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View Full Version : What is your desktop quirk?



Visti
August 20th, 2007, 05:10 PM
Come on! I know you have one, everybody does - That one little thing that sets your desktop apart, maybe one that you can't even fully justify. It just feels right. Maybe it's fully transparent windows, maybe you like a pink terminal. Who knows?

I know I just want stuff to be big. I want my icons as big and smooth as possible - the first thing I do when I install a new distro: make the panels wider. It just feels inviting, clean and friendly to have maybe to or three icons for major applications and just have them centered on the screen and enlarged to about five times standard size. Oh, well.

Now tell me yours!

Cheers,
Visti

LaRoza
August 20th, 2007, 05:17 PM
All my OS's, Windows, Ubuntu, *nix, have the following in common:

0. #000000 Background colour
1. #000000 Window color, or #888888, if the window disappears
2. Menu bar at top of screen, with links/shortcuts to terminal and text editor
3. All visual effects and display options reduced (For Windows, 16 bit colour)

fuscia
August 20th, 2007, 05:29 PM
i have to mess with the wallpaper. i can't just use a wallpaper the way it is. it always has something consciously to do with the look, but underneath, i think there's a bit of 'marking my spot' going on.

Acglaphotis
August 20th, 2007, 05:59 PM
I like my terminal with text color #09FF00 and background on #000000. It looks like the Matrix stuff.

init1
August 20th, 2007, 06:00 PM
Come on! I know you have one, everybody does - That one little thing that sets your desktop apart, maybe one that you can't even fully justify. It just feels right. Maybe it's fully transparent windows, maybe you like a pink terminal. Who knows?

I know I just want stuff to be big. I want my icons as big and smooth as possible - the first thing I do when I install a new distro: make the panels wider. It just feels inviting, clean and friendly to have maybe to or three icons for major applications and just have them centered on the screen and enlarged to about five times standard size. Oh, well.

Now tell me yours!

Cheers,
Visti
I don't use a desktop, so that's not an issue, but I ALWAYS have to change Firefox's preferences. And Google must always be the home page since I use alt+home so often.

igknighted
August 20th, 2007, 06:06 PM
Shortcut icons on a dock preferably, but failing that on a panel. I loathe using menus if I don't have to. Oh yeah... and I have to have the titlebar's double click action set to shade, not maximize.

Bungo Pony
August 20th, 2007, 06:06 PM
I always switch the panels around. Applications/Places/System ALWAYS belong on the bottom for me along with my quick launch icons. Minimized windows get thrown at the ceiling. :D My panels are always kept somewhat transparent.

jgrabham
August 20th, 2007, 06:09 PM
I always switch the panels around. Applications/Places/System ALWAYS belong on the bottom for me along with my quick launch icons. Minimized windows get thrown at the ceiling. :D My panels are always kept somewhat transparent.

I couldnt stand that - I have to have it like the default with my apps bar at the top and my minimized progs at the bottom.

bonzodog
August 20th, 2007, 06:13 PM
I can't stand panels at all. period. I use openbox, and just have peksystray on the dock for a system tray. I like menus on the right click.

vexorian
August 20th, 2007, 06:22 PM
Come on! I know you have one, everybody does - That one little thing that sets your desktop apart, maybe one that you can't even fully justify. It just feels right. Maybe it's fully transparent windows, maybe you like a pink terminal. Who knows?

I know I just want stuff to be big. I want my icons as big and smooth as possible - the first thing I do when I install a new distro: make the panels wider. It just feels inviting, clean and friendly to have maybe to or three icons for major applications and just have them centered on the screen and enlarged to about five times standard size. Oh, well.

Now tell me yours!

Cheers,
Visti
Icons of extreme sizes in desktop.

FuturePilot
August 20th, 2007, 06:22 PM
My theme, icons, and wallpaper all have to match. There's nothing worse than a wallpaper with a lot of green in it with a pink Gtk theme. And I have to have the title bars set to shade when double clicked.
The terminal has to be black with white text and a little transparency.

fyllekajan
August 20th, 2007, 06:23 PM
I can't stand panels at all. period. I use openbox, and just have peksystray on the dock for a system tray. I like menus on the right click.

I can't stand openbox at all because of the per desktop windowlist. Navigating through unnecessary menus feels stupid, unnecessary mouse movements, time consuming. Then again they may have fixed that by now...

Mach1US
August 20th, 2007, 07:37 PM
I love my desktop switcher which i have set to at list six windows on all my four Ubuntu machines.:biggrin:

macogw
August 20th, 2007, 08:00 PM
Black themes, and I use Beryl to map keyboard shortcuts to open programs instead of using the menus. I also don't use a panel where programs minimize to. They just minimize to invisibility.

Mr. Picklesworth
August 20th, 2007, 08:11 PM
I have eyes. Lots, and lots, of eyes.

http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/7543/eyesdx2.th.jpg (http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/7543/eyesdx2.jpg)

On a different and more on-topic thought, I wish I could have the tabbed windows of Fluxbox in Gnome.
Hehe, I'm in the same boat as Vaxorian with the huge icons, too. I have a script set up to download an image from chimpomatic.net every 20 minutes, and a link to it on my desktop. The icon is scaled up to enormous size, so it displays the image at full size in the preview.

tehkain
August 20th, 2007, 08:45 PM
That title bars exist. I believe that all areas that are not buttons/toggles/entries should used as grab areas for dragging. My other quirk is the lack of an official single menu bar solution for gnome. I do not always like the single menubar but its an option that needs to be considered and made as an official option rather then a hack.

tigerpants
August 20th, 2007, 08:47 PM
On *nix systems, a skinny fluxbox setup. I've forced myself to adopt keyboard shortcuts and it makes things so much faster. It's surprising just how little is actually needed on a desktop.

Onyros
August 20th, 2007, 09:32 PM
Font size: 7 (100 dpi) - Bitstream Vera. That's it :P

And I gotta have good looking (yet small-ish) icons. I hand pick most of them for my favourite apps, building on the NuoveXT icon set.

PartisanEntity
August 20th, 2007, 09:42 PM
This is how I like my desktops, no icons, no clutter :)

urukrama
August 20th, 2007, 09:58 PM
I can't stand panels at all. period. I use openbox, and just have peksystray on the dock for a system tray. I like menus on the right click.

No panels here as well. Plus no icons on the desktop. No docks. No application icons in window decorations.

christhemonkey
August 20th, 2007, 10:01 PM
Nothing at all.
The only slightly quirky thing i do is when reading text on the internet, i have to highlight upto the word before the one i am reading.

urukrama
August 20th, 2007, 10:02 PM
I can't stand openbox at all because of the per desktop windowlist. Navigating through unnecessary menus feels stupid, unnecessary mouse movements, time consuming. Then again they may have fixed that by now...

I never liked that either, but they did fix that now. You should give Openbox 3.4 a try -- it contains numerous improvements over 3.3

Paul133
August 20th, 2007, 11:29 PM
I map open terminal to Super-Z and the ALT-F2 Gnome program starter thing to Alt+X, so they're right where I can reach them. Sadly, the CF update broke my key bindings. :'(
This is my .bash_aliases file:

alias killedx='sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg'
alias gshot='gnome-screenshot -d'

The former is for when I kill my X and the latter is for when I'm screwing around with CF and need to take a screenshot with a delay.

As for my desktop itself,nothing fancy. It's the regular Gnome desktop, with an icon for Firefox and Computer. The only quirk is the top panel as a launcher for a xwinwrap start/stop script I got off these forums.

rharriso
August 20th, 2007, 11:35 PM
I like to be suprised what my wallpaper boot up, so I randomized the selection.

WanderingKnight
August 21st, 2007, 12:17 AM
My theme, icons, and wallpaper all have to match. There's nothing worse than a wallpaper with a lot of green in it with a pink Gtk theme. And I have to have the title bars set to shade when double clicked.
The terminal has to be black with white text and a little transparency.

Same here. I can't stand non-matching themes and wallpapers.

kuja
August 21st, 2007, 12:21 AM
I remove any and all desktop and taskbar icons and use custom left/right/middle click menus in their stead.

reacocard
August 21st, 2007, 02:11 AM
Well its not strictly a desktop thing, but..

Pruning and eyecandy. Yes I know it sounds contradictory, but I do it somehow. I prune down my desktop (and everything really) to the minimum I can have while still having lots of nice eyecandy. After each Ubuntu realease I start out with the default desktop, then it slowly migrates away to something completely different. My current setup is mostly based on xfce, with a few things from gnome brought in for functionality. Here's a screenshot:

http://img366.imageshack.us/img366/3104/200708202005021280x800snk1.th.png (http://img366.imageshack.us/my.php?image=200708202005021280x800snk1.png)

It's running compiz-fusion. The system monitor in the top right is conky, the system tray in the bottom right is trayer, and the dock is avant window navigator. The whole setup feels much faster than gnome, esp when launching applications.

I think for gutsy I may go the other way, start from nothing and build up. Should be fun :D

Happy_Man
August 21st, 2007, 03:15 AM
I have quite a few things, actually:

I must have "my theme." Kwin and KDE to start. #626263 color for the borders. Random desktop wallpapers, pulled from my collection. They must change every half-hour. SuperKaramba with the Nanoramba2 theme. One panel on the bottom with the taskbar and systray, another menu in the upper-right corner set to hide unless i need it that has K menu, desktop pager, quick launch, clock.

If I don't have any of this, then I go insane and make it like this. Call me a slave of routine if you like, that's just how it works.

Chilli Bob
August 21st, 2007, 08:51 AM
I hate clutter on my desktop. The bottom panel is gone, and everything on it moved to top panel. The exit icon gone, and menu reduced to main menu (i.e. Ubuntu logo rather than "Applications, Places, System") NO LAUNCH ICONS on the panel (I can't stand that). My most used apps are all in a draw nice and tidy.

But most importantly, NOTHING on the desktop unless I'm actually using it right now. Docks and widgits/gadgets are the work of the devil!!

Ironically my actual desk that the computer sits on is buried 6 inches deep in crap - beer cans, spare change, scratched CD's, magazines, food wrappers etc, and I like it like that.

Tux Aubrey
August 21st, 2007, 09:20 AM
OK, I'll admit that I make icons of people in old family photos and use them on my desktop. I currently have my wife's Grandmother as a young girl representing her family history folder, my dad with me aged 6 linking to my documents folder and my uncle Bill just back from WWII launching Firefox. I change them for other family members when the mood strikes. Is that a quirk? I thought everyone did it.

http://ubuntuforums.org/g/images/167727/1_noni.png

happy-and-lost
August 21st, 2007, 09:22 AM
I have Firefox set up so that the Bookmarks toolbar is next to the "File Edit View..." thing, so as to maximise space and ease of use.

Luffield
August 21st, 2007, 10:42 AM
Cool thread.
I always move the gnome menu to the right side of the the top panel - when it's at the top-left corner I tend to confuse it witht the application menu bar of maximized windows. I move other stuff around as well, but this is the most quirky thing I do.

steven8
August 21st, 2007, 11:31 AM
I hate icons on the desktop. I like it blank.

vexorian
August 21st, 2007, 06:44 PM
I hate blank desktops, in fact I wish one of these days there will be a wm that will simply show the contents of ~/ in the desktop.

reacocard
August 21st, 2007, 06:46 PM
I hate blank desktops, in fact I wish one of these days there will be a wm that will simply show the contents of ~/ in the desktop.

You can do it in Gnome, I don't remember how but I know its possible.

Depressed Man
August 21st, 2007, 07:02 PM
- Blank Desktops
- docks on the bottom (not necessarily 100% like OSX since I can't stand those). I just like having a way to see icons of my open windows (instead of the taskbar)
- taskbar at the top
- minimize/max/close buttons on the upper right

jacob01
August 21st, 2007, 07:04 PM
41261

yea thats mine not to differant from default configuration
differant color bars quick acces things to my most used programs
you know

happy-and-lost
August 21st, 2007, 07:10 PM
You can do it in Gnome, I don't remember how but I know its possible.

In gconf-editor: /apps/nautilus/preferences/desktop_is_home_dir

kuja
August 21st, 2007, 07:11 PM
I hate blank desktops, in fact I wish one of these days there will be a wm that will simply show the contents of ~/ in the desktop.

Perfectly doable.


rmdir ~/Desktop
ln -sf ~ ~/Desktop

LaRoza
August 21st, 2007, 08:13 PM
I hate icons on the desktop. I like it blank.

I too, have my desktop clear, no icons at all.

igknighted
August 21st, 2007, 08:19 PM
Not really a "desktop" thing, but I despise maximized windows. Also I turn off any and all "snapping" to the sides of the screen. I like to always have space around my windows and to be able to drag them around by the titlebar freely without them sticking to anything.