The problem withcurrent window managers...

Hiya all,

I'm the happy owner of an AA1 and I've modde the desktop with the script that k0ro posted in this forum.
That's a pretty nice hack, however, after a lot of browsing I found out there's no really good UI that takes care of minimum screen waste.

An example. All windows have the toolbars at the top, and usually also a status bar at the bottom. Since the AA1 (and many other subnotes) have a rather wide screen with limited resolution, that approach wastes quite a bit of viewing space. It's bad in firefox, but even worse in openoffice (where there's lots of toolbars).

I know lots of these tools can be switched off, but the issue is they are quite useful and constantly en/disabling them is annoying.

I was wondering if there's a UI that has most of these on the side or dynamically hiding/showing. I love the look of BeOS (I may try to get Haiku to install on the AA1 someday), but even tat minimalistic UI has its issues on the AA1 I think (although a lot less).

Anyone who has opinions on this and maybe found something worth trying? (I can't imagine being the only one here )

thanks!

 

Some programs, such as Abiword and Firefox, let you toggle to full-screen mode with F11. FBReader lets you rotate text 90 degrees, so I use that and turn my computer sideways to read e-books.

If you're using the XFCE script, you move your panel to the side instead of the top or bottom.

For your program menus, use text-only or small icons if available (Firefox 3 has them).

You also may want to try XFCE's Smallscreen theme (under Window Manager Settings).

 

Enlightenment has been around for awhile. It may be the most configurable, fastest, minimalistic, yet rich on features. I'm not sure how most people would like it, because I first used it when Rasterman first wrote it. Stuck on it ever since.

 

I just installed Xubuntu which uses xfce just like k0ro's script enables for you. I have removed the top bar from my system, but included that functionality that I wanted all into the bottom bar. Likewise, you could move everything to the top if you prefer.

Everything on those bars are "Applets" (not to be confused with java web based programs) and can be added to each bar. For example, Your programs you are running are in a "Task List", your system tray is a "Task List" etc. I was even going to put the bar on the left side of the screen to maximize my vertical room, and you can do it nicely with an "Icon Box" which is the same as the Task List except it only shows an icon for the running applications.

I decided to keep the bar on the bottom, however, because i'm too used to have the clock there, and I don't want the clock to stretch the side bar out. Too bad there isn't a way to rotate the clock 90 degrees

I've had to customize some apps on here one by one, but I think i have them pretty well set up now, and am pretty happy with the result.

 

Running Haiku from a USB stick is as simple as dd:ing the raw hd image from http://haiku-files.org/raw/index.php?dir=&sort=name&order=desc directly to the device:

Code:

dd if=haiku.image of=/dev/sdb

This of course destroys the stick's original msdos partition table, but you can fix that with parted when you're done testing
[attachment=0:3rpiq5jx]haiku.jpg[/attachment:3rpiq5jx]
Seeing as Haiku is still pre-alpha and things change almost everyday I can't really recommend installing it to the harddrive just yet
What works right now: SATA, ethernet
What doesn't work right now: wireless, sound, webcam, card readers, hibernation etc

 

Yep, I modified the Haiku display driver and network driver to work with the Aspire One (half the changes are already in the repository), and it is a beautiful little operating system to have on it. Sound works with OSS and once I finish my modifications to the rtl8169 driver (or you use the 810x ported from freebsd) ethernet is amazing.

http://www.freelists.org/archives/haiku-development/09-2008/msg00165.html