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

[Scott Robbins]

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On Sat, Aug 06, 2005 at 10:04:55PM -0700, pete wright wrote:
> On 8/6/05, George R. <george at sddi.net> wrote:
> > Francisco Reyes wrote:
> > > On Sat, 6 Aug 2005, Scott Robbins wrote:
> > >
> > >> I suspect that much of this discussion about WM's and terminals
> > >> resembles a discussion I saw long ago on google about mutt and
> > >> pine--someone posted, "People tend to give all sorts of technical
> > >> reasons to support what is, in the end, an emotional decision."  :)
> > >
> > >
> > > Not entirely.. something like how much memory a program uses is not an
> > > emotional decision specially if you have a range of machines you plan to
> > > install including old machines with less memory.
> > 
> > I agree with you Francisco, and we're also talking about what we're
> > running on a desktop as a primary workstation/laptop.

Even on a PIII 500 with 256 megs of RAM, I think that the difference
between flux and xfce performance isn't going to be drastic.  KDE is
another story of course.  :)  (I use flux on such a machine and it's
fine, haven't tried xfce on it.)  That's the oldest machine I use.  I
think if I were on a really really old one, I'd use weewm, with which
I've played in the past.  I was able to do most of what I do with flux,
I think the only thing I lacked was the ability to open the root menu
with keystrokes. 

So, perhaps having been spoiled by not having to use an ancient machine
in awhile, I forgot that point, especially if we're bring KDE into the
mix.  



> > What I don't understand is the aterm/eterm/rxvt discussion.
> > 
> > I need something readable and clear, so I've never gone past
> > xterm -bg black -fg green
> > for any extended period of time.
> > 
> > Transparency, lack of scroll bars, etc, is just to way overcomplicated
> > when I just want a clean xterm.

As Francisco said in an earlier post, aterm uses fewer resources.   
Transparency is eye candy, fun for an hour then it pales.  Also, as my
eyes age, I find it harder to read.  I use a borderless aterm, grey
background black foreground.  I feel the borderless aspect and the lack
of a scrollbar subjectively at least, give me a bit more space on the
desktop, so those are a bit important for me.  Pete mentions below
(sorry I'm snipping it Pete, but I'm lazy) how he likes tabs in
terminals.  I prefer separate terminals, simply a matter of taste, and
that's another thing that aterm gives me.  With its fading option, the
terminal that has focus is brighter than the others, so I know where I
am.  This, of course, is personal taste--many people prefer tabs. 



- -- 

Scott Robbins

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