[nycbug-talk] BSD on a desktop (revisited)

[Marco Scoffier]

On Wed, Aug 03, 2005 at 08:03:23AM -0400, Isaac Levy wrote:
>Hey All,
>
>What kinds of X11 desktops does everyone use, and would reccommend to  
>a possible 'reverse switcher', from a Mac desktop to a BSD machine?   
>I know this discussion has come up here before, but in different  
>contexts, (newbie users, people switching from windows, etc...)
>
>--
>I'm asking in light of yesterday's post regarding Apple and trusted  
>computing fun,
>
>http://lists.nycbug.org/pipermail/talk/2005-August/006242.html
>
>this BSD/UNIX server jockey is now looking to dive seriously into X11  
>desktop use.  I'm coming from the perspective of a LONG time mac  
>user, who tends to live at shells on remote servers, and listen to a  
>lot of music...  I like using multiple desktops, and usually switch  
>between LOTS of windows while working.  I'm also an avid key-command  
>user, and learn new GUI app key commands fast- but I expect  
>consistency for any of it to make sense to me.
>
>What does everyone use?
>

A long time windowmaker user (very easy to set up key bindings for what
ever, lots of panel widgets)  I recently switched to xfce4 which while
remaining light and fast, has more eye candy.  I have an "agua" skin which
makes my mac using wife more comfortable on the desktop...

For music playing there is xmms and the new beep media player (bmp)
which uses gtk2 but has fewer plugins (missing a pluging for .flac for
example, but development on xmms has halted so...), also install imms
(port seems to be broken right now, but easy to compile and can be used
with both).  IMMS keeps track of your listening patterns (skipping a
song gives it negative weight, skipping right after a transition gives a
negative weight to the transition) IMMS also keeps track of the beats
per minute of tracks, so that while it randomizes your listening after
using it for a while you feel that it just gets in a groove. :)

-- 
Marco