else run
> in
> % to this?
>
>
> Hi, I've run into that as well, I didn't
> realise what it was, so thanks for the
> information (and the quick fix ^L). Have
> you found any further information on
> this issue? is it just screen
> related?
>
Re: UI Design with Blinders
Have you tried openbox 3? It seems usable for a full range of preferences, from super-minamalist, to a full blown gnome/kde session. Plus it was designed to be stardards compliant first, and then the other stuff.
> what is it with all these
> "minimalist" window managers
> that
> aren't any different from other
> windowmanagers? Ratpoison
> is the closest I've seen to what I would
> want, but i don't want
> to actually lose the ability to use
> multiple windows at the
> same time and place them where I want. I
> just want to lose all
> the extraneous bs that every wm these
> days insists on
> plastering all over the screen. Title
> bars, 3d animated borders
> to drag, and on and on. All I want is a
> modern
> windowmanager that supports modern
> features like gnome
> and kde but has a theme that's close to
> my current twm
> setup. No title bars, 1 pixel borders
> that I can drag to move
> or resize. Even the minimalist themes
> for e, sawfish, etc, all
> seem to be nothing more than playing
> with colours and
> background tiles and not actually
> rethinking whether all this
> crud is really necessary.
Re: Forget X altogether...
> I tried using screen in the past and it
> was nice. I liked it a lot, but I found
> something that sort of falls between X
> and using screen and that is twin. Twin
> is a console window manager but more
> along the lines of X window managers
> than screen. Look it up here on
> Freshmeat. I have mutt running as a
> rolled up window checking my e-mail,
> centericq, elinks (enhanced links which
> is even better), BitchX running in
> another for IRC and a few others. I
> might do something along these lines
> once I have X installed on a decent
> computer though.
Screen is great, no doubt, and ratpoison is nice, too, but my favourite ebooks (http://ebooks.die-werbung.de) is amiwm with two high-res monitors in a multihead setup. I usually keep a browser open on the right screen, and a couple of xterms on the left one; up to 6 fit on the screen without any overlap at all, and there still is enough space for gkrellm, gqmpeg and a few other tools; everything else I use usually runs in an xterm, anyway.
Re: screen for X?
> screen is a great tool for the terminal.
> But is there a similar tool for X -
> i.e., one that would let detach from an
> X session and reattach later, even if on
> a different host? Ideally, it should
For the benefit of myself later in time and possibly others, here are links to two projects that I've randomly stumbled upon:
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~zandy/guievict/
http://www.cs.brown.edu/software/xmx/
Re: You aren't fully evolved yet ;)
>
> % And it's a shame that you don't know
> % that any sane xterm isn't linked to
> % gtk:
>
>
> I never said anything about xterm being
> linked
> to gtk. That was the output from ps and
> "gtk"
> happens to be my username.
>
> I just wanted to point out that rxvt
> uses less
> ram than xterm since less ram usage
> seemed to be
> your goal.
I always thought that xterm used more RAM then rxvt.... That's interesting.
Can see the attraction but...
it is just too hard to do for most of us so we have to grin and bear it.
I also think something it would be good for kids to introduce them to a bare computing environment without so much clutter they never feel in command.
BozMo (http://catesfamily.org.uk/)
Re: Screen is ace
> I run debugging computational jobs on
> ~10 dual procs (production is on a
> larger cluster) so I have a screen
> session running on each with two terms.
> Then I have one overall screen which has
> email etc and contains all of the
> sessions on the remote machines. I have
> uptimes as long as the machines ~6
> months -- reattaching from home and the
> office, on holiday etc. With a large
> history I can look back at the output
> from all my jobs for the last couple of
> weeks and with its status-line monitors
> I can ensure the load average on all the
> machines stays close to 2.0.
>
> Screen is my effective screen manager.
> I run emacs (windowless) editting my
> code and can go home and return to the
> exact same spot with my kill ring and
> last modifications intact.
>
Also it is useful when your dialup connection pull down. You may reattach your screen jobs one more.
X's
I've had the same experience as you've had.
Re: UI Design with Blinders
You should be able to do this with a bit of work with Fvwm.
For a good introduction to what Fvwm can do see http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=80517
Re: Not for everyone, but...
> There are a few things about ratpoison
> that I don't particularly care for,
> unfortunately. One is that EVERY window
> that can be resized, is automatically
> set to full-screen - even transient ones
> such as GTK file selectors. The GIMP is
> rendered all but unusuable, because you
> have to switch to the full-screen
> toolbox (which looks as awkward as it
> sounds). And even applications that can
> normally be moved without need of a
> window manager's titlebar, such as XMMS,
> are forever stuck dead-center in the
> screen.
>
I switched to ion from ratopoison for the reasons
you talk about. I was able to configure a ratpoison
interface to it. It has a floating window workspace
available for aps like Gimp. The only think I haven't
worked out yet in my ratpoison emulation is how to
send the escape character (Ctrl-A A type semantics).
Before I switched to ion, i used the exact setup as
the author which i had independently discovered as well.
Many thank
Stand in good stead
Desktop update?
It would be cool to get an update from Jeff to see what he's running these days. I'm sure screen is still part of the kit, but has ratpoison stood the test of time?
I also used centericq as well as IRC (via irssi, truly the IRC client of the gods). I found, however, that it was difficult to keep track of IM traffic, as it was in another window from the IRC window where i would focus most of my attention. Centericq, like many full-screen programs, didn't work well with screen's notify-on-action, as it would update itself randomly, even when nobody was talking.
The solution to my problems ended up being Bitlbee. This is a wonderful program, whose goal is simple: translate IM to IRC. It's a little more involved than centericq, as you must run it as a server. However, you can use any number of pre-setup public servers (one of which I run: irc.net). bitlbee has done a great job of matching many IRC commands to their IM equivalents. You can even send files!
So Jeff, what are you using these days?
Re: ICE Window Manager + GNU Screen + full screen
I normally use IceWM and love the full screen feature! Here's a few other things I've set it up to do:
10 workspaces, and each number key on the numeric keypad is set to switch to one of them. This way it is easy to remember which screen a certain program is running in and switch to it quickly. It compliments the full screen feature well, and puts the numeric keypad to good use - since I never use it for its intended purpose! (This one can also be done in Window Maker or almost any WM with multiple workspaces / screens.)
Alt + numeric keypad keys to switch workspaces and move the currently active window. Much easier than selecting "Move To..." from a menu with a mouse, and then trying to remember which workspace you actually wanted to move it to.
Alt + drag to move a window. Makes it easy to move a window out of the way, even if the title bar is off the screen.
Enter to maximize a window, and Alt-Enter to switch to/from full screen. This means a bit less mucking around with the mouse for programs that I normally run full screen (e.g. Firefox), and it's easy to quickly maximize a file load / save dialog box to see more files at once.
Pause / Break to close a window. Maybe this is a little bit risky, but this key is far enough out of the way that so far I haven't pressed it by accident.
Re: Desktop update?
After ratpoison, I used ion2 (http://freshmeat.net/projects/ion/) for a while, then
larswm (http://freshmeat.net/projects/larswm/). I currently
use wmii (http://freshmeat.net/projects/wmii/). I like it,
and it's an extremely fast-moving target. The wmii mailing list has a
lot of good (often long and heated) discussion about what a window
manager should do, and some interesting ideas are being worked into the
next version.
I also use irssi and bitlbee. And vim.
Thanks for your interest!
Sincerely,
Jeff
Re: Add my vote for screen
You may add my vote to yours.
hate that mouse
I use gnome + Ion3 for my desktop.
It does have a float environment for those pesky apps like The Gimp. It also has a system for windows that are asking for attention -- a simple text notification appears in the top of my current frame and I can jump to the requesting window with Alt-k-k... handy for using Gaim. I can take advantage of it's features, but keep it off screen and get to the message when I'm good and ready.
I just wish there were fewer apps that required a mouse. I don't mind using a GTK app at all if it has sensible hot-keys; but there are things like text-selection that are rather difficult in apps like Firefox.
... speaking of firefox, I also use the "Mouseless Browsing" add-on. Very handy.
If there were a modern gui browser with vim-like key bindings I'd be in heaven.
Anyway... it's been a rather natural progression to Ion3 for me. I started using the mouse for most things on a GUI wm... until I found the hot-keys to do things faster. Then I'd find most of the hot-keys and find it much faster than using the mouse; but would still be forced to use it for some tasks. Then I had enough and wanted something that used the keyboard exclusively.
It's much easier to keep your hands in one place on your desk. It's also faster to type what you want rather than hunt and peck with a pointer. I loathe to think of all the times I mistakenly performed some action because I "missed" with my mouse and clicked something else by accident. Almost never happens with Ion3 (except maybe when managing frames on-the-fly. You can split horizontally or vertically; but I haven't figured out how to do more complex operations like splitting two windows in a frame into two frames).
Either way; good article. I hope to see development in this area continue. I'm certainly a fan of a good interface. The desktop metaphor is just too cumbersome and slow after a certain critical level of understanding is reached by the user.
Re: hate that mouse
> If there were a modern gui browser with
> vim-like key bindings I'd be in heaven.
Hi, have you tried vimperator (http://vimperator.mozdev.net/)?
vimperator is a firefox extension that makes it behave like vim. It is modal, and allows most of the key bindings. I tried it a few weeks ago, and was able to do all my normal browsing without touching the mouse. I ended up removing the extension after a few days though, as I'm just too used to mouse browsing now.
Your antiwindowmanager artical
Hello- this is interesting and different indeed. You didn't come from a "Windows" background since you were a VM user. I think IBM got everything off of VM about a year ago. I'm not so sure that was such a great idea !? I used to say Windows was an OS for the illiterate. Work is work, and play is play. I still think the working world works best with menu's, but i do not own a business so who cares. I had to fire up NetTerm on my laptop to eyeball the VT100 emulation. I don't remember it being a DEC thing, and memory is getting worse! Nice artical, so how did you get the WiFi console connection from laptop to desktop? Tanx, mike
Very Nice
Nice article, Jeff!
I have been using a frighteningly similar setup for about three years.
Ratpoison has truly stood the test of time as a viable window manager
for mouse-less computing. I have found that an Emacs and Ratpoison
X11 session suits all my needs as an alternative desktop environment
and window manager combination. Using the keyboard exclusively,
without a doubt, is considerably faster than having to frequently
reach for the mouse.
Unfortunately, on those occasions where I find myself working with any
other setup (on my wife's or parents' computer), I am decidedly
miserable. I fumble about with the mouse and inadvertently type
prefix keys to no avail. To me, that is a tribute to how a setup like
this can become second nature despite an initial counterintuitive
learning curve.