Despite the fact I can’t stop talking about xfce4, what I’m have been missing lately is the functionality of gnome-terminal… I know I could install gnome terminal and use it, but this will imply a lot of unwanted dependencies and I prefer not go that way. Chatting on #xfce in IRC it was suggested to give a try to terminator https://launchpad.net/terminator/. I’ve used it for a couple of days now and I feel very comfortable with it. It has a lot of configuration options, the possibility to have multiple profiles and to group windows together, it has tabs and all bells and whistles you can ask.

The only thing I didn’t like from the default settings is the red title bar on top… to remove it you need to edit the config file in ~/.config/terminator/config and add show_titlebar = False . This is my conf file :

[global_config]
  geometry_hinting = False
  dbus = True
  focus = mouse
  borderless = True
[keybindings]
[profiles]
  [[default]]
    scrollbar_position = hidden
    show_titlebar = False
  [[presentation]]
    use_system_font = False
    font = Monospace 13
[layouts]
  [[default]]
    [[[child1]]]
      profile = default
      type = Terminal
      parent = window0
    [[[window0]]]
      type = Window
      parent = ""
[plugins]

Something else I’d like to do is to reduce the size and font of the tab on top of the terminal. Since this is a gtk applications, I should hack my gtk theme in order to style the tab, but I don’t know how to do it only for one application. If somebody has an answer I’m all ears.

just a quicky. If you use the xfce terminal and you like to have more then one tab-terminal open, you might have niticed the the middle button closes it, without confirmation… I just discovered that this annoying feature can be turned off.

Following the freedesktop spec, you can just edit the file .config/Terminal/terminalrc and set the option MiscTabCloseMiddleClick to False.

There are many other settings . The full list is here : http://docs.xfce.org/apps/terminal/advanced

If you are tracking unstable, and you were using gnome2, then it’s futile to resist and not to move to gnome3. A lot has been written about gnome3, some poeple love it, others hate it. Others put their head under the sand by using the gnome3 fall-back mode. I’m on the “hate” category. I’ve used the fall-back mode for a while, then switched to the full blown gnome-shell and I’ve tried to use it for one month. I have to admit that is nice looking, intuitive and accessible. However it lacks so many things (gnome shell plug-ins are nice, but we still have to wait quite a while to have back all the fantastic gnome2 plug-ins) that I had in gnome2 that the new shiny look is not enough to keep me using it.

Moreover, apart for the very subjective reasons I gave above (I’m sure then other had different experiences and have a different pain threshold then I do), what I missed the most is the integration with awesome. I started using a tiling window manager last year and my productivity sky rocketed. Going back to manual window placement, overlapping, hiding, and this desperate continuous use of the “expose” functionality of gnome-shell was driving me mad.

So, since I started fresh with the new laptop, I looked around for alternatives. Going KDE is not an option. Many people say it’s nice and it works very well, but it’s not my cup of tea. Going back to gnome 2 was not really an option either. What I knew is that I wanted a desktop environment that is compatible with the freedesktop standards, modular and that would allow me to use my WM of choice.

The almost natural solution was to try xfce4. It seems to me a very nice desktop environment, light weight, extensible and with all the goodies I was looking for. The feeling is very much of gnome2. All components can work independently and it works very well with awesome.

Since i wanted a minimal subset of components I started by installing the xfce4 panel and awsome. This worked ok, but there were a lot of functionality missing, like plug-ins, notifications, automunting, integrations with consolekit, etc…

So after fighting a while, I’ve installed the full xcfe4 stack. Running awesome instead of the standard wm is just a matter of creating a custom session in the user preferences. On the awesome side, you need to disable the awesome panel and the awesome menu. This is all pretty easy and it was pretty much the same conf I used to have with gnome2.

I also tried to use slim as display manager. I’ve to say it works well, but fails to integrate with xfce4 and consolekit leaving me without the correct permissions. Looking for a replacement, I’ve tried ligthdm. This one more used then slim and intergrates perfectly with consolekit solving all my problems.

On very nice application that comes with xfce4 is thunar, their file manager and it integration with Ristretto, the image viewer. It always stuck me how eog and nautilus work badly together…

And since I was at it, I also dumped rhythmbox for listen and f-spot for shotwell . I like these two applications. They do their job well, they are stable (so far) and have all the functionalities I need. Bonus I finally go rid of mono !