[Cialug] Tracking the Ubuntu beta distribution

[Daniel A. Ramaley]

On Thursday 01 March 2007 11:33, Nathan Stien wrote:
>I'm curious, what is it about the AfterStep pager that you like so
>much?

I set up several desktops, each one twice as wide and three times as 
tall as my monitor. To move to a different screen within one desktop i 
either just have to bump the mouse against the edge or hit a meta key 
(i'm using the Windows logo key for that purpose) plus an arrow key. To 
move to a completely different desktop i can hit a meta key plus 
pageup/pagedown or click on the Pager (and all those keystrokes are 
user-definable, i just set them to what i like). I've so far not found 
another window manager that has a pager that works as slick as the one 
in AfterStep.

My other main reason for liking AfterStep is that it is possible to 
configure a very minimal desktop. When i log in there is a background 
pattern and the pager. I don't have any bars at the top or bottom of 
the screen wasting space. At one time i tried to figure out with both 
KDE and Gnome how to get rid of their menu bars and all desktop icons, 
but gave up fairly quickly. If i want a program launcher similar to 
Windows' "Start Menu" or the equivalent in the more common Linux window 
managers, i can click anywhere on the desktop and the appropriate menu 
pops up. But i have keystrokes defined for my most-used applications so 
i can just hit a combination without having to mess with the menu very 
often.

It is also easy to configure what buttons show up in the title bar of 
each window. I have 5 buttons configured on each window. Each one 
responds differently depending on which mouse button is used to click 
it. And if i forget what mouse button does what on which button, 
hovering the mouse over it pops up a little help window. In general 
AfterStep seems more configurable than most window managers, but to 
make full use of it you need to be willing to get your hands dirty and 
edit the configuration files with a text editor. Since i prefer that 
method of configuration to a GUI anyway, it works well for me. 
Configuring it the first time and getting it set up perfectly the way i 
want it was a real pain. But the configuration files don't really 
change between versions so getting it set up was a one-time cost.

AfterStep is also *fast*. My main machine at home (built in the summer 
of 1998, so approaching 9 years old) runs Debian Etch, and it would not 
be able to handle KDE or Gnome. But it runs AfterStep wonderfully. 
AfterStep isn't as fast as Blackbox or some of the others that are 
meant to be truly minimalistic, but for me it offers a good compromise 
between efficiency and features.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dan Ramaley                            Dial Center 118, Drake University
Network Programmer/Analyst             2407 Carpenter Ave
+1 515 271-4540                        Des Moines IA 50311 USA