Playing with Echinus and Oroborus

These are tiny window managers. Unfortunately they both have something wrong with them.

I'm running Oroborus right now, version 2.0.18. Looks nice. The only problem that I have encountered so far is that when I click an icon in the ROX Panel, nothing appears on the desktop -- I have to then click in the desktop for the application to appear. Weird.

Home: http://www.oroborus.org/

An aesthetic thing: these days window managers should support xft, even minimalistic ones.

Echinus has been discussed recently on the forum:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=47476

I compiled version 0.3.9. It is delightfully tiny and simple. Unfortunately, when I right-click on a file in a ROX-Filer window the menu appears underneath the window! (only in floating mode, it's ok in tiled mode). Also, there doesn't seem to be any way to drag-resize a window.

So for me the only windows managers that I have been satisfied with are still JWM and Openbox.

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Comments

openbox + fbpanel are the best choice


gtkdialog menus
Username: technosaurus
"I have been playing with the rox panels as well and found a couple of useful things and one TODO. rox will iconify minimized windows (like the pager) bottom right works well with puppy's current layout rox -{l,r,t,B} MyPanel will put a panel on the {left, right, top, bottom} but should be loaded on start with the pinboard (-t and -B gives a gnome kind of feel, but -l and -r would be better for widescreen netbooks)... both methods can use the same panels interchangably ... also helps unclutter the desktop Stalone tray may be necessary as well for things like the battery monitor, clock.... AVFS will allow you to browse archived files as if they are folders (much faster/simpler than Xarchive but a slightly larger 125kb pet) The big TODO - not sure if my scripting is up the the challenge... a fixmenus style script that builds a GtkDialog program menu by parsing the .desktop files. This menu could be used by any window manager and placed in the Rox Panel, even mapped to button 2 (maybe even getcurpos for the x,y coordinates)

oroborus
Username: MU
"I think oroborus is not actively supported any longer. I used it for quite a while years ago, as it was the only one where I understood how to modify the source. The goal was to run a screenshot program before a window is minimized. Unfortunately it does not support completely modern specs like the EMWH specifications. So some of my programs behaved wrong (e.g. concerning the layers). JWM also has issues in this concern. Openbox certainly is a great choice: small and "up to date". Ultrapup uses it together with lxdesktop (panel, "pinboard", filer). The only thing that misses, is that the pinboard has less options than the one from rox, e.g. you cannot drag'n'drop files on it. At home, I replaced openbox with xfwm from the Xfce desktop, because I prefer the rounded window borders using MacOSX like theming. I think as default desktop concerning speed, JWM+rox are still unbeaten, and should remain default for desktop systems, with icewm as option, as done in Puppy 4.20. Mark

oroborus link
Username: MU
"old oroborus message: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=3764 patched for my "taskbar using thumbnails": http://www.freewebs.com/markulrich/wxb-desktop01alpha01/index.htm Mark

Tags: quirky