Renzatic on 1/9/2009 at 21:42
I'm probably being pedantic here, arguing against something I haven't used extensively that might actually be useful, but using Expose/Switcher for managing multiple windows sounds like a better method. Like say I'm working with something that requires me to have 6 or so windows being open at once. I think it'd be easier to display all my applications and folders across the screen at once for easy picking and choosing instead of having them scattered across x amount of desktops.
Even if you have to have each of your applications open full screen, the Expose method seems far better to me. Plus you get all these zooming rotating windows that is just SO BAD!
heywood on 1/9/2009 at 23:08
Which is better depends on how many windows you need to manage and how often you switch tasks. If you never need to manage more than a dozen or so windows and typically concentrate on a single task at a time, the "flat" organizational model of Expose & Dock is fine.
Also, I think it's part of the UNIX vs. Windows/Mac culture divide. If you were an old school UNIX user and got used to multi-tasking by having lots of open terminal and text editor windows, you'd understand the appeal of virtual desktops better. When all the windows look alike, so do their icons and thumbnails, so you learn to avoid minimizing them. Instead, you leave your windows in place on the screen and instead switch desktops.
When I used to do a lot of software development, I would usually have several editor windows, a whole bunch of terminal windows, documentation, source control tools, and application related run/debug windows spread over 3 or 4 desktops within my X session. On each desktop, I'd have the various windows arranged in a specific way to aid my productivity. With virtual desktops, I could switch between logical groupings or tasks with just a keystroke, rather than having to minimize everything and then hunt for and restore the set of windows associated with the task I'm switching to.
Another example: I work with data analysis tools that generate dozens and dozens of plots at once, all in separate windows. That kind of thing gets unwieldy in any kind of flat window organization model. I like to keep that mess of plots confined to its own desktop along with the analysis app, file manager windows, and maybe an Excel sheet or whatever else goes along with that task. That way, they don't get in the way of other tasks I'm working on. I'll typically have another desktop with email, IM, and browser windows and a third desktop with 3 or 4 windows related to a presentation or document I'm working on.
mudi on 2/9/2009 at 01:17
Also, with compiz you can have glorious spinny zoomy windows! But I always turn compiz off... :p
David on 2/9/2009 at 06:14
I use Spaces on OSX quite a lot. I have four spaces set up. One for 'everything else', one for my email client, which stays maximised, one for my FTP client and Finder and a final one for a fullscreen Remote Desktop client.
Before I started using them in ernest I couldn't see the point of Virtual Desktops, but now I can and love 'em.
Renzatic on 7/9/2009 at 07:08
Figured it was time to do what I said I was gonna do and install Ubuntu on an old laptop I had lying around. The lappys specs are:
Pentium IV 2.6Ghz
Radeon Mobility 7500
512 Meg of Ram
40 Gb HDD
A decent machine for checking email and goofing around. Maybe even playing some Dosbox games. At the very least, it'd be a great testbed for Linux. So, long story short, I get it installed, and the first thing I discover is it's SLOW. I mean like you open Firefox and it lags everything out slow. Doesn't matter if I have desktop compositing on or not. It's slow. Slow as...like...bad slow. Running it in the virtual machine was actually faster for me.
Now I've gone through a number of tweaks. Screwed around with Xorg...
...Wait. Okay. Small aside here. Let me tell you how fun it was figuring out Linux doesn't recognize the 1 as a 1 on the laptops keyboard for some reason. Now while it looks like a 1, smells like a 1, tastes like a 1 even, well apparently it ain't a 1. I have to copy/paste bash commands I found on the internet into the terminal to edit the actual Xorg file.
...Anyway, I screwed around with a whole bunch of stuff. All it netted me was marginal improvements. It's been a pain.
Still, I'm still not ready to give up on it yet. I've seen what it can do, but for some reason it ain't doing it for me yet. For now, I'm trying a few smaller Linux distros. Just grabbed Xubuntu, and I'm looking into Damn Small Linux and other similar packages.
Granted, if I installed Ubuntu on my high end machine here I'd probably have a much better time of things. I understand that. But I've always been under the impression that Linux was an efficient operating system that ran well on a variety of hardware. Right now, a fresh install of Ubuntu eats up more ram than the old XP install I had on there previously, and doesn't run nearly as well out of the box. So far, I'm not too terribly impressed. If Xubuntu and the rest don't pan out, I'm putting the experiment on hold until I get some faster hardware to slap it on.
Renzatic on 7/9/2009 at 07:34
Yeah. The whole experience reminds me of my senior prom. Everyone told me I'd have the time of my life. Dance a few dances, get a little drunk, get laid, all that good stuff. Instead, I got beat up by a bunch of 6th graders and had my car stolen (by the 6th graders).
Linux has been like that.
jay pettitt on 7/9/2009 at 08:22
That laptop should be fine ~ certainly my eeepc with a 900MHz Celeron processor is plenty beefy enough to run Ubuntu. 512Mb obviously isn't huge but it shouldn't be the end of the world. Mostly when Linux crawls I find it's because something funky is happening with networking - though that probably doesn't help you much ~ but that's where I'd start looking. Unfortunately it's never been a problem for me, so it's not something I know a whole lot about.
The Alchemist on 7/9/2009 at 09:03
After discovering Hackintosh I found it hard to care anymore.
Our servers, however, are all Linux.
BTW: That's Hackintosh, ie: OSX on any PC, not some cute lingo for Apple.
Renzatic on 7/9/2009 at 15:25
Quote Posted by jay pettitt
That laptop should be fine ~ certainly my eeepc with a 900MHz Celeron processor is plenty beefy enough to run Ubuntu. 512Mb obviously isn't huge but it shouldn't be the end of the world. Mostly when Linux crawls I find it's because something funky is happening with networking - though that probably doesn't help you much ~ but that's where I'd start looking. Unfortunately it's never been a problem for me, so it's not something I know a whole lot about.
That seems to be the case here. As long as I don't fire up a browser, everything runs relatively well. Not quite as snappy as I'd like, but decent.
I might try going wired internet. I'm using a wireless PCMCIA card at the moment, and it might be disagreeing with Ubuntu for some odd reason. Beyond that, I guess I could try another browser. If that doesn't work, I guess I'm screwed at the moment, considering I know very little about tweaking Linux.
jay pettitt on 7/9/2009 at 15:33
At a guess I'd say wireless (and wireless drivers possibly?) was a more likely culprit than browser. Firefox is getting a bit bloated these days, but it shouldn't bring your machine to a crawl.
