XFce

[Clinton MacDonald]

Mr. Hamilton:

Greg Hamilton wrote:
> I've been reading about a lightweight desktop environment called XFce 
> (http://xfce.org). Has anybody here tried building it for YDL? Does
> anybody have any experience with it?

I have not played with XFce. However, I have had a reasonable amount of 
experience with BlackBox, another "lightweight" window manager. I am 
pretty happy with BlackBox (which may already be installed on your 
Yellow Dog Linux box). There are a few oddities -- and no documentation, 
neither in the environment nor on the Web -- but it is quite likable.

If you decide to experiment with BlackBox, here are a few hints:

[1] right-click to start any and all applications, middle-click to 
manage windows

[2] if you "iconize" an application, in fact you hide the application 
entirely, and can only visualize it using the middle-click window 
manager ("icon" was a very poor choice of name for this hiding feature)

[3] several of the options in the applications (right-click) menu are 
not active

[4] there is a text file (I don't recall its location, as I am not at my 
YDL box right now -- type "whereis blackbox," go to that directory, and 
look for a file called "menu"; the file is *not* in your home directory) 
that will allow you to edit the applications menu

[5] if you add "nautilus --no-desktop" to the applications menu, it 
makes a decent file browser

> According to the web site it's supposed to be lightweight and fast which 
> would be handy on a slow box.

You might like BlackBox, too. Let us know how you like XFce.

Best wishes,
Clint

-- 
Dr. Clinton C. MacDonald | <mailto:clint DOT macdonald AT sbcglobal DOT net>