Xfce ... light-weight/LEADWEIGHT !

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nss000

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Gents:

Running Xeon 1240/24Gig/MSIZ-gd55/NV660/2x1-T/Auria 27" & U_12.04. It's a system more able than its cll companion.

Following THW suggestions I've been shaking-out an Xfce front-end for about a week. It appears pretty easy to learn(discoverable). Does everything ... ugly as a Polish duck. But, light-weight it is NOT. May I repeat Xfce=LEADWEIGHT not light-weight! For one example:

In main menu ( ~16 items) the **setting** choice calls up a sub-list of 48 actionable items! Yep that's 48 titles each with multi-forked underbellies. A light-weight interface?

Hummm ... if I scrape the aluminum off my brain to remember some "learning theory" classes I took in-the-day I recall the number seven (7)
being roughly a MAX-COUNT for simultaneous human tasks. Yet Xfce presents 16*48*(N^2) items to ponder. Was that the devs intension ?? It will take me a decade to sift thru the bramble. Xfce devs are obviously decision-adverse!

And even if you are **matrix advantaged** and like 7x7 = 49 you must lable by shear option-count the Xfce interface as a LEADWEIGHT interface more appropriate for channel fishing the St Johns River bottom for DRUM than floating your easy-breezy interface ballon with fish-eagles over Talbot Park sand dunes. Only computer mutants who process data by O(lnN) stand a chance of EVER plumbing the options of Xfce. It's an uncreative choice, but no wonder Shuttlesworth plumped for GUIs with a few HUGE icons.



 
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nss000

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Your point is well-taken -- my HW can handle a MONSTER visually gorgeous and intellectually cunning front end, but Linux GUI users don't run-the-show ... the snickering CLI neckbeads and squintsville 5.5" phonebois do that and we GUI lusrs have to fit in.

So yes, option-extent is a perfectly good definition of "light-weight". Naturally my LOGIN menu includes both Unity and all-of-Gnome-3, but THW poster "Skittle" suggested that I try Xfce in-place-of Gnome-3-classic.

I quickly learned to do things in Xfce that were not allowed/not-obvious in GNOME. Vertical tool-bars for one fitting my 27" 16/9 Auria screen quite well. You would think that in the whole Linux world just one artistic genius would marry a human-factors pro and their ofspring would be subtle, slashing, wired-to-the-reptile-brain & HW-demanding Zatoichi-style GUI to carve pre-teen texters and bashing admins into little puddles of pigfat. Good luck.



 
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mouse24

mouse24

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Well as cringe worthy as that was to read, have you tried simply googling different gui schemes to see one you like then proceed further into customizing it if you actually like it?
 
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nss000

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Yes, even in-the-day OPERA 3.xxx had the reputation of being difficult to use/configure. Now I use it ONLY for access to scum AT&T webmail as I create NO protective settings screen for it ... which is what scum AT&T demands.



 
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nss000

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"Well as cringe worthy as that was to read, have you tried simply googling different gui schemes to see one you like then proceed further into customizing it if you actually like it?"

Mouse24:

Satisfied by **good-enough**, I am using Xfce at this moment -- and did not intend to denounce Xfce. Having used and respected GNOME-2 through-out U_8.08 and U_10.04 I ofcourse have looked at alternative GUIs after the GNOME-3 and UNITY trainwrecks. GNOME-3-classic is very tolerable, but I fished for a better option. And all along I read the phrase "light-weight" applied to Xfce.

I certainly found as you state that "lightweight" applies to the load placed on the system hardware (but, I have never seen a calculation in energy or entropy units that demonstrates that) , not the processing load placed on the user! Isn't the user the one who "carries the load" while "off-loading" rude machine-type function to the hardware. That's the way I think about it. Who needs less load (lightweight) than the person bearing the load ?

Only those nominally believing algorithm + data = program believe that. A computer program ofcourse exists ONLY in the mind of a human ... the rest is just **volts** and nothing more. So the human is the proper target or standard for measuring the "load" placed by any aspect of the mechanical computing system. A lightweight computer function requires a human does less gruntwork to acomplish his task ...
 
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spankmon

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Xfce has grown fatter every year since I began using Linux in 2007. I always install Openbox as an alternate session... similar to putting a tight corset on the fat lady.

P.S. and then comes Crunchbang... similar to putting a bikini on a slender penquin.
 
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nss000

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Skittles:

I had installed Xfce4-goodies and just installed, but cannot find wiskermenu. Yet, I seem not to be saying what I'm trying to say which is no great wisdom.

Let's assume there's a rationally knowable (if rubbery) BEST PRACTICE Linux GUI. I certainly don't know what it is -- though I would recognize it quickly if exposed -- and would rather write another historical fiction novel or re-write my bandpass filter lectures than find it! Let's also assume that somebody has already discovered that BEST PRACTICE Linux GUI. Such BEST PRACTICE exists in almost every discipline so please no solopsistic quibble.

I'll take it , learn amusing and useful parts of it and move on with my own personal and professional projects! BTW: For the working Linux desktop GNOME-2.xx came close ... before being trashed by squintsville phoneboi hectoring and RedHat branding memes.

Install xfce-whiskermenu-plugin and xfce4-goodies to greatly enhance xfce experience
 
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nss000

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OKey I found WHISKER-menu icon on the Xfce panel. Will see how it falls naturally into my workflow.



 
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nss000

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You are a good salesman. You made CRUNCHBANG sound like an 8-color N-curses enabled front-end to a 64-bit DOS_7

WooHoo. But, I read comments on the associated usrsite and the problems folks had sounded snarky. Debian really really doesn't know how to generate a Linux that just works. Again I'm reminded of granite-built SCIENTIFIC LINUX ... and wonder if I shouldn't have stayed there. As I remember I couldn't get TOR to work on SL and that failure is not-OKey.




 
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spankmon

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Linux that just works = mythical, non-existent. But that doesn't matter because any distro can fall apart after a few updates. You just gotta pick up the few gems along the way and use them til they become too much hassle. I still have fond memories of the few Slackware based systems I've had, and their fabulous stability. But that came at the expense of a time-consuming configuration. Your needs and mine are probably quite different, but neither of us wants a surprise fubar. The fubar always happens eventually. It's like having a good old-lady who decides to bitchslap you occasionally for no reason.
 
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nss000

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Yes I wish I'd have said it so clearly ... it's especially true for Linux users of "modest" ability. Let us blunder into a mud-puddle and it might as well be the great Devonian swamp. BTW I am finding Xfce a very pleasant surprise --- I complained about the long lists of subtopics in its heading, but that beats convoluted menu/popup/script inputs that only a Linux master can comprehend. If only the lettering in my vertical toolbar read horizontal ... but I guess that's part of Xfce charm.
 
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spankmon

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Xfce is, for me, the easiest and quickest to customize in any way I choose. And compositing can be easily turned off without freaking out the system. Each of the desktop environments has something you can love.
 
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