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Re: [LUG] A pretend rant

 
On 28/12/2020 13:05, Sebastian wrote:

Dear Neil,

It is most interesting seeing how different people use computers. The
way in which I use mine is quite different to how many distributions are
set up for, so I appreciate it when the installer gives the option to
not install a desktop environment at all. Conversely, I find it a shame
that the components of some desktop environments are integrated so deeply
that they become useless outside of that desktop environment (such as
GNOME Settings, which won't even open unless the current session is
running GNOME).


Desktop

I like to have the panel at the bottom. Some distros start with it at
the top, or even on one side. So I have to move it.


First difference! My father and I are both in the top-panel brigade!
Fine. With Linux so easy to change. Wife, daughter and self all have panel at the bottom. 



All those pretty (or not) pictures to show on the desk top. To me just
a silly distraction. I always set up each desk top with a plain
coloured background. Each one a different colour.


I like the idea of colour-coding your desktops; that sounds really
helpful. However I have to disagree about pictures! Without the lovely
photographs showing through my transparent windows I think it could look
a little drab. I have even created a cron job to cycle randomly through
a curated collection of images on a regular basis! Same, indeed, with
picture frames and posters: used in moderation they can be quite a
tasteful way of lifting the appearance of a room.
We must disagree on that one. My feeling is that my computer is there to do a job not to look pretty. It is not an ornament. So my four desktops all have plain colour backgrounds. 


I always keep the panel hidden. When I need it I just move the mouse
pointer to the bottom of the screen and the panel appears. The rest of
the time it is out of  the way.


Auto-hiding panels is very convenient on netbooks and other small
devices. The setup that I have currently has one wafer-thin bar that's
always visible; it just shows indicators for the desktops (empty,
current and occupied), the date/time, my IP address and a volume
control. All of this is mostly out of the way, and I can change the
content of the bar easily when my needs change; currently I am doing a
lot with networking so I need the IP address visible for instance.
I auto-hide the panel mainly because, most of the time I am not using it. It just uses up space at the bottom of the screen and is distracting. As soon as I need it a quick move of the mouse pointer and there it is. On the other hand, both wife and daughter like it to show permanently. 


For some reason most browsers seem to be set up at the start so that
closing the last, only, tab also closes the application. Why? I always
switch that off via about:config. There are already several ways to
close my browser down when I have finished, I don't need  another one.


Haha! Well put! I must look into that about:config setting for myself.


See note at end.




Terminal screen.

Yes, I do use it a lot. But the default seems to be to open it up with
a small screen. I like to have it full screen, so I change that in
preferences. I usually change the font and background too.


I use a tiling window manager, so any new window will expand to fill the
space available to it. So the first window is full screen, the next
splits the desktop in half, and so on and so forth. It feels very
awkward going back to stacking/floating window managers now!
Yes, I have looked at tiling windows. I can't get on with them. I prefer to use two or more of my four desktops. It is easy to move from one to another using Ctrl-Alt and an arrow key. Also this keeps every screen full size. Each to his own. 

Neil
Using about:config. I am assuming you know how this works. Search for browser.tab. In my version the third item is 
Browser.tabs.closeWindowWithLastTab
If the value column shows this as true, double click true to change it to false. That's it. 










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