[NCLUG] common tasks

[Sean Reifschneider]

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I'm kind of late in picking this back up, sorry about that...

On 05/28/2011 06:23 PM, Chad Perrin wrote:
> If you're talking about changing mouse settings, xset can do that from
> the command line.

I guess much of the "settings" is not valid because I'm not using KDE.
Probably the biggest one that I use similar to this is the printer
configuration tool, I never remember what it's called, so I go to the KDE
menu, type in "printer" and it shows me the few choices and I pick it.

The primary thing I use the menu for is running GUI apps like firefox,
thunderbird, and konversation.  Why don't I just type them?  Well, because
these apps all tend to write garbage to stdout as they operate, so whatever
terminal I run them in is then worthless unless I remember to redirect
stdout to /dev/null.

> What kind of volume are you talking about -- alsamixer?

Not exactly sure, under KDE it just comes up so that I press the hardware
media buttons and my volume goes up or down or mutes...

> In general, tiling window managers don't have a concept of "minimizing"
> windows (though that is not a universal fact).  Instead, store different
> applications on different workspaces, and switch to the workspace for the

That works well for some apps, where I'd just be minimizing them, but
others like Skype and Pidgin I want to "close" the chat windows when I'm
not using them, and use the icon to see if someone has chatted back at me
on another workspace, etc...

> I actually wrote an article about i3 as a beginner's intro to tiling
> window managers.  It's scheduled for publication on 2 June at this URI:

I think i3 is quite good, and agree that it's probably the best way to get
started.

> like checking RAM usage, how quickly things open and close, and CPU
> spikes, all that a GUI environment shootout is going to "prove" is the
> relative merits and flaws of different ways of doing things.  If you

Sure, and that seems reasonable.  I guess "shootout" was the wrong word for
it, "demo" would have been better.

I mentioned to Chad offline yesterday that I had stopped using tiling
window managers a few days ago.  The reason?  Not because they pissed me
off or anything, my video card broke, and when I put my spare in it now
won't run *ANY* of the tiling window managers, they segfault.  I think it
may be a graphics driver issue, I guess I should try reverting to an older
version...

I'd really like to get back to i3, in general my KDE that I'm running now
(which would work with the old card) is tiled, but there are things that
are annoying me about it compared to i3...  Mostly related to focus after
my SSH key window and often having to bring windows to the front when
something DOES cover a window...

> screen, I would have a damned fit trying to deal with something like KDE
> or GNOME every day.  I'd feel like I had a lodestone around my neck,
> concrete boots on my feet, and a complete Big City largest-size (What do

You're talking the "Gutbuster"...

Yeah, I'm not so picky about window managers, I'll pretty much just use
whatever.  But I *DID* like i3...

Sean
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