I've been working some more on my fvwm2rc file today.
As I have already mentionned what I consider my ideal desktop is:
1)one which is more or less completely keyboard-driven and where the key combinations are as efficient as possible.
2)a minimalistic one - all I need at the smallest cost possible and nothing more.
My current Fvwm consists of one desktop spread over 4 pages. To navigate efficiently across these 4 pages I have defined a few intuitive keyboard combinations. You can either use the MS Windows meta key along with the arrows or the h,j,k,l keys (vim style), or you can use the keypad to access any page in one key press (the keypad is a sort of map of the entire desktop instead of used for movement). I also have shortcuts for the 3 X applications I need the most: mrxvt (316K), firefox (9.5M) and thunderbird (12M). Most of the other appps use curses so run in mrxvt. As you can see thunderbird and firefox are quite large and require many libraries. I am planning on eventually superseding thunderbird with fetchmail+mutt. However because of the state of the Web and the current trend of Web 2.0, firefox will be harder to replace. I do however plan to experiment with simpler browser which I will configure and recompile for fun (lynx and links seem most accessible) but I don't see myself completely breaking away from firefox.
Back to my Fvwm...
At the top left corner lies an FvwmButtons panel with a pager and a digital xclock. The panel can be toggled to the foreground by the WindowsKey+Escape combination. This simple panel will eventually grow into a status panel where I will have my own choice of performance monitors, email notifiers and maybe other useful things.
Something one might consider peculiar with my setup is that I have partially done away with iconification. As a matter of fact, I never find the need for iconifying anything as I never run that many apps concurrently so have plenty of space with 4 pages (mrxvt and firefox and tabbed apps which each take up one page and thunderbird takes another, giving me one full page for anything else).
Anyway without further delay here's my current fvwm2rc file (this is not meant to be used as is but merely for reference and maybe to suscitate some feedback). Btw if any of you are also in the process of configuring you Fvwm may I suggest you take a look at FvwmConsole which allows you to configure Fvwm interactively instead restarting the window manager each time. Also here are 2 good examples of fvwm2rc files: http://linuxmafia.com/~n6tadam/fvwm/ and http://dev.gentoo.org/~taviso/fvwm2rc.html
Ok I've spent enough time on configuring my Fvwm for now. Tomorrow I'll commit my day to working on mrxvt.
Showing posts with label fvwm2. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fvwm2. Show all posts
Tuesday, 26 June 2007
Monday, 25 June 2007
User applications
Overall
Minimalist and efficient. Ideally only run software which I can tweak for my own usage. Understand as much as possible. Be a control and performance freak.
The window manager: fvwm2
Small memory footprint. Keyboard driven. At most 2 applications per page at a time.
The terminal emulator: mrxvt
I am currently studying and modifying the code for my own use. I really like the tab support. Still not as complete as xterm (no UTF8 support for example). My mrxvt has been trimmed from all the visual stuff I deem unnecessary. I removed the -g flag from the final build and it is presently at 316K. I'm using the XFT functions for drawing fonts which don't support UTF-8 as of yet. I am hence currently looking at XFT functions which can either handle UTF-8 straight or maybe I'll do the conversion to another encoding first like UTF-16. More on this in next post...
The editor: vim
I am very impressed with vim but not that proficient yet. Smaller and faster than emacs. Very extensible for programming (ctag support).
The web browser: firefox or links?
This might be the most dependencies-hungry application I'll require. links is small and I have some hope of understanding and customising the source. firefox is huge and the code base seems huge. I don't think I'll be able to do with links only.
The email client: mutt?
I already use an ssh tunnel to get my mail from my POP server with thunderbird. Using fetchmail with mutt offer much better performance.
C code browsing tools
Exuberant ctags. Cscope. Cflow.
Minimalist and efficient. Ideally only run software which I can tweak for my own usage. Understand as much as possible. Be a control and performance freak.
The window manager: fvwm2
Small memory footprint. Keyboard driven. At most 2 applications per page at a time.
The terminal emulator: mrxvt
I am currently studying and modifying the code for my own use. I really like the tab support. Still not as complete as xterm (no UTF8 support for example). My mrxvt has been trimmed from all the visual stuff I deem unnecessary. I removed the -g flag from the final build and it is presently at 316K. I'm using the XFT functions for drawing fonts which don't support UTF-8 as of yet. I am hence currently looking at XFT functions which can either handle UTF-8 straight or maybe I'll do the conversion to another encoding first like UTF-16. More on this in next post...
The editor: vim
I am very impressed with vim but not that proficient yet. Smaller and faster than emacs. Very extensible for programming (ctag support).
The web browser: firefox or links?
This might be the most dependencies-hungry application I'll require. links is small and I have some hope of understanding and customising the source. firefox is huge and the code base seems huge. I don't think I'll be able to do with links only.
The email client: mutt?
I already use an ssh tunnel to get my mail from my POP server with thunderbird. Using fetchmail with mutt offer much better performance.
C code browsing tools
Exuberant ctags. Cscope. Cflow.
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