Post Your Desktop!



Let me show you my latest desktop build:

f89af91f43def3f8124e7a8cbb3c079e.png


Surprised?

My wife's old XP machine finally died. Thankfully!

The case and power supply (420 W) are in awesome shape. They should be. It was a replacement case that we used to transplant the guts out of the old case a number of years ago.

Got the case, got the power supply. I already had 4 GB of RAM and a 500 GB hard drive setting around in surplus. So all I needed was:

* GIGABYTE GA-H61M-S1 LGA 1155 Intel H61 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard - About $40 after mail-in rebate.
* Intel Pentium G2020 Ivy Bridge 2.9GHz LGA 1155 55W Dual-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics - $68
* SAMSUNG DVD Burner 24X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 24X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 24X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM SATA - $20

The most expensive part of the build...

You guessed it!

* Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-bit - OEM - $100

Why? Because I could. And because sometimes we still need a Windows machine for work to run certain software that will not run on Linux, in WINE, or in VirtualBox.

But in my defense, I went the cheapest, best route I could find.

And just to appease Richard Stallman who would stand before an audience and ask, "Show of hands, please. How many of you have pirated software on your computers?" I have none. Every software package is either OEM or legitimately licensed to me.

To keep score: I have six Linux machines to one Windows 7 (and it is 7) computer. I'm not one of those Microsoft haters (nor am I a fan), and I'm certainly not one of the snobby Linux elitists who insist that you call it "GNU/Linux."


Agreed negative emotions like hate are so negative and quite bad for one's health. There is to much hate talk in the Community, concentrate on enjoying Linux and learning more.
 
zzkde.png

So I been running KDE for a few weeks with the default back ground but yesterday I loaded up Conky and the non transparency in KDE forced me to put the "boots" back on.

What's up with KDE and the transparency of Conky?
 
God bless your boots :D. Transparency can be tricky... Try changing your compositing to OpenGL.
 
Redone my Mint 16. Weather & time desklet & Rainlendar. Almost forgot running Cairo-dock.
Screenshot from 2014-04-09 03:44:02.png
 
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OK, I know this is an old-ish thread, but it's OK because I am a powerful Necromancer (bwah hah hah hah haaaa!) And besides, it's just a Show your desktop thread, so where is the harm? I mean really? :)

Thought I'd show you my dwm desktop on my laptop running Kubuntu 14.04 and do a massive, boring TLDR; description of dwm and some of its features:

desktop-with-bar.png


BTW: To prove it's not a gratuitous botty shot and is actually my desktop* I've made the top-bar visible. Usually the top-bar is hidden by default on my setup - one of many minor customisations I made to my copy of dwm. I only ever display the top-bar by toggling it on briefly if I am unsure which tag I am viewing or to check the battery stats/time and hide it again afterwards. Toggling the top-bar is done via a keybind: alt+b by default in dwm, but I have re-mapped the modifier key to the windows/super key in my copy, so it's win+b for me!

* And it's not a plug for my bands unreleased album either. It actually IS my desktop - I just REALLY like that artwork for some reason.... Saying that, nobody outside the band has actually seen the album artwork yet, so this could also be considered a Linux.org exclusive! Heh heh! XD

Anyway, here's how it looks with some programs running (and the top bar still visible - forgot to hide it before doing the screenshot, DOH!):
desktop-working.png

The programs running are:
Drumburp drum tab editor (left),
A terminal session using Lilypond to convert Lilypond .ly files exported from DB to .pdf (top-right),
and Okular to preview the pdf's generated by Lilypond (bottom-right).

The view in the above shot is set to tiled mode, which displays all of the programs that are associated with the current tag as a set of tiles on the screen. (The current tag is Tag 1 in the image - Tags are kinda similar to virtual desktops...ish... But not quite!).
The area on the left is the primary area, the area on the right is the secondary area. Whenever you start a program it gets put into the primary area. If there is already a program running in that tag, the program that was in the primary area gets shunted into the secondary area. But there is functionality that will allow you to swap a program in the secondary area into the primary.

There are two other display modes: Monocle mode, which displays the active/selected program in the current tag in fullscreen. And floating mode, which allows you to drag windows around the screen and resize them with the mouse as you would for most other desktops/WMs.

The floating mode is useful for programs that do not work well with dwm - Typically these are programs which use fixed size windows/dialogs that will not resize properly. Not many programs are problematic, but you do encounter the odd one now and then, so floating mode can be useful from time to time. But most of the time, I find myself using the tiled and monocle modes!

Everything in dwm is done using simple keybinds and dwm does have some very useful and powerful features. Switching between tags, or between each program in the current tag; Swapping one of the secondary windows on the right into the main/primary area on the left; switching to another view mode; resizing the primary area; spawning a terminal; spawning the menu (dmenu) and starting programs; associating/disassociating a program with one or more tags (programs can be associated with more than one tag!).

You can even set up your own custom keybinds - However, making ANY customisations to dwm requires editing some C files and rebuilding and reinstalling dwm. But that isn't actually as bad as it sounds! Especially if you know C! :) Even if you don't know C, some changes will be trivial!

Most of the common settings you might need to tweak are found in the main header file - things like changing colours, keybinds, topbar position and visibility, program behaviours/tag associations, etc. But anything more involved (adding transparency support, or additional view modes) would also require adding code to the main C file. After making any changes, it's just a case of running 'make' and 'make install', then log-out and log back in again to see your changes in action! (or to see it explode violently if you managed to introduce any bugs.... Learning from your mistakes is always an experience! Heh heh!)

This is how it usually looks when I am using programs in monocle mode... And with no top-bar taking up valuable screen real-estate... This time I remembered to switch the top-bar off! HA!
desktop-nobar-terms.png

Above is a single, full-screen, Terminator session, with the screen split into three terminal sessions. The left split is running irssi (command line IRC client - Note the IRC channel in use!). Top right is mp3blaster (command-line/curses based media player). And bottom right is alsamixer.

The view in the screen-shot above is in monocle mode. But you can't see that because the top bar is hidden. And because it is in monocle mode, you also cannot see the other programs that are running in that tag either (Two additional, separate instances of Terminator, both running vim with several documents open in tabs).

My desktop might not be much to look at, but it is lightweight, fast and means I can pretty much do away with the mouse/mouse-pad. With less need to take my hands away from the keyboard, I can also be a little more productive.... At least, as long as I remember all of the keyboard shortcuts! Tee hee!

OK, sure - Customising dwm might be a bit more involved than in most other environments, but once you have it looking and behaving the way you want it to, you never have to touch the code again. So it's worth it IMHO.

Tiled window managers like dwm might not be to everybody's taste, but it suits me just fine! I almost never log into a KDE desktop session nowadays!
 
Screenshot from 2014-08-18 12:07:59.png
Well here's my desktop :)
I'm sure you can figure out what I'm running from the desktop, the menu applet is the "Stark" menu in Cinna-minna-mon. I can't get the name where the penguin is to use a dark font. If anyone has the answer, I would appreciate it. I'll be damned if I can find the line in the code which has it. The conky was fun to configure. It will do anything I want it to. Very handy to have. But I'm not sold on the weather apps. Can't get it to get any weather even after I find the code from the site. Oh well. This one desklet is actually the best I've used so far.
 
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hi everyone, i'm new here. looks like it was quite fun, so let me join, okay :D
i was having fun with xmonad, and here's my screenshot. :D

scrot-png.1466


at first i don't know from right to left about xmonad, but now i'm enjoying this window manager. it's quite easy to figure monad.
 

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View attachment 1463 Well here's my desktop :)
I'm sure you can figure out what I'm running from the desktop, the menu applet is the "Stark" menu in Cinna-minna-mon. I can't get the name where the penguin is to use a dark font. If anyone has the answer, I would appreciate it. I'll be damned if I can find the line in the code which has it. The conky was fun to configure. It will do anything I want it to. Very handy to have. But I'm not sold on the weather apps. Can't get it to get any weather even after I find the code from the site. Oh well. This one desklet is actually the best I've used so far.

I found My Weather Indicator off of Noobs site and installed that weather app instead and I like that just as well.
 
Desktop? Nothing really to post. Generally open 2 xterms at login for the "gui."

Setup accel keys to launch the 5-10 apps I use all the time - a pure xterm is one, so any application is possible. super-1, super-2, super-3, super-c, super-a for a browser, email, keepassx, calculator, alarm, ... you get the ideas.
No menu, no desktop icons. Mousing just slows us down. ;O

Take advantage to make it fast for your specific needs. Forget my needs, make your system 100% yours.
 
Well I have recently abandoned Arch, Slack because I got tired of using them. So I switched over to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. As you can see I don't like anything fancy. Unity is bleh Gnome 3 is bleh. Everything else beyond is bleh. So I'm just using good old gnome classic.

6hrd8E6.png

Ain't no shame in that!..... :D
 
10974430_886385034714956_3962031222918065856_o.jpg

Mate Desktop with cairo-dock on Debian Wheezy. I like clean screen.


Cairo Dock, hmm.....?? :) Maybe I'll put it on my old Dell, since I'm using Docky in this Chromebook of mine..... :3
 
Let me show you my latest desktop build:

f89af91f43def3f8124e7a8cbb3c079e.png


Surprised?

My wife's old XP machine finally died. Thankfully!

The case and power supply (420 W) are in awesome shape. They should be. It was a replacement case that we used to transplant the guts out of the old case a number of years ago.

Got the case, got the power supply. I already had 4 GB of RAM and a 500 GB hard drive setting around in surplus. So all I needed was:

* GIGABYTE GA-H61M-S1 LGA 1155 Intel H61 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard - About $40 after mail-in rebate.
* Intel Pentium G2020 Ivy Bridge 2.9GHz LGA 1155 55W Dual-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics - $68
* SAMSUNG DVD Burner 24X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 24X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 24X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM SATA - $20

The most expensive part of the build...

You guessed it!

* Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-bit - OEM - $100

Why? Because I could. And because sometimes we still need a Windows machine for work to run certain software that will not run on Linux, in WINE, or in VirtualBox.

But in my defense, I went the cheapest, best route I could find.

And just to appease Richard Stallman who would stand before an audience and ask, "Show of hands, please. How many of you have pirated software on your computers?" I have none. Every software package is either OEM or legitimately licensed to me.

To keep score: I have six Linux machines to one Windows 7 (and it is 7) computer. I'm not one of those Microsoft haters (nor am I a fan), and I'm certainly not one of the snobby Linux elitists who insist that you call it "GNU/Linux."

I have an ASUS (lot's of horror stories with USB Linux Booting.....), but if they Open-Sourced Windows, in it's entirety, in my Lifetime, I wouldn't stop using GNU/Linux..... But, I would Love Windows a whole lot more..... :3
 
Ubuntu minimal running openbox with a custom lxpanel. Wallpaper made in gimp...
ySuvAxR.jpg

Ohh..... Pretty....... :3 Could..... Could you share that wallpaper with us.....? I could do something in return and stuff..... :)
 

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