Post Your Desktop Thread **56k**

[Instinctz]

If you need any help with with doing any of it or get stuck, let me know.

Thanks so much. Although i have windows 7 and couldn't use the theme. Even though i really want too.
I found another cool theme and now i know how to install them. Once again thank you.

 

[Zoot]

Laptop's Debian Installation, always nice to add some Linux to this thread every now and then.

 

[alpenwasser]

Laptop's Debian Installation, always nice to add some Linux to this thread every now and then.

Hell yeah! :rock:

Conky makes for some awesome desktop stuff

 

[Zoot]

Hell yeah! :rock:

Conky makes for some awesome desktop stuff

Indeed it does! I quite miss it in Windows.

BTW, how long have you been using Arch for?

 

[alpenwasser]

BTW, how long have you been using Arch for?

Spring 2011, when Ubuntu switched to Unity. For one thing I didn't like the
first few iterations of Unity, too many idiosyncrasies and bugs, and I also
wanted to learn some new things because I had gotten bored by Ubuntu.
What I've seen of recent versions of Unity seems not too shabby I must
admit though.

After pondering what distro to switch to for a while I landed on Arch because
I'm a big fan of rolling release models, but that's more personal preference
than firm belief in a superior concept

Then last fall I switched to i3 because I had noticed that my workflow
had sort of evolved towards manually tiling my windows, so sparing myself
the trouble and having an actual tiler just seemed like the next logical step.
I very much enjoy i3, it's really pretty awesome. The learning curve was
not steep at all with regards to installation and initial config. I was set up
and ready to be productive after about three hours of tinkering to get it
the way I needed it.

I had been using Ubuntu since ~ 2007, and made my first foray into Linux in
2004 with Gentoo (yeah, my first ever Linux was Gentoo :lol: ), but I had a
knowledgeable friend who helped me a lot and made the learning curve a bit
less tricky. It was a great learning experience.

I know people usually say Arch is only for those who are a bit more experienced,
but to be honest I actually don't find it extremely difficult. Most of the stuff
is documented extremely well, all you need to do is not be lazy and actually
read up on it . And there's lots of tutorials on Youtube about installing it
etc.

I'm actually contemplating trying out Gentoo again just because I'm sort
of itching for more tinkering, or even FreeBSD. I tried that for the first time
last fall, was pretty awesome, didn't have the time to learn enough about
it to be productive with it yet though. Even though the underlying ideas
are for the most part quite similar between Linux and the BSD's, there's a
lot of stuff that you have to do differently, so there's quite a bit of reading
involved to learn it. But ZFS is absolutely awesome, I really miss that on Linux
(yes, I know you can use it, but support is still very hinky at best).

 

[Zoot]

Spring 2011, when Ubuntu switched to Unity. For one thing I didn't like the
first few iterations of Unity, too many idiosyncrasies and bugs, and I also
wanted to learn some new things because I had gotten bored by Ubuntu.
What I've seen of recent versions of Unity seems not too shabby I must
admit though.

I missed the Unity party, I'd switched from Ubuntu a good bit before then. Never really liked the way they were mimicking Apple at the time by moving the Window buttons to the left for instance. What it's like now, I couldn't tell you; I haven't been following it since.

I had been using Ubuntu since ~ 2007, and made my first foray into Linux in
2004 with Gentoo (yeah, my first ever Linux was Gentoo :lol: ), but I had a
knowledgeable friend who helped me a lot and made the learning curve a bit
less tricky. It was a great learning experience.

Gentoo is a good way to throw yourself in the deep end from day one, I'll give you that!

I was openSUSE back in 2006, went on to Ubuntu after that and used it until 9.04. I got sick of the breakage that came with each upgrade and switched to Debian, which I've been using on and off since. I've tried a good load of other distros either in VMs or on old hard drives just for fun, but I keep coming back to my minimal install of Debian; I love the stability of the Stable release.

I must admit I don't use Linux as much as I used on my own machines, I don't even have it on my desktop any more since pretty much all of what I do I need Windows for (Games, Music Production etc.), although I use it (Debian) exclusively on my laptop.

The fact that at work I use Red Hat for everything is satisfying my Linux needs for now; I work as an Analogue Circuit Designer, Linux is the standard in the industry.

Although I really should shove Debian on my desktop at some point, I'm dying to see how quick my FX-8350 will compile the entire kernel, particularly while overclocked.
Considering my lowly and old laptop took over an hour to do it the last time. (Great linux machine though)

Specs:

[B]mark @ ~ $ inxi -F[/B]
[B]System:[/B]    Host: mark-xps Kernel: 3.2.0-4-amd64 x86_64 (64 bit) Desktop: Openbox 3.5.0 Distro: Debian GNU/Linux 7.0
[B]Machine:[/B]   System: Dell product: XPS M1530
           Mobo: Dell model: 0XR148 Bios: Dell version: A09 date: 07/14/2008
[B]CPU:[/B]       Dual core Intel Core2 Duo CPU T7500 (-MCP-) cache: 4096 KB flags: (lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 ssse3 vmx) 
           Clock Speeds: 1: 2200.00 MHz 2: 2200.00 MHz
[B]Graphics:[/B]  Card: NVIDIA G84 [GeForce 8600M GT] X.Org: 1.12.4 driver: nvidia Resolution: 1280x800@63.2hz 
           GLX Renderer: GeForce 8600M GT/PCIe/SSE2 GLX Version: 2.1.2 NVIDIA 304.64
[B]Audio:[/B]     Card: Intel 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller driver: snd_hda_intel Sound: ALSA ver: 1.0.24
[B]Network:[/B]   Card-1: Intel PRO/Wireless 4965 AG or AGN [Kedron] Network Connection driver: iwl4965 
           IF: wlan0 state: up mac: 00:1d:e0:46:76:17
           Card-2: Marvell 88E8040 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller driver: sky2 
           IF: eth0 state: down mac: 00:15:c5:86:5a:5d
[B]Drives:[/B]    HDD Total Size: 1000.2GB (30.0% used) 1: id: /dev/sda model: WDC_WD10JPVT size: 1000.2GB 
[B]Partition:[/B] ID: / size: 29G used: 7.6G (28%) fs: ext3 ID: /home size: 109G used: 40G (39%) fs: ext3 
[B]Sensors:[/B]   System Temperatures: cpu: 49.0C mobo: N/A gpu: 59C 
           Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A 
[B]Info: [/B]     Processes: 128 Uptime: 7:29 Memory: 684.6/2011.3MB Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 1.8.37

I know people usually say Arch is only for those who are a bit more experienced,
but to be honest I actually don't find it extremely difficult. Most of the stuff
is documented extremely well, all you need to do is not be lazy and actually
read up on it . And there's lots of tutorials on Youtube about installing it
etc.

I'm actually contemplating trying out Gentoo again just because I'm sort
of itching for more tinkering, or even FreeBSD. I tried that for the first time
last fall, was pretty awesome, didn't have the time to learn enough about
it to be productive with it yet though. Even though the underlying ideas
are for the most part quite similar between Linux and the BSD's, there's a
lot of stuff that you have to do differently, so there's quite a bit of reading
involved to learn it. But ZFS is absolutely awesome, I really miss that on Linux
(yes, I know you can use it, but support is still very hinky at best).

I gave Arch a shot something like 3 years ago, as part of trying a boatload of distros just for laughs at the time, I can't remember why I got rid of it though. :lol:

What sort of a box are you using for Linux out of interest?

 

[alpenwasser]

I missed the Unity party, I'd switched from Ubuntu a good bit before then. Never really liked the way they were mimicking Apple at the time by moving the Window buttons to the left for instance. What it's like now, I couldn't tell you; I haven't been following it since.

Last time I checked stuff was still on the left side of the screen.
But it seems that the HUD they introduced is working quite nicely
by now.

When I switched to Arch I actually ran Gnome 3 (pretty much right
when it came out) until last fall. I was actually quite happy with it,
and I still think parts of the general concept are valid, but there are
quite a few things I didn't like and as mentioned in the end it just
didn't fit my work flow anymore so I switched. Working with a well
configured tiler (that's important though) is a breeze.

Most of my programs are configured similarly to the Vi keyboard
layout (I also run a Vim browser extension), so I can switch between
windows and between terminal session (tmux in xterm is also rather
brilliant) with pretty much the same keys, just using a different
modifier.

Gentoo is a good way to throw yourself in the deep end from day one, I'll give you that!

Yeah, that's pretty much how it felt :lol:

I must admit I don't use Linux as much as I used on my own machines, I don't even have it on my desktop any more since pretty much all of what I do I need Windows for (Games, Music Production etc.), although I use it (Debian) exclusively on my laptop.

The fact that at work I use Red Hat for everything is satisfying my Linux needs for now; I work as an Analogue Circuit Designer, Linux is the standard in the industry.

For stuff like professional video and audio work sadly Linux is just
not yet a viable platform. Of course that's not really astonishing
considering that these programs take up a tremendous amount
of resources to develop and it takes an enormously expansive and
specific set of skills as a programmer and UI designer to create a
good program in that niche.

At the same time the number of people who will actually use these
programs is quite limited (I mean, sure the Kernel is also a huge
project, but that has all kinds of different uses all over the place).

Photoshop could also be thrown into that category to some extent,
although I must say that for almost everything Gimp is totally
sufficient. It's only really advanced stuff that you actually need
Photoshop for these days, Gimp has come a very long way.

But it's nice that you can work with Linux at your job

I gave Arch a shot something like 3 years ago, as part of trying a boatload of distros just for laughs at the time, I can't remember why I got rid of it though. :lol:

Well, there is stuff you have to tinker with from time to time, and
the community can be a bit snobbish I must admit (although I have
yet to see something really bad tbh).

Last big thing I remember was the switch from BSD-style rc scripts
to systemd. Caused quite a ruckus in the community, and there is
still some bitterness about it. But in actuality it was not that big
of a deal. They wrote a very nice and detailed guide how to switch
your system over to systemd without having to do a reinstall and
it worked like a charm, I really can't see much reason to complain.

And systemd does offer some significant advantages. Bootup time
is insanely fast! :rock:

What sort of a box are you using for Linux out of interest?

Aside from this baby, which will be my next rig, my current laptop is
a Dell XT2 (not the newest either, but it runs very nicely and I've
had no driver issues, even when I put FreeBSD on it).

My current main rig (Zeus, from the above screenshot) is:

• CPU: Intel 2600k
• M/B: Asus P8P67 Pro
• RAM: Corsair Dominator 2 x 4 GB
• GPU: An old Nvidia Geforce 8800 :lol:
• HDD: 4 x Western Digital RE4 2 TB (these are awesome!)
• HDD: 3 x Samsung HD103UJ 1 TB (very nice drives as well, been
  running pretty much 24/7 since 2008).
• HDD: 1 x Samsung 753LJ
• HDD: 1 x Samsung 501LJ
• HDD: 1 x Samsung 502IJ
• HDD: 1 x WD Velociraptor 150 GB
• HDD Controller: Some Promise card
• W/C: Plus an assortment of W/C parts

This rig will be taken apart in the next weeks though. The HDDs and the CPU
will go into a file server/HTPC/BOINC rig along with most of the W/C parts, while
an i5 2500 I still have laying around will be used for this rig and it will become
dad's new main machine.

HELIOS will then be my new main rig, although I must admit I'm not sure yet
what flavour of UNIX-likeness I will install on it :lol:

EDIT: Since this is actually a Desktop thread and not OS discussion,
here's my true wallpaper that I rarely get to see though since most of the
time I have programs open and they always take up the entire screen, since
that's the nature of a tiling window manager :lol:

 

[equk]

Here are some more linux screenshots
(been using linux as desktop os since 1998)

Both Screens (on startup)


Main Screen (fake busy)


Click images for full size
(images I attached are resized to 800px width)

 

[alpenwasser]

Here are some more linux screenshots

Nice, I like it, the more the merrier!

The right wallpaper is pretty awesome imho. Google reverse image search FTW!

Click images for full size
(images I attached are resized to 800px width)

I see we share a similar approach to resizing and linking pics

 

[Zoot]

When I switched to Arch I actually ran Gnome 3 (pretty much right
when it came out) until last fall. I was actually quite happy with it,
and I still think parts of the general concept are valid, but there are
quite a few things I didn't like and as mentioned in the end it just
didn't fit my work flow anymore so I switched. Working with a well
configured tiler (that's important though) is a breeze.

I've actually never used Gnome 3 properly. I made the switch to Openbox a while before it started to come into the major distros. Debian 5 (Squeeze) was long frozen before it would have come into the Stable release so I would have missed it anyway.

Looking at it back then I wasn't too keen on the concept but it looks like it's come on a long way since. I should probably give it a whirl in a VM or something.

For stuff like professional video and audio work sadly Linux is just not yet a viable platform.

The hope for us Linux fans is that someday it might be. It's made major strides in the last few years particularly with things like Steam coming to Linux. Although still the fragmentation and lack of a stable API and miniscule market share just don't make it an attractive or even practical
platform for developers to bring their software to.

Photoshop could also be thrown into that category to some extent,
although I must say that for almost everything Gimp is totally
sufficient. It's only really advanced stuff that you actually need
Photoshop for these days, Gimp has come a very long way.

I totally agree on Gimp, it's very powerful these days. It's my image editor of choice in Windows too.

And systemd does offer some significant advantages. Bootup time
is insanely fast! :rock:

It was back in the rc scripts time I gave it a whirl. Sounds like I should give it a shot again.

HELIOS will then be my new main rig, although I must admit I'm not sure yet
what flavour of UNIX-likeness I will install on it :lol:

Something like Gentoo would be pretty damn cool on it I reckon, given the compilation power.

Here are some more linux screenshots
(been using linux as desktop os since 1998)

Yay for the customisation abilites in the Linux desktop world! What distro are you rocking?

Obligatory Desktop Post, this time my Windows Desktop.

 

[alpenwasser]

Looking at it back then I wasn't too keen on the concept but it looks like it's come on a long way since. I should probably give it a whirl in a VM or something.

Overall I think it's gotten a lot more flack than it deserved. The last straw for
me was when they removed the key mapping "Backspace -> Go up in directory
tree". I have been using that for ages. I rarely go "Back" in folder browsing
but usually use "Up".

The key combo they wanted you to use was "Alt + Left" (for going back
instead of up), which unfortunately is used by me for something else. :nono:.

So I switched to PCManFM which has been working very well for me. Now, I'm
aware that Nautilus alone does not make or break Gnome, you can use another
file manager with Gnome as well after all, but at that point I just finally said
"Screw it, I'm going tiler." :lol:

The hope for us Linux fans is that someday it might be. It's made major strides in the last few years particularly with things like Steam coming to Linux.

I am hopeful, yes. And I cannot stress enough how happy I was when I heard
that Steam was coming to Linux. At first I thought it might be a hoax and
just went "please don't be a hoax, please don't be a hoax..." :lol:

Although still the fragmentation and lack of a stable API and miniscule market share just don't make it an attractive or even practical
platform for developers to bring their software to.

That is somewhat of a problem. Part of me really likes that everybody can do
their own thing and that there's so many flavors of Linux. The other part of
me is realistic and has to admit that this is probably a disadvantage at least
in some moments.

But let's see, maybe things work out

It was back in the rc scripts time I gave it a whirl. Sounds like I should give it a shot again.

I actually hadn't done a scratch install of Arch for about a year and finally
did one again last week for my laptop (the Dell XT2). With the help of Rob
Graves' Youtube tutorials it was really easy and I could get it to work without
frustration.

Something like Gentoo would be pretty damn cool on it I reckon, given the compilation power.

Hehe, yeah I have been thinking about that. Instantaneous kernel compilation

This time, I present to you my screen layout when I'm actually doing some work.
This is how my screen looks when I'm doing web programming. The website
to the left is the new website I'm making for my dad, running locally on lampp
in this pic, although a first version of it is actually in deployment, even though
some things are still missing. I will finish it once I have HELIOS up and
running.

It's completely custom code, programmed from scratch. Partially this
is because I actually wanted to learn something by doing this, and also
because I didn't really want to get frustrated by having to adjust
something pre-fabricated for our own needs. I even programmed a
custom CMS for the site, which actually makes up almost half the code.
Total code length is ~11000 lines of PHP at the moment, but that will
still grow in the summer.

There are certainly still many mistakes in the code, and I'm not satisfied
with the server's speed (lags from time to time), so there is still a lot
of tweaking and optimizing to do. But for the most part I'm quite happy
with the result. I know PHP sometimes gets a bit ridiculed by old school
pros (the Perl gurus ), but to be honest I have found it to be capable
of pretty much anything I've thrown at it.

If I had to do the website again I might consider doing it in Perl, or even
Ruby, but now that it stands I'll certainly not change it :lol:

And before anyone has a conniption: I'm not a professional programmer, so my
coding practices are still in development. But I pay attention to it and am
constantly working to improve myself. It's not necessarily something I want
to do professionally but I am very interested in it and enjoy it for the most part.

The scripts on alpenwasser.net that resize the images were also written by
me (with help from YT and Google ) and can resize gif, png (with
transparency, which is a bit tricky sometimes) and jpg on the fly,
proportionally by height and/or width. In time I actually intend to do a
full blown website (probably also written from scratch) but first I need
to do other things .

As always, click for full version.



EDIT: Yay! 600 posts

 

[Zoot]

The key combo they wanted you to use was "Alt + Left" (for going back
instead of up), which unfortunately is used by me for something else. :nono:.

Change for the sake of change is always quite annoying. To this day setting the audio levels for the individual audio devices in Windows 7 still gets to me, as it was significantly less clicks in XP.

So I switched to PCManFM which has been working very well for me. Now, I'm
aware that Nautilus alone does not make or break Gnome, you can use another
file manager with Gnome as well after all, but at that point I just finally said
"Screw it, I'm going tiler." :lol:

I quite like PCManFM myself too. That, Openbox and the Xfce panel is my choice for the minimal install of Debian I run.

But let's see, maybe things work out

Hopefully. I've always got my finger on the delete button for my Windows partition.

This time, I present to you my screen layout when I'm actually doing some work.
This is how my screen looks when I'm doing web programming. The website
to the left is the new website I'm making for my dad, running locally on lampp
in this pic, although a first version of it is actually in deployment, even though
some things are still missing. I will finish it once I have HELIOS up and
running.

[...]

Nice job! You make me want to dust off the books and delve into the world of programming again, as I meant to learn PHP and try my hand at web development a few years back but never did.

My knowledge is limited to C which I did during college, but that's pretty damn rusty now.

 

[alpenwasser]

Nice job! You make me want to dust off the books and delve into the world of programming again, as I meant to learn PHP and try my hand at web development a few years back but never did.

My knowledge is limited to C which I did during college, but that's pretty damn rusty now.

Thanks! :blush:

I must admit it has been quite a fun project and I'm looking forward to applying
the finishing touches (for example, it's still lacking a proper gallery view function,
and a more vertical-layout mobile version has yet to be done).

I'm not that experienced in C, but if you have done some objective programming
(so, C++, of which I've had a semester in College in 2010) and are familiar
with the general concepts, doing PHP is not very difficult for the most part.
Sure there are certain idiosyncrasies in the syntax (there are in every language ),
but overall it's not that different.

I had never done PHP before last fall, and I did not find it that difficult getting
started. There's tons of tutorials on youtube, you just have to sit down and
do some work.

Sure there's lots of stuff I'd do differently if I had to start over again (and I
intend to rewrite some major parts of the code in the future). For example,
I would probably implement a proper MVC, of which I sadly learned a little
too late into the project to switch concepts. But that's pretty much the
only major change, the rest is mostly just coding practice. Making my classes
and my methods smaller, and being more strict about making them modular.
And one would hope that I would do stuff differently; after all, this is
supposed to be a learning experience .

There is of course stuff that I still don't quite can get to work (I'm still
comparably inexperienced, after all), the most important one being
implementing proper caching of resources in the client's browser cache.
Also, I still need to seriously optimize my database access patterns.
But since our website is not exactly in high demand (it's a very niche
market in a rather small country, after all), optimizing the site is not an
absolute top priority at the moment. And luckily, the rest of the code
is quite proper with regards to performance traps (meaning I pay
attention to avoid unnecessary loops and conditions and all the usual
good stuff).

But overall it has been very interesting and allowed me to broaden my
horizons immensely, not only with regards to web development, but just
generally about programming (design patterns, functional languages,
which PHP is not really, but I learned about them nonetheless, code
management, version control, coding practices, and probably most
importantly, databases, with which I had never had the opportunity
to work before, and so on and so forth).


EDIT: To avoid misconceptions: You can work without OOP in PHP,
and do it well. I've read quite a few arguments against objective oriented
programming (and for it) in the past few months, and I don't necessarily
believe that it's an absolute necessity. I have used it in this project, but
you can easily do great code without it.

After all, the Linux kernel (and anything Linus Torvalds has any say in)
is written in C, and therefore non-OOP .

 

[Zoot]

I'm not that experienced in C, but if you have done some objective programming
(so, C++, of which I've had a semester in College in 2010) and are familiar
with the general concepts, doing PHP is not very difficult for the most part.
Sure there are certain idiosyncrasies in the syntax (there are in every language ),
but overall it's not that different.

I did more MATLAB than anything else in college really, I gather PHP is mixture of HTML & C so I'm sure I'd probably pick it up easily enough, finding the time and motivation is another matter though!

After all, the Linux kernel (and anything Linus Torvalds has any say in)
is written in C, and therefore non-OOP .

Ever try the "Hello World" kernel module?

 

[alpenwasser]

I did more MATLAB than anything else in college really, I gather PHP is mixture of HTML & C so I'm sure I'd probably pick it up easily enough, finding the time and motivation is another matter though!

Ah, Matlab. Still not quite sure what to make of that. On one hand it has some quite
powerful capabilities, on the other hand I really don't like to be dependent on a
proprietary solution for this sort of thing (well, for anything, really). But it has become
sort of an industry standard, so I don't see this changing any time soon

PHP itself is pretty easy to pick up if you know some C or something similar. HTML
is not really in PHP itself, but you of course need it to create a website with actual output.

Ever try the "Hello World" kernel module?

Can't say that I have. I shall have a look, thanks!

 

[Zoot]

Ah, Matlab. Still not quite sure what to make of that. On one hand it has some quite
powerful capabilities, on the other hand I really don't like to be dependent on a
proprietary solution for this sort of thing (well, for anything, really). But it has become
sort of an industry standard, so I don't see this changing any time soon

Array/Matrix manipulation is where it really scores, for example one line of code will suffice where you'd need hundreds to do the same thing in C. It's more designed for engineering calculations more than anything else, there's a massive repertoire of functions like FFTs, Laplace Transforms etc.

You wouldn't really tend to use it for anything else. Although it does have its own compiler and a GUI suite to build standalone stuff.

It's been a few years since I've used it properly, but I break it out at work every now and then if there's some god-awfully complex calculation I've to do.

 

[alpenwasser]

Array/Matrix manipulation is where it really scores, for example one line of code will suffice where you'd need hundreds to do the same thing in C. It's more designed for engineering calculations more than anything else, there's a massive repertoire of functions like FFTs, Laplace Transforms etc.

You wouldn't really tend to use it for anything else. Although it does have its own compiler and a GUI suite to build standalone stuff.

It's been a few years since I've used it properly, but I break it out at work every now and then if there's some god-awfully complex calculation I've to do.

I took a numerical maths class and you could start to tell how powerful it can be when used
correctly. But as I said, I'm really not a friend of the whole vendor-lock-in proprietary thing.
Not much I can change about that though.

Ontopic: I've switched to my laptop this week because I've taken apart my main rig to
cannibalize its parts. So, my current workspace looks like this (part of the conkyrc
used for this on the left).

 

[Josh Weston]

Can we try and keep this on topic, guys? I understand most of your words when used on their own, but altogether it's all getting a little confusing for me.
Feel free to create your own thread to talk about MATLAB and its benefits, but unless it's explicitly to do with desktop background i'd appreciate it if you could move on from here.

Cheers.

 

[Zoot]

Can we try and keep this on topic, guys? I understand most of your words when used on their own, but altogether it's all getting a little confusing for me.
Feel free to create your own thread to talk about MATLAB and its benefits, but unless it's explicitly to do with desktop background i'd appreciate it if you could move on from here.

Cheers.

We've completely derailed the whole thread, I'll give you that.

Maybe split our derailment into another thread?

 

[alienware]