[NTLUG:Discuss] Re: GUI recomendations -- ROXFiler Session+File (OS/2 Workplace Shell-like)

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Mon, 2005-08-29 at 23:39 -0500, Jay Urish wrote:
> I wish IBM would release OS/2 for linux. I loved my 'warped' desktop.

Well, I've come to find out in more recent years that Microsoft has some
IP rights to the OS/2 Workplace Shell, since IBM used some existing
Program Manager code in it.  I'm sure their stupidity in 1995 (by
signing the Windows 95 licensing agreement which gave all sorts of IP
assertion to Microsoft) complicated things even further.

Heck, some of you guys out there in Texas probably know more than I do
on that whole fiasco.

But with that said, I guess you didn't read my whole post then ...
  http://ntlug.org/pipermail/discuss/Week-of-Mon-20050829/024354.html  

  "And there is also ROXFiler, a OS/2 Workplace Shell like
   combination Session+File Manager.  It works best with XFCE's
   window manager, and to a lesser extent, IceWM.  It actually
   is almost entirely Xt based and very lightweight, with a few
   GTK+ features."

Screenshots are here:  
  http://www.lynucs.org/?rox-filer  

Homepage is here:  
  http://rox.sourceforge.net/phpwiki/index.php/ROX-Filer      

It's still not OS/2 Workplace Shell, but it's as close as it gets.
Again, it's very lightweight/small-footprint -- developed largely with
Xt (the base X11 toolkit) with GTK+ (same toolkit as GNOME) for added
features.

Most people like to run it with either the IceWM or XFCE WM (xfwm4) for
window managers.  There are only a few quirks with IceWM and XFCE WM
seems to run flawlessly.  Since I'm a Red Hat bigot, I typically run
XFCE (one of the 3 officially supported frameworks since FC2+/RHEL4+)
and use ROXFiler for my session/file manager. 

Information on switching window managers is here:  
  http://rox.sourceforge.net/phpwiki/index.php/ROX-Session#ChooseWM  
  http://rox.sourceforge.net/phpwiki/index.php/ROX-Session  

I'd really like to see a lightweight distro come out using ROX-Filer as
its Session manager (with gdm2), and be well integrated with xfwm4.  I
used to hope that would become of a Fedora off-shoot, but it appears
that projects (such as Cobind) have trouble un-i686'ing Fedora Core
because there's just a lot that requires an i686 ISA** these days -- not
always ideal for embedded.**

But even then it would be nice to have a smaller footprint / faster GUI
for even i686 ISA** systems.

[ **NOTE:  Although there are a lot of i686 ISA processors such as the
K6, M2, etc..., GCC stupidly requires the optional "cmov" instruction.
In other words, i686 ISA in the Linux world means at least an Athlon.
Not sure about the ViA C3. ]

-- 
Bryan J. Smith     b.j.smith at ieee.org     http://thebs413.blogspot.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The best things in life are NOT free - which is why life is easiest if
you save all the bills until you can share them with the perfect woman