Desktop Interface
Posted: Sat Dec 18, 2004 12:44 am
After reading Tog's article on how to fix the OS X interface, I realized that I had already configured my GNOME 2.4 workstation desktop to match his Monster Mac functionality, within the limits of the software.
Here is a screenshot of my workstation desktop.
The panel at the bottom of the screen is persistent. The panels on the side autohide to the bottom of the screen. I have a pager for my workspaces on the right and a tasklist of all open applications on the left. On the bottom, I keep a tasklist of only the applications for the current workspace.
The bottom panel takes up 24 pixels, which was my tradeoff between devoting screen area to apps and having a legible tasklist. It has a launcher for my terminal, a clock, and a graph of CPU load. This is actually a fairly standard Windows Taskbar-style panel, minus the Start menu. The way I work, I use emacs, terminal, and command-line programs exclusively. I do all my file manipulation and GUI program launching from the command line, too. I just haven't found a more efficient way to work with thousands of files.
To maximize the usefulness of the tasklist, I use xtitle extensively. You can see this in the terminals named Willy, Studies, and so forth.
On my office desktop, I wouldn't mind the ability to minimize to thumbnail as described in the article, but all my windows look identical. See the pager on the right for an example of this. Just black terminal with grey text. GNOME does do window-shading, though I never use it.
The two tasklists I have give me most of the benefit of a Apple Applications menu. I can see the apps I'm using currently at a glance without mouse movement, or look at all applications just by moving my mouse to the lower left hand corner.
I essentially never use the menus, so I moved the GNOME menu someplace out of the way on the top of the right-most panel. GNOME does let you customize your menus and panels.
GNOME has drawers, though they don't sound quite as nice as DragThing. However, I haven't made use of them because I just don't launch applications with the mouse. I find it more convenient to use the command line to launch applications rather than wait for a directory listing for thousands of files in a GUI file opener. Command line tab-completion is still too slow, though, so I'm always looking for a better way.
I do make extensive use of symlinks in my home directory to commonly accessed directories so most of the paths I use are only one or two levels deep. I also have custom color rules (in $DIRCOLOR) for ls to highlight the file types I use the most.
Here is a screenshot of my workstation desktop.
The panel at the bottom of the screen is persistent. The panels on the side autohide to the bottom of the screen. I have a pager for my workspaces on the right and a tasklist of all open applications on the left. On the bottom, I keep a tasklist of only the applications for the current workspace.
The bottom panel takes up 24 pixels, which was my tradeoff between devoting screen area to apps and having a legible tasklist. It has a launcher for my terminal, a clock, and a graph of CPU load. This is actually a fairly standard Windows Taskbar-style panel, minus the Start menu. The way I work, I use emacs, terminal, and command-line programs exclusively. I do all my file manipulation and GUI program launching from the command line, too. I just haven't found a more efficient way to work with thousands of files.
To maximize the usefulness of the tasklist, I use xtitle extensively. You can see this in the terminals named Willy, Studies, and so forth.
On my office desktop, I wouldn't mind the ability to minimize to thumbnail as described in the article, but all my windows look identical. See the pager on the right for an example of this. Just black terminal with grey text. GNOME does do window-shading, though I never use it.
The two tasklists I have give me most of the benefit of a Apple Applications menu. I can see the apps I'm using currently at a glance without mouse movement, or look at all applications just by moving my mouse to the lower left hand corner.
I essentially never use the menus, so I moved the GNOME menu someplace out of the way on the top of the right-most panel. GNOME does let you customize your menus and panels.
GNOME has drawers, though they don't sound quite as nice as DragThing. However, I haven't made use of them because I just don't launch applications with the mouse. I find it more convenient to use the command line to launch applications rather than wait for a directory listing for thousands of files in a GUI file opener. Command line tab-completion is still too slow, though, so I'm always looking for a better way.
I do make extensive use of symlinks in my home directory to commonly accessed directories so most of the paths I use are only one or two levels deep. I also have custom color rules (in $DIRCOLOR) for ls to highlight the file types I use the most.