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GNOME GUI

Sun Drops Sawfish for Metacity 452

Posted by timothy from the sawfish-works-nicely-though dept.
Cardhore writes: "According to this article, Sun's and Wipro's developers are now working on Metacity, instead of Sawfish. Metacity and Sawfish are two window managers for the GNOME desktop, and Sun has decided to use Metacity over Sawfish for GNOME 2. This decision has been based on issues such as accessibility, maintainability of the code [1], documentation, multi-head support and a general eagerness from the community to commit to Metacity in the future." Here's a brief description of Garret LeSage's experience with Metacity, which is described here as a "boring window manager for the adult in you." Anyone with Metacity screenshots, please post below :)
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Sun Drops Sawfish for Metacity More

Sun Drops Sawfish for Metacity

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  • Thanks for defining the terms (Score:4, Insightful)

    by John Jorsett ( 171560 ) on Tuesday May 21, 2002 @03:43PM (#3561094)
    Metacity and Sawfish are two window managers for the GNOME desktop

    Thanks for explaining, and I hope this is the start of a new policy on /., where potentially-unfamiliar terms are defined. Time after time I've encountered some unexplained reference in an article and wondered, "Am I the only person who doesn't know what this is?"
    • Let's string him up for failing to mention the other very important wm [enlightenment.org] that runs with Gnome.
      • I was a user of enlightenment, but isn't development nearly dead? The last major release was in Oct of 2000.

        From the site, it looks like there has been more news of late. Is development kicking back up? I personally liked enlightenment although I ran it independent of Gnome. It was a bit heavy, but soooo configurable / maleable. I'm definately a fan of it from that standpoint...

        • The next version of Enlightenment (DR17) is a complete rewrite which can do nifty stuff like use opengl to handle desktop geometry, alpha transparency/anti-aliasing, etc... It has been in development since a bit before devleopment ceased on DR16.

          You'll have to wait a while still before the first public release, though.

  • Where to find it ... (Score:5, Informative)

    by charlie ( 1328 ) <charlie.antipope@org> on Tuesday May 21, 2002 @03:44PM (#3561109) Homepage Journal
    You can find Metacity here [redhat.com].

    (It doesn't seem to have a web page yet.)

  • Multihead support? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Jeffrey Baker ( 6191 ) on Tuesday May 21, 2002 @03:45PM (#3561113)
    Funny, I thought the multihead support was relatively bad. I've got metacity installed on Debian unstable. It seems to map windows more or less at random, frequently split between my two monitors.

    I do like the way metacity places dialog boxes though. They are placed horizontally centered and just below the top of their parent window, somewhat like a MacOS X dialog.

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday May 21, 2002 @04:12PM (#3561372)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Yes i'm running Xinerama, but thanks for the pointers anyway. Are you claiming that metacity is supposed to work correctly on Xinerama? If it is, it doesn't.

        Take as an example the window list that appears when you use alt-tab: it is placed square in the center of the display, which on a 2-head display happens to be split by a few inches of plastic. I guess I should upgrade to a 2-head display to account for such broken software :')

      • Xinerama really needs both monitors to have the same resolution (docs claim it's mandatory, but it isn't.)
        I have a 15" flat screen (1024x768) as my #2 and a sony 21" at 1600x1200 as my main. While I have gotten it to work, it's buggy and you end up with "screen space" you can't see.

        Multihead support in Xfree86 is lame, and needs lots of work. For programming, multihead is REALLY nice to have.

    • (Don't mod this up. Its just here for someone who might want more details.)

      I have run my woody system multiheaded for quite some time. I like to keep a bunch of monitoring type programs running on one display and work on the other.

      I do not use xinerama because I do not want the gnome panel to act like it is on one big monitor, thats just a PITA. (plus it had problems with opengl, some of my monitoring uses it heavily.)

      It worked ok, except that the gnome session manager would 'gain' applications. All the stuff from the 2nd montor would get started on the first monitor at login time. This machine also has a firewire induced crashing problem, and after a crash even more applications would get started at the next login. Very ugly.

      Also, running a panel on each monitor works ok, but the panels get confused about configuration. Maybe there is a way to specify an alternate config file for one of them.

      All in all, it worked, but the gnome session and panel developers really need to have two monitors and feel the pain. So, if you can show to me that you are 'the' gnome session or panel developer and you need a PCI video card in order to have two monitors, get in touch with me. I'll give you my old one.

  • Reason for the switch. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Hornsby ( 63501 ) on Tuesday May 21, 2002 @03:47PM (#3561129) Homepage
    I just grokked this off of the gnome mailing list here [gnome.org].

    > Btw: Why there has not been any updates for sawfish lately?

    Rumor has it that John was employed by Apple and that as part of the employment contract he's no longer allowed to develop sawfish.

    So there you have it! Before you start flaming back and forth about what's better, think about the logistics behind using a WM that's no longer being maintained.

    • Re:Reason for the switch. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by g4dget ( 579145 ) on Tuesday May 21, 2002 @03:56PM (#3561236)
      So there you have it! Before you start flaming back and forth about what's better, think about the logistics behind using a WM that's no longer being maintained.

      Everybody has the source, and it is apparently quite usable since many people sue it. If someone like Sun additional features or bug fixes, they can make them and publish them. The fact that a single person has moved on to doing something else makes little difference for open source software.

      Choosing Metacity may be the right thing for Sun to do anyway, but the departure of even the main developer of Sawfish would not be sufficient reason.

      • Re:Reason for the switch. (Score:3, Insightful)

        by swb ( 14022 )
        The fact that a single person has moved on to doing something else makes little difference for open source software.

        This can be a problem for niche open source software. Some packages are never developed/driven by more than one person. When that person moves on, it's real easy for the package to drift apart. Sure "anyone" can use the source and built it, fix it, maintain it, and further develop it but usually the further you go from just using it towards further development, the greater the skill required which increases the chances that the package will just get orphaned.

        • Re:Reason for the switch. (Score:5, Informative)

          by luge ( 4808 ) <slashdot.tieguy@org> on Tuesday May 21, 2002 @04:46PM (#3561628) Homepage
          This is particularly a problem for sawfish; not only is it a complex, niche codebase involving fairly obscure stuff (X) that not as many people have experience with, it is also in Lisp, which narrows down the number of potential hackers even more. Nothing wrong with Lisp, mind you, just not as many proficient lisp hackers in the community as there are C hackers. And that does make a difference to community supported projects.
      • and it is apparently quite usable since many people sue it.

        That's an interesting view on usability... :)

      • Everybody has the source, and it is apparently quite usable since many people sue it.

        Choosing to use a window manager because of the number of people that sue it sounds like a relatively bad idea to me. I'd expect that Sun's legal department would generally recommend against using that window manager. Best to go with the product that's generated the least number of lawsuits.
  • It will be interesting to see which wins out, Metacity or Sawfish. Because this brings up a major issue. With all the corporate support in Linux these days, who carries a bigger voice in development, corporate sponsers with teams of programers or OS hackers with "carismatic" leaders?

    I say given Sun's mixed history in OS they probably won't be able to sway GNOME development and will eventually switch back to the mainstream.

    (then again, some say Miguel is easily swayed)

    • Re:Who's in charge? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It's not Sun vs the GNOME community. Metacity is a WM that uses GTK2.0; it is also a lot smaller and faster than the LISPing bloat of Sawfish.

      There's been a dissatisfaction with Sawfish and a considerable push to move to Metacity for ages - long before Sun even became involved in GNOME. I doubt you'll find much in the way of opposition to this.

  • Metacity and GNOME2 (Score:4, Informative)

    by Snorp ( 63417 ) on Tuesday May 21, 2002 @03:47PM (#3561138) Homepage
    http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~jwillcox/desktop.png

    • Re:Metacity and GNOME2 (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Whats the name of the mp3 player in the screenshot?

    • Now that's comedy (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Excuse me while I crack up.

      Has anybody actually considered how useless a screenshot of a window manager is these days? Upon looking at that image, anyone familiar with X window managers should realize that the only parts of the shot drawn by the window manager are just the frames around the two windows. Assuming (I'm guessing) the window manager supports themes in some manner, it's basically a Gnome screenshot. Nautilus, the panel, etc.

      While we're all addicted to screenshots, in the case of window managers, a comprehensive feature list would've been infinitely more useful than anything a picture can show.

      Next thing you know, people will be asking for screenshots of DBMS's.

  • I use it... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by JanneM ( 7445 ) on Tuesday May 21, 2002 @03:48PM (#3561150) Homepage
    I started using metacity two weeks ago or so, and I'm fairly pleased. I really liked sawfish, but felt it was time to try something new.

    Pro: easy to set up (not a whole lot of options to choose from, really), fast (much speedier than sawfish), and largely with sensible defaults for everything.

    Con: I miss a few settings, like the ability to remember window size and position. Also, lazy focus only changes focus and does not raise the newly focused window.

    On the whole, a good, solid windowmanager that really feels lean and efficient.

    /Janne
    • Con: ... Also, lazy focus only changes focus and does not raise the newly focused window

      Thank god! If I want a window raised I'll do it myself, thank you very much. ctrl-alt-up or clicking on the titlebar to name a couple ways I've got. I'm also glad to see text file configs again. Back when I used fvwm (version 1), seemed a lot more powerful than current GUI-configs. Plus their was never a question of which file(s) to go under version control to save your settings.

      • That's nice that you'll raise your own windows, and I heartily concur you should not have the UI force you into a behaviour you don't want. Similarly, the other poster should probably have his/her prefered method of window navigation also supported. That's the whole point about choice and configurability isn't it?

        Unless of course you'd like to install the interface suggested in Dilbert that "hurts the users".....me, I think I like choice.

        As an example of anti-choice: In Win2K, I can launch a command prompt from StartBar|Run. So, I start this window... what are the odds I want to do something with it? Pretty good. What does the UI not seem to do? Apply focus to the newly spawned window. Kind of annoying... and then some. But I haven't found a way around this behaviour yet. This illustrates my thought that users are much happier if you give them choice....

    • Re:I use it... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Jeffrey Baker ( 6191 )
      Pro: [...], fast

      Do you have anything to support that statement? With metacity 2.3.337, switching to a desktop with 14 NEdit windows and 2 xterms takes quite a while, well over 1 second. You can quite easily see the individual NEdit windows being mapped, bottom to top. The workstation is a Dual Xeon with 512MB main memory. A dual fucking Xeon and I have to watch my windows get mapped 1 by 1.

      It seems to me people are parrotting the "metacity is fast" line without really checking it out. Probably a groupthink preference for C implementations.

  • Couple of screenshots (Score:5, Informative)

    by dizco ( 20340 ) on Tuesday May 21, 2002 @03:49PM (#3561157)
    There's a couple screenshots here: http://www.lucidus.uklinux.net/metacity/ [uklinux.net]

    Found at http://www.sunshineinabag.co.uk/ [sunshineinabag.co.uk]

    --sean

  • I want my twm! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Limburgher ( 523006 ) on Tuesday May 21, 2002 @03:51PM (#3561184) Homepage Journal
    I want to be able to do almost nothing, but FAST!

  • Pronounciation (Score:3, Informative)

    by reaper20 ( 23396 ) on Tuesday May 21, 2002 @03:51PM (#3561185) Homepage
    According to the garnome site, it's pronounced matacity like "opacity". That's cool.

  • Way to go slashdot... (Score:2, Redundant)

    by Rahga ( 13479 )
    "...They killed Garret's homepage!" "YOU BASTARDS!"

    Google had the following cached:
    I have left Sawfish in the dust. Having recently switched to Metacity, I have found that I am actually loving it.
    It's great! Metacity has the least amount of crack of any usable window manager I've seen. It works; it's fast; and it uses GTK+. However, not everything is roses right now -- for instance, there is no graphical configuration unless you count using gconf-editor. The window manager is new and currently in development, so what do you expect? *smile* Still, I find that either passing a command line to change a variable or to use gconf-editor is easier than editing a text file in some esoteric format or hunting down one option with a funny name amongst 5,327 others also strangely (and inconsistantly) named.

    For what it's worth, other people (hi Trae!) are switching away from Sawfish too.

    Personally, I like the fact that it works right, "out of the box", supports some keybinding modification, has the ability to change to sloppy focus mode, and has all the advantages of using GTK+2 (internationalized and anti-aliased fonts, double-buffering, et cetera).

    Anyway, it's a promising window manager and I think I like where it's going (and it's usable for me right now, too!). It's not on all my computers yet, but it's also development software at the moment (lumped in there with the Gnome2 stuff, which is also really nifty).

  • not so bad? (Score:2, Funny)

    by tps12 ( 105590 )
    Okay, I know the Linux/slashbot response to this is, "how dare they?" and "I want my eye candy!" Well, I was right with you for a while.

    But now I'm thinking: for Linux and OSS to succeed on the desktop and in a high-impact profit-oriented enterprise environment, we need a sober, powerful, stable desktop.

    I'm an admin at a Fortune 500 company in the gourmet cereals industry. We have a daily need for responsive and robust desktop software, and Metacity has repeatedly stepped up to the plate and delivered where inferior technology such as Gnome and Sawfish could not.

    Metacity saved our business. Maybe it will save slashdot, too.

    • Re:not so bad? (Score:5, Funny)

      by MadFarmAnimalz ( 460972 ) on Tuesday May 21, 2002 @04:11PM (#3561362) Homepage
      Metacity saved our business. Maybe it will save slashdot, too

      Let's get one thing clear; metacity is not Jesus, allright?

      And if it took a new window manager to save your company, then I need its name. I'm worried I might be a stockholder.

      :-)
    • I know you are a troll, but Metacity runs ontop of Gnome, so you make no sense.

      maybe you should practice trolling with somethng a little easier. Someday you might make a good troll, but for now stick to the BSD is dying topic until you are more experienced.

      Thanks.

  • I'm still waiting for a window manager (besides FVWM and OLVWM) to include a FVWM-style virtual desktop switcher (or "Pager"). I have my desktop [chrissnell.com] set up with a 3x3 virtual desktop switcher. I can use Ctrl+an_arrow_key to switch between desktops (two-dimensionally; I can go up, down, left, or right) without using the mouse. If I put xterms in the same spot in each desktop, I can switch between them very quickly, using only the keyboard. It sure would be nice to see this elsewhere.

    Chris
    • http://www.enlightenment.org

      It has one of the most impressive pagers there is. You can flame about slowness, but the reality is if you have a decent amount of RAM, CPU, and Video Card it should run fine (ie. 256/800MHz/16MB).

      --Joe

      • I've run Enlightenment with virtual desktops on a P133 with 64MB RAM. Quite snappy. (And, yes, I had also run Windowmaker on the same setup just prior to that).

        What I'd found was that at the time, GNOME 1.0 was the big culprit. Taking that off and just relying on the paging and launchers and such of E made my PC quite nice. (And, yes, GNOME was even as slow with Windowmaker).

    • Re:Virtual Desktops (Score:2, Informative)

      by Roadmaster ( 96317 )
      afterstep [afterstep.org] used to have a similar feature (maybe it still has it? haven't used it in a while), which I loved, and was one of the things I missed the most when migrating to WindowMaker. I've since become used to WindowMaker's "one-dimensional" paging which is also pretty good; I still use AfterStep's ctrl+arrow convention for switching (WM's default is shift+ctrl+arrow).
    • You can do this in KDE, sort of at least. But I use Win-key + F1 to F4 instead. Simulates virtual terminals more than a 3x3 desktop, but works great.

    • Re:Virtual Desktops (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Burdell ( 228580 )
      I don't want to get involved in any window manager wars, but you can do
      this in sawfish; it just isn't in the default key bindings.

      Either go into the sawfish configurator and select "Bindings" or choose
      "Shortcuts" from the sawfish window manager menu. Click "Add", and add

      C-Right bound to "Move viewport right"
      C-Left bound to "Move viewport left"
      C-Up bound to "Move viewport up"
      C-Down bound to "Move viewport down"

      I used to use that all the time in fvwm, but now I typically just use

      M-TAB bound to "Cycle windows"
      M-ISO_Left_Tab bound to "Cycle windows backwards"

      and go from window to window (I don't have _too_ many windows, and I
      tend to remember which one is where in the stacking order and can get
      there quickly).
    • Most definitely agreed.

      Not to troll, but could someone who uses Metacity explain to me exactly what it can do that FVWM 2.4 can't? From the description in the article it just seems to be the same but less powerful and less mature.

  • Metacity-Setup might be of some interest (Score:5, Informative)

    by plastercast ( 234558 ) on Tuesday May 21, 2002 @04:08PM (#3561334) Homepage
    On the topic, and with the complaints of no GUI tool to configure Metacity, I just though I would point everyone to a piece of software that I wrote called Metacity-Setup. Im currently working on getting it a little more friendly (its flawed to be sure) but it does basic stuff nicely.

    http://www.gnome.org/softwaremap/projects/metaci ty -setup/

  • It is all about themes ... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Serpent Mage ( 95312 ) on Tuesday May 21, 2002 @04:10PM (#3561361)
    I have used both window managers frequently for about 4 or 5 months now (sawfish2 and metacity that is) and find both of them fast, stable, and great products overall from a user perspective.

    Configurability is easily in favor of sawfish right now but that is only because there is not a gui configurator for metacity currently afaik. However, i knew how to make the modifications I wanted and everything works identically to sawfish so no big worries there.

    Port over Crux to metacity and you will have another convert .. until then sawfish rulez!

    The BIGGEST factor keeping me from using metacity full time is that the Crux theme has not been ported over to it and I cannot figure out how to make metacity themes (or sawfish themes for that matter) and I really hate the look of the default metacity theme when combined with the Crux gtk and gtk2 themes.
  • I remember downloading Metacity from Havoc Pennington's homepage awhile ago when I wanted to learn how XLib works. I emailed him with a couple idiot questions and to my suprise, almost immediately got friendly, helpful replies. I remember he mentioned that it was really just a learning project for him at the time and possibly not the best thing for someone like me to learn from.

  • Sun goes for eye-candy-less wms (Score:3, Insightful)

    by shaldannon ( 752 ) on Tuesday May 21, 2002 @04:16PM (#3561416) Homepage
    I'm actually surprised that they ever went with Sawfish, since it has all sorts of nifty extras (differently themed windows, for example). From the two screenshots I was able to find of Metacity, it looked like a bland Gnome. Given that Sun was a major purveyor of CDE and olwm, I'm not the least bit surprised that they've switched to a tamer wm. I still think they're missing out, but I guess the philosophy behind the decision is "these machines are made for work, not glitz." Not for me...I use Gnome + E .16 at work....single monitor (makes me wish for my dual-head box at home...) with the same desktop look and feel as my home desktop [house.cx] (see more recent shots).

  • Couldn't hack the Lisp? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Kaz Kylheku ( 1484 ) on Tuesday May 21, 2002 @04:27PM (#3561515) Homepage
    Could programming language ignorance or bigotry be at least partially at the root of this? Probably not, but one wonders anyway.
  • I like the KDE/Win32 style alt-tab window list (small window pops up with all available windows listed; alt-tab selects between them).

    Very user friendly and very quick to pop between a large collection of windows. No need to mess up your stacking order plowing through umpteen windows to find the one you're looking for.

    Why wasn't such a feature implemented in Sawfish? General unpopularity with the feature? Too similar to Windows?

    Does Metacity have a similar window list? Or does it use the annoying Sawfish style?

  • Definitely from the WRONG "dept." (Score:3, Informative)

    by tempest303 ( 259600 ) <<jensknutson> <at> <yahoo.com>> on Tuesday May 21, 2002 @04:39PM (#3561596) Homepage
    from the sawfish-works-nicely-though dept.

    HA! Two *serious* reasons why Sawfish doesn't really "work nicely":

    1) I won't link directly, because in this case, it's a Bad Thing(TM), but go check Bugzilla for Sawfish... it's a nasty sight.

    2) Ever looked at the configuration dialogs for that beast!? They're INSANE. Let me give you an example. This is an actual preference in Sawfish: "Offset (%) from left window edge when warping pointer" Pardon my shouting, but WHO THE FSCK WANTS TO CONFIGURE THAT?! What's so wrong about just setting a sane default and leaving it at that? (ie: the way Metacity does it)

    That said, for day to day use, Sawfish is ok, but it's got huge issues and it needs to *go*. While it'll throw things into some turmoil, I have to admit I'm pretty happy that Sun made this decision.
    • 1) I won't link directly, because in this case, it's a Bad Thing(TM), but go check Bugzilla for Sawfish... it's a nasty sight.
      Many, many, many thanks ;)
    • Ever looked at the configuration dialogs for that beast!? They're INSANE.

      You set your user lever to "advanced", right? I'm too lazy to check right now, and I don't remember exactly what the setting is called, but I'd bet you did. Set your user level to "beginner" (or whatever the lowest level is), and you won't see such arcana.

      Sawfish's configuration infrastructure is beautifully designed. One result is that it's terribly cheap (in terms of coding and maintenance) to add a configurable parameter, yet the front-end can easily manage the complexity exposed to the user. It would have been straightforward for Sun to present the options to their users in a way that they find more suitable. Go look at the design sometime--it's nice.

      But who would expect Sun to recognize good design--much less their low-bidding hackers in India?

  • Code Maintainability? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by big.ears ( 136789 ) on Tuesday May 21, 2002 @04:40PM (#3561600) Homepage
    When they say "unmaintainability", this is code-word for "Programmed in Lisp", rather than "Programmed in a sloppy messy spaghetti-like fashion", or "The primary developer is no longer working on it". Most likely, the Wipro programmers don't have much experience with lisp/scheme/rep, and a decision was made to dump it for Metacity, which happens to be written in a language they speak (c, that is).

    If you read the metacity source code, at least on earlier releases, Havoc had written things like "I won't implement idea X, because it is crackrock. Tough luck." Things like making metacity play nicely with XMMS. Of course, this was when it was his pet project and not being considered by Sun/Wipro. One wonders if there will be a Sun fork of the project, or if Havoc will turn over development or make compromises that Sun will inevitably require.

    While I think metacity is a pretty cool project, Sun's decision is probably one of these management mistakes that have been talked about in all the sociology of software development books. Think of all the little bugs that have been sorted out over the years in Sawfish that will have to be solved again. Things like maintaining focus of window when changing desktops using keybindings; or dual-head setups that have different monitor resolutions while using multiple workspaces and desktops. These things will all have to be sorted out again.

    • Re:Code Maintainability? (Score:4, Informative)

      by The Pim ( 140414 ) on Tuesday May 21, 2002 @09:36PM (#3563205)
      When they say "unmaintainability", this is code-word for "Programmed in Lisp", rather than "Programmed in a sloppy messy spaghetti-like fashion"

      Well, I'll just say it: Sawfish is, in my reasonably informed opinion, a well-designed, maintainable program. I read the documentation and looked at the code in order to make some changes of my own (which I never finished...), and I was generally impressed.

      So, while I haven't seen enough evidence to be sure, I strongly suspect someone at Sun is afraid of Lisp.

  • There's a point to this (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hatless ( 8275 ) on Tuesday May 21, 2002 @04:52PM (#3561667)
    I think there's some missing the point going on here. From Sun's perspective (indeed, from a sysadmin's perspective), the lack of its own setup tools, relying on a command interface to change settings is a plus.

    Metacity gives GNOME a chance to address one of its manageability flaws, the confilct between a desktop environment and the window manager. Which controls wallpaper? Screensavers? Why are there separate themes and theme settings interfaces for window chrome and the window contents?

    It's because some power users high up in GNOME and window manager development--who usually aren't responsible for any machines beyond their own personal ones--like the flexibility of mixing and matching, and like pushing the bounds of what each component of their system can do. So overlapping--and conflicting--features get built.

    This isn't the end of the world, but it does make a GNOME system more unwieldy than it has to be. KDE can run with several window managers, but it comes with one of its own that leaves configuration matters to KDE. GNOME hasn't had this yet. Enlightenment, sawmill and sawfish have been progressively better fits, but Sun and others who are moving to Metacity probably see it as a simpler route to getting a decent (GTK+ 2, anti-aliasing, multihead, accessibility-enabled) window manager seamlessly tied into GNOME than revamping Sawfish--and subsuming all of its configuration into GNOME--would be.

    GNOME with Sawfish is a much tougher sell to a simplicity-minded CDE administrator than GNOME with Metacity will be, I suspect.
    • GNOME with Sawfish is a much tougher sell to a simplicity-minded CDE administrator than GNOME with Metacity will be, I suspect.

      That statement right there hit the nail on the head, so to speak. There are a huge number of people that hate the CDE and wish it had never been born. The majority of those folks have usually never used more than one "corporate" UNIX system. I still remember the day, after numerous upgrades of several different systems (over the course of more than a year) that I walked into the datacenter and looked at the heads attached to our primary servers (17 primary servers, a few hundred smaller servers w/o heads).

      Seventeen boxes. Among them several HP-UX, Digital UNIX, OpenVMS, Solaris, and a lone Linux box (yup, we were testing it back then for a web server). All running CDE. Five different OSes, a single common interface that used a single common configuration script (and associated .fp and action files). Once I saw that I stopped hating CDE and realized how it can really make an admin's life easier. :)

      I think that's the same goal that Sun is shooting for. I know that they've caught a lot of flak for moving away from CDE - especially to GNOME, something that many Solaris admins I know consider "flashy". Moving to a simpler window manager is probably a good move on their part, and will be an easier move for those admins that really loved the CDE's simplicity.

  • Can the button order be changed? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Mendax Veritas ( 100454 ) on Tuesday May 21, 2002 @04:53PM (#3561680) Homepage
    One thing I notice in all the metacity screen shots I've seen is that the title bar buttons are badly arranged (a problem it shares with many other WMs). Putting the close button right next to the maximize button (or any other non-destructive button) is just dumb, even if it is fashionable nowadays (MacOS X and Windows since Win95 have the same problem, though older versions of MacOS and Windows did not). Can this be changed without modifying the source and recompiling?

    I recently got tired of sawfish too, so I switched to fluxbox, which is a new fork of blackbox with some nice features. One of its new features is that the user can change the button order! So I have the close button on one side and the minimize and maximize buttons on the other side, as they should be.

  • None of this makes sense! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by X-Nc ( 34250 ) <nilrin@NOSPAm.gmail.com> on Tuesday May 21, 2002 @05:38PM (#3562007) Homepage Journal
    I really wish I could get someone from Sun and IBM and all other vendors who use CDE to look at XFce [xfce.org]. XFce is better, stronger and faster than GNOME (and KDE, for that matter) and can easily look and feel just like CDE for those who want that. It can also look and feel like nothing else out there. The Muntihead capabilities are better than anything on the market (to include WinXX and OS X). The speed of this thing can only be matched by things like twm or IceWM get it is a full, complete desktop environment. It just seems like a complete waste of time and effort to try and build something that will, at best, only be a shadow of something that is already here.
    • "... can easily look and feel just like CDE for those who want that."

      That'd be precisely no one. :-)

      Honestly, since CDE first came out I have yet to hear a single person say they like it.

      However, it _is_ good at multihead.
  • I installed the Ximian Gnome 2 snapshots on a PII 333 machine w/ 64 MB RAM. I know it sounds like suicide, but when I used metacity instead of sawfish and didn't use nautilus to draw the desktop (I don't use desktop icons anyway) it ran pretty snappy.

    Well, first I killed nautilus (duh!), noted it was still a little slow, and decided to try out Metacity. I use blackbox normally on my other slow machine, but I wanted something Gnome complaint. Metacity fit the bill perfectly since it uses the same libs as everything else. I've been using the thinice theme for Gnome2 as well.

    Oh, and you can find metacity themes at sunshine in a bag [sunshineinabag.co.uk].

  • Everyone here is missing the point.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by niola ( 74324 ) <jon@niola.net> on Tuesday May 21, 2002 @08:41PM (#3562998) Homepage
    If you are running a Sun server chances are you won't have any of this shit running - well at least if you have a clue. Why use system resources and have services running, and also providing the machine with more ways to be compromised if it is a server?

    If I am running a production server, there won't be shit for a GUI on there. Who needs it...

    --Jon

  • Oroborus (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Z4rd0Z ( 211373 ) <joseph at mammalia dot net> on Wednesday May 22, 2002 @01:49AM (#3564051) Homepage
    I recently on a whim tried out the Oroborus window manager and was pleasantly surprised to find that it is a "boring" wm that does nothing but manage windows, has no menu, icons, pager, or anything. It's also Gnome compliant. It looks really cool by default with a green window border somewhat reminiscent of the qnx gui.
    The thing that bugs me about Gnome is that it doesn't have its Very Own window manager. Well actually, it seems like it doesn't have a lot of things of its own, like a file manager, to name one. Everything is someone else's project. Gnome will adopt Metacity, and then, like with Enlightenment and Sawfish before it, the developer will head in some other direction, leaving Gnome in search of a new one.
    You've got Gnome with gmc, you've got Gnome with Nautilus. Which one is the real Gnome? Why doesn't the Gnome project unify and maintain its own components? To me it seems that they're really lacking in this area. I like how organized KDE is. The wm and file manager are built as part of the kdebase tarball. All one neat package.
    This is not meant to fan any kind of KDE vs. Gnome flames, however. I think Gnome is pretty neat, but I just keep waiting...and waiting...for it to "get there".

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