Vertical taskbars on MATE

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Sun, 26 Aug 2018 17:16:42 +0200, Liam Proven wrote:
>As I said before: 20y ago, on (for example) a 133MHz single-core
>Pentium with 128MB of RAM, it booted faster and was more responsive
>than the machine I'm typing on -- a quad-core Retina iMac with 24GB of
>RAM and an SSD.
>
>Almost nobody who is only used to 21st century computers realises how
>vastly bloated and underperforming modern OSes are.

Hi,

that is _not_ well-worded. Default kernels of distros are bloated, to
support a variety of hardware, but this has got no impact on the
performance. Regarding performance the kernel is no issue at all. If you
want a smaller kernel, you could compile a very slim kernel:

""make localmodconfig" Create a config based on current config and
                      loaded modules (lsmod). Disables any module
                      option that is not needed for the loaded modules.

                      To create a localmodconfig for another machine,
                      store the lsmod of that machine into a file
                      and pass it in as a LSMOD parameter.

              target$ lsmod > /tmp/mylsmod
              target$ scp /tmp/mylsmod host:/tmp

              host$ make LSMOD=/tmp/mylsmod localmodconfig

                      The above also works when cross compiling.

"make localyesconfig" Similar to localmodconfig, except it will convert
                      all module options to built in (=y) options." - https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.16/admin-guide/README.html


If you don't use a GUI and if you write scripts for dash instead of
bash, you still will not experience performance issues. The performance
issues are caused by the widget toolkits.

Today I migrated from GTK2 to GTK3 for spacefm on Arch Linux, because
spacefm started crashing.

To ensure that I'm not mistaken with my following claim, I reinstalled
the GTK2 version and then installed the GTK3 version while writing this
email.

[rocketmouse at archlinux aur]$ sudo pacman -U old/spacefm-gtk2-1.0.5-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz
[snip]

When opening the GTK2 version, I'm barely able to notice an empty black
widget.

[rocketmouse at archlinux aur]$ sudo pacman -U current/spacefm-1.0.6-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz
[snip]

When opening the GTK3 version, the empty black widget stays relatively
long.


>Another innovative desktop I like is ROX:
>
>http://rox.sourceforge.net/desktop/
>
>No Linux distro includes either GNUstep or ROX, sadly, nor ever has.

At least Ubuntu and Arch Linux do provide ROX:

[rocketmouse at archlinux aur]$ sudo systemd-nspawn -qD /mnt/moonstudio apt list -qqa 'rox-*'
rox-filer/xenial 1:2.11-1 amd64

[rocketmouse at archlinux aur]$ pacman -Si rox | head
Repository      : community
Name            : rox
Version         : 2.11-3
Description     : A small and fast file manager which can optionally manage the desktop background and panels
Architecture    : x86_64
URL             : http://rox.sourceforge.net/desktop/
Licenses        : GPL
Groups          : None
Provides        : None
Depends On      : sh  libsm  gtk2

"ROX is a fast, user friendly desktop which makes extensive use of drag-
and-drop. The interface revolves around the file manager, or filer,
following the traditional Unix view that `everything is a file' rather
than trying to hide the filesystem beneath start menus, wizards, or
druids. The aim is to make a system that is well designed and clearly
presented. The ROX style favours using several small programs together
instead of creating all-in-one mega-applications." - 
http://rox.sourceforge.net/desktop/

The problem is, that it's based on GTK2, perhaps still stable today, but
nobody knows for how long.

Regards,
Ralf