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perstromgren
December 30th, 2008, 12:31 PM
Cheers!

I have an Asus Eee 901 with only 1024 by 600 pixel. I am a little irritated by my current window manager becuase of its appearence and use of the desktop. I honestly don't know the name of the program! A Gnome panel runs the top, and AWN a set of icons at the bottom, anyway.

This is what it looks like on my screen now:

http://www.pulpeten.se/images/desktop.png

This is what I would like:

A window (desktop?) mgr that uses the lefthand part of the desktop as a place for menus (Applications, Places and System), minimized windows, and the information in the panel (date, WLAN, etc). This would make a lot better use of the screen height.

Does such a window/desktop manager exist? Can I even talk my current one (whatever you guess it to be), into this appearance?

Per.

.arean
December 30th, 2008, 02:28 PM
You can do that in gnome. Right click on the top panel and click add to panel, then select window list. Next right click on the top panel again and make sure lock to panel isn't enabled, then drag it to the left side of the screen and close AWM.

perstromgren
December 30th, 2008, 03:03 PM
You can do that in gnome. Right click on the top panel and click add to panel, then select window list. Next right click on the top panel again and make sure lock to panel isn't enabled, then drag it to the left side of the screen and close AWM.

Thanks!

But...

1. As you can see in http://www.pulpeten.se/images/desktop_aftermod.png , it is very hard to read the text in the panel. I guees it would be a lot more readable, if the text is still horizontal, and the panel wider. Is there a fix for this too?

2. What happened to my minimized windows when I remove AWM? I can't see them anywhere, except when clicking thorugh them with Alt+Tab.

Per.

Zorael
December 30th, 2008, 05:57 PM
I would just like to pipe in and advise you to reconsider having vertical panels, unless you like to use your browsers in a zoomed in mode or in fullscreen. Many™ sites have 1024px as their lowest supported width, with some leeway for scrollbars and window borders, and if you further encroach on that you'll find yourself scrolling horizontally on those.

This is based on experience gathered over several months using my Advent 4211 (rebranded MSI Wind).

luisito
December 30th, 2008, 06:32 PM
What about setting the panel to autohide? That way you can keep it wherever you like it better (top? bottom?) but still use its space for the applications.

MedianMajik
December 30th, 2008, 07:09 PM
Have you tried running Fluxbox or Openbox as a window manager? I use Fluxbox (http://screenshot.planet-libre.org/albums/Fluxbox/pti-seb-screesnhot-fluxbox-fc9.jpeg) on my eee701 and openbox (http://www.eeextra.com/images/eee-flux-0808.jpg) on my desktop. They keep everything nice and clean

Skripka
December 30th, 2008, 07:21 PM
I would just like to pipe in and advise you to reconsider having vertical panels, unless you like to use your browsers in a zoomed in mode or in fullscreen. Many™ sites have 1024px as their lowest supported width, with some leeway for scrollbars and window borders, and if you further encroach on that you'll find yourself scrolling horizontally on those.

This is based on experience gathered over several months using my Advent 4211 (rebranded MSI Wind).

Yes...but when the screen is only 600 pixels tall, and say 60 or so of those pixels are taken up by menus--you're left with squat. Most websites only throw banners on the far left and right anyway-so you don't want to see the sides of pages anyway. This is one of the problems cited in the famous "9 Reasons Why the Apple Dock Still Sucks" (http://www.asktog.com/columns/044top10docksucks.html)--the wasting of vertical screenspace on widescreen format monitors. Autohide only causes more problems-as when you go to look for something in a Dock you have no clue where it is spatially.




My vote is for flux/openbox

TheOrangePeanut
December 31st, 2008, 12:07 AM
If you don't mind getting your hands dirty and learning something completely different, give a tiling WM a try. The whole point of tiling WMs is that you can maximize viewable space. I'll suggest wmii as a 'beginner' tiling WM, but if you've come to like it then move on to Awesome WM.