What window manager do you guys use?

[duragezic]

I used to run Fluxbox but it was a bit minimalistic even for me. It was just weird at first because I couldn't access System preferences, programs I didn't know I had installed, and whatnot like I could through Gnome's "start menu". Using the menu generator was good though, so I might give it a go again now that I know a little more about configuring it. But right now I'm using XFCE mostly just because I seen it was an option in the FC3 install. It seems to be pretty lightweight but not completely where it's hard to configure and run programs.

Are there any other window managers that are lightweight and sleek, but perhaps something like a cross between XFCE and Gnome? What do you guys use? I could spend months playing around with different GUIs, but it'd be a lot quicker to see what you guys run and just use that (if it looks like what I want).

 

[Nothinman]

I use Enlightenment.

 

[Crusty]

Fluxbox on my old slow laptop, Gnome on my desktop and Gnome on the cs machines here at school.

 

[xcript]

Usually Fluxbox or something similarly light.

I've been using KDE for the past few days, though, for the first time since version ~2.2 and it seems quite quick/stable these days (avoided the hassle of aRts this time by simply not building it).

I'll most likely be back to good old Fluxbox soon though.

 

[hopejr]

I started with Gnome, went to KDE, and then went back to Gnome (it seemed to work better with samba)

 

[stars]

Pekwm, blackbox, and/or windowmaker, depends on the mood/day. Currently using windowmaker.

 

[Sunner]

KDE/KWin.
I keep trying others out, but I keep coming back to KDE since I for one thing use many QT apps, and for another, I've simply gotten so used to KDE that I don't feel at home with much else.

On lower end systems I tend to use XFCE or *box though.

 

[Whizzy]

I use Aston, but thats also a complete shell replacement for windows. I like it becuase its faster and cleaner than the default Explorer.exe

(is this a linux only thread?)

 

[drag]

Right now I have been playing around with Ratpoison again. Got most everything figured out, although most of the time I just use Gnome + metacity.

One interesting (at least to me) thing that I figured out how to do is play around with Xnest. Wrote a little script...

#! /bin/bash

#Xnest fullscreen for Ibook...
Xnest -ac -geometry 1024x768 $1 &
POW=$!
export DISPLAY=$1
$2 $3 $4
kill $POW

So I can go:
nest.it :1 startkde
nest.it :2 gnome-session

Mostly I use it for Gimp and other MDI applications because they absolutely suck for ratpoison. For that I use lwm for the window manager in the nested X server.

I even run OS X in one using Mac-on-Linux (have to run it in a nested window to get it to work properly with ratpoison's keycombo to change windows)

So I can go ctrl-a-n for gnome, ctrl-a-n for OS X, and then ctrl-a-n for KDE.
(uses around 650megs of RAM just sitting there, and constant 10-20% of cpu, works though and is just as fast as anything else considuring no real OpenGL acceleration for OS X)

Only two bugs so far I've found... One is that when you switch to a xnested window it thinks that your holding the ctrl button down. Just have to hit ctrl to get that. Then the second one is that KDE does something to crash the Xnest program sometimes. Not to often though. But gnome and OS X runs just fine (minus openGL acceleration, of course. Xnest can only do software acceleration.)

 

[Nithin]

xfce

 

[eigen]

Kde

 

[n0cmonkey]

Blackbox usually.