[linux-audio-user] favorite window Manager for making music?

[pirrone]

Brian Dunn wrote:
> So you guys helped me pick a distro, and i'm pretty
> happy with it.  Lets here the verdicts, what window
> manager? Gnome 2.12 is what i've been using, but it
> isn't the most stable.  Sometimes i can't logout and i
> have to switch to a vt and kill it. The absence of
> easily configurable menus has me sticking all my music
> apps in a "drawer," where those without icons apear as
> big feet that must be mouse-overed until i get
> tool-tipped to even know that program it is.  I could
> work around/live with it but then i resized one day
> with <ctrl>+<alt>+- to read some fine print and all o'
> the sudden the horizontal refresh was busted like an
> old television.  the whole screen was cycling to the
> left at a dizying pace and my muse cursor disapeared. 
> Even after killing X and restarting this nonsence was
> still going on and i hate having to reboot my machine.
>  So now i'm playing with e16... before i invest in
> realy figuring out how to use it, what do any of you
> using a jack studio setup with like MusE and Ardor and
> the like prefer?
>
> Thanks,
> Brian
>
>
>   
Brian,

Strong preference for Fluxbox.  Light, powerful, elegant, fast, highly 
configurable.  Pure productivity in an excellent work environment.  It 
has tabbed windows and the ability to open a group of programs in one 
window accessed by their tabs.  It has simple text files for this 
(~/.fluxbox/groups) and for key bindings (~/.fluxbox/keys) and for the 
menus (~/.fluxbox/menu), and a menu maker that will search for 
applications as you specify.

Here's a set of clips from those files to show you how clear and simple 
configuring this wm is and how in-control the user is:

Groups:
ardour_editor ardour_mixer (guess what two apps this opens in a single 
window)

Keys:
Mod1 e  :ExecCommand gedit
Mod1 f  :ExecCommand Eterm --trans --borderless --scrollbar off 
--buttonbar off --geometry 00x44+185+65 --font 10x20 --foreground-color 
white -e mc >/dev/null 2>&1
Mod1 g  :ExecCommand gimp
(that Eterm/mc command is very cool - along with my settings for 
transparency, it results in Midnight Commander just floating disembodied 
on the screen - no window, no scroll bar, no title - just its display 
contents set transparently against my blue background.  Then when I 
shell out to a command prompt  using ctrl-o all you see is the prompt 
floating on the screen until something is executed, then its output 
floats against the bg)

Menu:
[separator]
    [submenu] (Local Menus)
        [submenu] (Local-Applications)
            [exec] (AbiWord) {abiword}
            [exec] (Bookshelf) {/usr/share/wine-c/bookshelf}
            [exec] (Celestia) {celestia }
            [exec] (CmapTools) {cmaptools }
            [exec] (Inkscape) {inkscape }
            [exec] (GNUmeric) {gnumeric}
            [exec] (Lyx) {lyx }
(which is a tiny piece of what displays when I right-click my mouse 
anywhere on any screen - no Start button, no launcher, no drawers - just 
a simple quick and elegant cascading menu structure where I slide down 
to Local Menus, slide over to Local-Applications, and slide down to 
AbiWord and I'm off and running.  If I want to work within my Multimedia 
sub-menu where all my self-installed music apps are I can simply tear 
that off by pulling on its title and leave it open on the screen as I 
launch all the programs needed for that session.).

Frank