XFCE+which WM?

Hello!

I'm in a DE/WM-hopping period now (finished distro-hopping, arch's the best) 'coz I received a "new" laptop (Intel Core Duo 1,66Ghz, 1Gb RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 6600 Gt). I've been using fluxbox on my old laptop, I was pretty satisfied.
Now that I have a new computer, I want to try some elegant themes and eyecandys (must say that fluxbox's themes are real ugly), but that DE/WM must have the fluxbox-like right click menu. So I thought XFCE would be the one. After some days playing with XFCE, it didn't manage to persuade me (speed and lightweightness was ok, but xfwm themes aren't so nice etc.)
So now I want to try Compiz or Beryl (instead of xfwm). But my questions are : will it still be possible to have that right click menu? Are compiz and beryl better integrated with Gnome or is it the same as with XFCE? And also what are the system requirements for compiz or beryl (will it be smooth with the specs above)?

There's one thing I find strange in linux (i'm pretty new though): why separate the WM (window borders, right click menu) and the graphical kit (GTK : buttons, scrollbars)? I mean, sometimes we can't find exact matches for WM themes and GTK themes, and it becomes ugly. For example, I pretty like KDE4's appearences & styles (but I don't like KDE itself and its apps so much), I found a nice GTK theme which recreates KDE buttons etc and tried it on XFCE, very nice indeed, but couldn't find the correspondant xfwm theme to this KDE style, nor any metacity/compiz/beryl theme which looked like KDE4. (By the way if someone had a link to a WM theme which looks like KDE4?).

Thanks in advance.

PS: Final thing: is it possible to have that sweet right-click menu in Gnome or KDE?

Have you tried "Enlightenment" yet? Enlightenment - Beauty at your fingertips

If you're going to desktop hop you might as well try out the lesser used ones. I myself love Xfce, converted from Gnome. I never really cared much for Fluxbox as I guess I've always been too lazy to learn it. I find doing complex file management difficult and I wind up just using a terminal for everything, which defeats the purpose of the file manager and desktop enviro for me in the first place.

Should you like the "stacking" method you may also be interested in
icewm

Xfce and Fluxbox are light weight window managers and because of that they are not as, asthetically pleasing as Gnome or KDE.

To answer you're question I believe you can get the powerful Fluxbox "right click" in Gnome or KDE with some tweeking.

If you are using Gnome or KDE as the desktop environment, open up a terminal and run

Code:

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fluxbox --replace

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Originally Posted by AMA112

Hello!

I'm in a DE/WM-hopping period now (finished distro-hopping, arch's the best) 'coz I received a "new" laptop (Intel Core Duo 1,66Ghz, 1Gb RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 6600 Gt). I've been using fluxbox on my old laptop, I was pretty satisfied.
Now that I have a new computer, I want to try some elegant themes and eyecandys (must say that fluxbox's themes are real ugly), but that DE/WM must have the fluxbox-like right click menu. So I thought XFCE would be the one. After some days playing with XFCE, it didn't manage to persuade me (speed and lightweightness was ok, but xfwm themes aren't so nice etc.)
So now I want to try Compiz or Beryl (instead of xfwm). But my questions are : will it still be possible to have that right click menu? Are compiz and beryl better integrated with Gnome or is it the same as with XFCE? And also what are the system requirements for compiz or beryl (will it be smooth with the specs above)?

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I guess it should integrate as well. Haven't much experience with eye candy myself. I consider it useless. About performance, well, it depends on how aggressive you are when using effects. Some of them are really heavy, others are lighter. Your nvidia card is ok for desktop effects as long as you retain sanity when using effects, however apps that require 3d for themselves (like games) are going to suffer a penalty if you run them under compiz, that's a logical thing. It's not a top end card and some of the heaviest effects might work with problems.

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There's one thing I find strange in linux (i'm pretty new though): why separate the WM (window borders, right click menu) and the graphical kit (GTK : buttons, scrollbars)?

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Mmmmm, but windows does the same. All windows programs do have the same window borders, and the menu of the window will always have the same style (i.e. when you right click on the title bar). While the application itself (the client area, inside the frame) can be of any kind. Some applications might fake otherwise by not showing the window border and faking a decoration of any kind, but it's just that, a fake. Linux programs can also run borderless.

The window manager is a separate piece, and that's the way it *must* be. Otherwise, all the applications would have to implement their own code to move, resize, maximize and in general, do all the things that the wm do. That would be an utterly useless replication of code in every single program. And not only that, but also programs would act at their will, and they would all be fighting to be the most important window ever, in detriment of the rest of windows.

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I mean, sometimes we can't find exact matches for WM themes and GTK themes, and it becomes ugly. For example, I pretty like KDE4's appearences & styles (but I don't like KDE itself and its apps so much), I found a nice GTK theme which recreates KDE buttons etc and tried it on XFCE, very nice indeed, but couldn't find the correspondant xfwm theme to this KDE style, nor any metacity/compiz/beryl theme which looked like KDE4. (By the way if someone had a link to a WM theme which looks like KDE4?).

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Theming is not a very complicated thing nowadays. I am not much into it, but I guess that creating a theme for compiz is just a matter of making some pixmaps with a few transparencies (just my guess, as said, I am not too interested in the matter). So I guess that the best thing to do if you can't find a nice theme is to make your own. There are also sites like kde-look.org or gnome-look.org with lots of material to look around.

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PS: Final thing: is it possible to have that sweet right-click menu in Gnome or KDE?

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Gnome and kde have their own menu. You just have to configure them adequately. I am fairly sure that kde can be configured to assign the k menu to whatever button click on the root window (your desktop background), at least that was possible in 3.x, haven't tested much 4.x. You just need to look around a bit.

The Arch Compiz Wiki has some info on using compiz as a standalone WM.

Your specs should handle compiz fine.

Thanks for your answers guys. I'm going to try compiz now. (Special thanks to i92guboj for his extremely helpful post).

PS: I've just discovered this forum, a very good one IMO. I also posted this thread on ubuntuforums, and still no answers today... Thanks again!