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Sun Drops Sawfish for Metacity
Posted by
timothy
on Tue May 21, 2002 03:38 PM
from the sawfish-works-nicely-though dept.
from the sawfish-works-nicely-though dept.
Cardhore writes: "According to this article, Sun's and Wipro's developers are now working on Metacity, instead of Sawfish. Metacity and Sawfish are two window managers for the GNOME desktop, and Sun has decided to use Metacity over Sawfish for GNOME 2. This decision has been based on issues such as accessibility, maintainability of the code [1], documentation, multi-head support and a general eagerness from the community to commit to Metacity in the future." Here's a brief description of Garret LeSage's experience with Metacity, which is described here as a "boring window manager for the adult in you." Anyone with Metacity screenshots, please post below :)
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Thanks for defining the terms (Score:4, Insightful)
Thanks for explaining, and I hope this is the start of a new policy on
Re:Thank the submitter (Score:5, Interesting)
Where to find it ... (Score:5, Informative)
(It doesn't seem to have a web page yet.)
Multihead support? (Score:4, Interesting)
I do like the way metacity places dialog boxes though. They are placed horizontally centered and just below the top of their parent window, somewhat like a MacOS X dialog.
Re:Multihead support? (Score:4, Informative)
Reason for the switch. (Score:5, Interesting)
> Btw: Why there has not been any updates for sawfish lately?
Rumor has it that John was employed by Apple and that as part of the employment contract he's no longer allowed to develop sawfish.
So there you have it! Before you start flaming back and forth about what's better, think about the logistics behind using a WM that's no longer being maintained.
Re:Reason for the switch. (Score:5, Insightful)
Everybody has the source, and it is apparently quite usable since many people sue it. If someone like Sun additional features or bug fixes, they can make them and publish them. The fact that a single person has moved on to doing something else makes little difference for open source software.
Choosing Metacity may be the right thing for Sun to do anyway, but the departure of even the main developer of Sawfish would not be sufficient reason.
Re:Reason for the switch. (Score:5, Informative)
Who's in charge? (Score:2, Interesting)
I say given Sun's mixed history in OS they probably won't be able to sway GNOME development and will eventually switch back to the mainstream.
(then again, some say Miguel is easily swayed)
Metacity and GNOME2 (Score:4, Informative)
I use it... (Score:5, Interesting)
Pro: easy to set up (not a whole lot of options to choose from, really), fast (much speedier than sawfish), and largely with sensible defaults for everything.
Con: I miss a few settings, like the ability to remember window size and position. Also, lazy focus only changes focus and does not raise the newly focused window.
On the whole, a good, solid windowmanager that really feels lean and efficient.
/Janne
Couple of screenshots (Score:5, Informative)
Found at http://www.sunshineinabag.co.uk/ [sunshineinabag.co.uk]
--sean
I want my twm! (Score:5, Funny)
Pronounciation (Score:3, Informative)
Way to go slashdot... (Score:2, Redundant)
Google had the following cached:
I have left Sawfish in the dust. Having recently switched to Metacity, I have found that I am actually loving it.
It's great! Metacity has the least amount of crack of any usable window manager I've seen. It works; it's fast; and it uses GTK+. However, not everything is roses right now -- for instance, there is no graphical configuration unless you count using gconf-editor. The window manager is new and currently in development, so what do you expect? *smile* Still, I find that either passing a command line to change a variable or to use gconf-editor is easier than editing a text file in some esoteric format or hunting down one option with a funny name amongst 5,327 others also strangely (and inconsistantly) named.
For what it's worth, other people (hi Trae!) are switching away from Sawfish too.
Personally, I like the fact that it works right, "out of the box", supports some keybinding modification, has the ability to change to sloppy focus mode, and has all the advantages of using GTK+2 (internationalized and anti-aliased fonts, double-buffering, et cetera).
Anyway, it's a promising window manager and I think I like where it's going (and it's usable for me right now, too!). It's not on all my computers yet, but it's also development software at the moment (lumped in there with the Gnome2 stuff, which is also really nifty).
How times have changed . . . (Score:1)
Odd, isn't that what many people said about sawfish when it first came out and they were comparing it to Enlightenment?
Havoc and Garrett r00l (Score:1, Redundant)
metacity? (Score:1)
not so bad? (Score:2, Funny)
But now I'm thinking: for Linux and OSS to succeed on the desktop and in a high-impact profit-oriented enterprise environment, we need a sober, powerful, stable desktop.
I'm an admin at a Fortune 500 company in the gourmet cereals industry. We have a daily need for responsive and robust desktop software, and Metacity has repeatedly stepped up to the plate and delivered where inferior technology such as Gnome and Sawfish could not.
Metacity saved our business. Maybe it will save slashdot, too.
Re:not so bad? (Score:5, Funny)
Let's get one thing clear; metacity is not Jesus, allright?
And if it took a new window manager to save your company, then I need its name. I'm worried I might be a stockholder.
:-)
Virtual Desktops (Score:2)
I'm still waiting for a window manager (besides FVWM and OLVWM) to include a FVWM-style virtual desktop switcher (or "Pager"). I have my desktop [chrissnell.com] set up with a 3x3 virtual desktop switcher. I can use Ctrl+an_arrow_key to switch between desktops (two-dimensionally; I can go up, down, left, or right) without using the mouse. If I put xterms in the same spot in each desktop, I can switch between them very quickly, using only the keyboard. It sure would be nice to see this elsewhere.
Chris
Metacity-Setup might be of some interest (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.gnome.org/softwaremap/projects/metac
Ximian (Score:1)
It is all about themes ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Configurability is easily in favor of sawfish right now but that is only because there is not a gui configurator for metacity currently afaik. However, i knew how to make the modifications I wanted and everything works identically to sawfish so no big worries there.
Port over Crux to metacity and you will have another convert
The BIGGEST factor keeping me from using metacity full time is that the Crux theme has not been ported over to it and I cannot figure out how to make metacity themes (or sawfish themes for that matter) and I really hate the look of the default metacity theme when combined with the Crux gtk and gtk2 themes.
Good old days (Score:2)
I don't get why... (Score:1)
Sun goes for eye-candy-less wms (Score:3, Insightful)
That laughing you hear... (Score:1)
Couldn't hack the Lisp? (Score:4, Insightful)
Boring isn't always bad (Score:1)
That's one reason I stuck with boring old SPARC Solaris and CDE (not that CDE isn't SCREAMING to be replaced).
KDE/Win32 style Alt-Tab window list? (Score:3, Insightful)
Very user friendly and very quick to pop between a large collection of windows. No need to mess up your stacking order plowing through umpteen windows to find the one you're looking for.
Why wasn't such a feature implemented in Sawfish? General unpopularity with the feature? Too similar to Windows?
Does Metacity have a similar window list? Or does it use the annoying Sawfish style?
Definitely from the WRONG "dept." (Score:3, Informative)
HA! Two *serious* reasons why Sawfish doesn't really "work nicely":
1) I won't link directly, because in this case, it's a Bad Thing(TM), but go check Bugzilla for Sawfish... it's a nasty sight.
2) Ever looked at the configuration dialogs for that beast!? They're INSANE. Let me give you an example. This is an actual preference in Sawfish: "Offset (%) from left window edge when warping pointer" Pardon my shouting, but WHO THE FSCK WANTS TO CONFIGURE THAT?! What's so wrong about just setting a sane default and leaving it at that? (ie: the way Metacity does it)
That said, for day to day use, Sawfish is ok, but it's got huge issues and it needs to *go*. While it'll throw things into some turmoil, I have to admit I'm pretty happy that Sun made this decision.
Code Maintainability? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you read the metacity source code, at least on earlier releases, Havoc had written things like "I won't implement idea X, because it is crackrock. Tough luck." Things like making metacity play nicely with XMMS. Of course, this was when it was his pet project and not being considered by Sun/Wipro. One wonders if there will be a Sun fork of the project, or if Havoc will turn over development or make compromises that Sun will inevitably require.
While I think metacity is a pretty cool project, Sun's decision is probably one of these management mistakes that have been talked about in all the sociology of software development books. Think of all the little bugs that have been sorted out over the years in Sawfish that will have to be solved again. Things like maintaining focus of window when changing desktops using keybindings; or dual-head setups that have different monitor resolutions while using multiple workspaces and desktops. These things will all have to be sorted out again.
Re:Code Maintainability? (Score:4, Informative)
Well, I'll just say it: Sawfish is, in my reasonably informed opinion, a well-designed, maintainable program. I read the documentation and looked at the code in order to make some changes of my own (which I never finished...), and I was generally impressed.
So, while I haven't seen enough evidence to be sure, I strongly suspect someone at Sun is afraid of Lisp.
Configurability (Score:1)
But metacity ist really fast. One thing that keeps me from using it: Clicking into a window raises it. I can't with this. I want a window to be raised, when I tell it so (clicking on the title bar with the right mouse button).
There's a point to this (Score:5, Insightful)
Metacity gives GNOME a chance to address one of its manageability flaws, the confilct between a desktop environment and the window manager. Which controls wallpaper? Screensavers? Why are there separate themes and theme settings interfaces for window chrome and the window contents?
It's because some power users high up in GNOME and window manager development--who usually aren't responsible for any machines beyond their own personal ones--like the flexibility of mixing and matching, and like pushing the bounds of what each component of their system can do. So overlapping--and conflicting--features get built.
This isn't the end of the world, but it does make a GNOME system more unwieldy than it has to be. KDE can run with several window managers, but it comes with one of its own that leaves configuration matters to KDE. GNOME hasn't had this yet. Enlightenment, sawmill and sawfish have been progressively better fits, but Sun and others who are moving to Metacity probably see it as a simpler route to getting a decent (GTK+ 2, anti-aliasing, multihead, accessibility-enabled) window manager seamlessly tied into GNOME than revamping Sawfish--and subsuming all of its configuration into GNOME--would be.
GNOME with Sawfish is a much tougher sell to a simplicity-minded CDE administrator than GNOME with Metacity will be, I suspect.
Can the button order be changed? (Score:3, Insightful)
I recently got tired of sawfish too, so I switched to fluxbox, which is a new fork of blackbox with some nice features. One of its new features is that the user can change the button order! So I have the close button on one side and the minimize and maximize buttons on the other side, as they should be.
Big Whoop De Doo (Score:1)
Metacity? (Score:1)
"Many window managers are like Marshmallow Froot Loops; Metacity is like Cheerios".
Hmm. OK, I guess I'll stick with IceWM. I like Froot Loops better.
translucent windows and other nonsense (Score:1, Insightful)
The window management in Windows is better than anything I've seen in Linux. I'm sorry, but it's true. I don't care if you can make windows "roll up" into the title bar and you think it looks cool - what problem does that solve that wouldn't be handled better by minimising the window and showing it in the taskbar? Really, I'd be interested if someone could tell me the advantage.
I'd like to see a better way to handle multiple windows, but sadly it seems we are stuck with things that look cool [systemtoolbox.com] rather than anything useful.
These are the problems that need to be solved, I reckon:
Re:translucent windows and other nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll agree that translucence and themability are fluff. I might be able to envision an actual use for translucence if I thought about it long enough, but it'd be a real corner case.
But...
Things that suck in Windows window management:
Sumner
Re:translucent windows and other nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)
For goodness sake, what problem do translucent windows solve? The need to see what's behind your xterm while simultaneously rendering it unreadable?
Can't argue with that. I like plain light-grey-on-black xterms. Easy to read.
I'm sorry, but it's true. I don't care if you can make windows "roll up" into the title bar and you think it looks cool - what problem does that solve that wouldn't be handled better by minimising the window and showing it in the taskbar? Really, I'd be interested if someone could tell me the advantage.
Ummm, ok. Not everybody likes the whole "taskbar" idea. When I'm on a Windows box, I frequently have so many windows open that the taskbar is utterly unusable (takes me 30 seconds just to hover over icons and find which one I'm after). On my X desktop, I have no taskbar or anything like it -- I use sawfish with no desktop envorinment. Just gkrellm in the corner of my left-hand monitor, a tiny pager in the bottom left (4 virtual desktops X 3 monitors == lots of room :), and the windows themselves. If I have too much open and the windows are overlapping, just click on the desktop and I get a nice, easy to read menu with everything grouped by application or class. It really saves me a lot of time. Right-click gives me a list of commonly used programs to start. To answer your question, when I'm not using a window and want to get it out of the way, I shade it. It's a lot easier to find it again since it hasn't changed position.
Trust me, after getting used to that, it's a pain to work in Windows because it just takes so long to get anything done.
One feature I absolutely love about sawfish that Windows doesn't have anything close to is the customizible bindings to do almost anything you want. On an MS box, if the title bar of a window is obscured, there is no way to move it without either moving something else first, or using the task bar to raise the window (disrupting your Z order). In sawfish, I just hold down the windows key, grab the window anywhere, and drag it where I want it (without changing the Z order). Incredibly convenient. And Windows+X for an xterm? ;)
And don't even get me started on focus-follows-mouse. Just imagine having a bunch terminals or whatever, simply pointing at the corner of xmms with the mouse, pressing 'B' for next track, then going back to what you were doing. Windows has a hack with tweak UI that tries to do this, but some apps (*ahem*, MS OFFICE *ahem*) insist on raising themselves to the top whenever they get focus, which is incredibly annoying...
WM-SF-MC (Score:1)
I'm hopeful that this is good news. I finally gave up WindowMaker for Sawfish a few weeks ago because they appear to have ground to a virtual halt and they seem to have only a passing interest in playing nicely with GNOME.
I'm happy with it's relatively light weight, but it still seems somewhat hackish and rough around the edges. I don't need different frames for every window. Just give me a fast, light window manager that integrates with GNOME and provides reasonable themeability and I'll be happy.
Oh, and icons instead of task bars.
None of this makes sense! (Score:3, Interesting)
metacity = lighter weight goodness on Gnome 2 (Score:2, Informative)
Well, first I killed nautilus (duh!), noted it was still a little slow, and decided to try out Metacity. I use blackbox normally on my other slow machine, but I wanted something Gnome complaint. Metacity fit the bill perfectly since it uses the same libs as everything else. I've been using the thinice theme for Gnome2 as well.
Oh, and you can find metacity themes at sunshine in a bag [sunshineinabag.co.uk].
[1]? (Score:2)
Huh? What does the [1] refer to?
Clarification? (Score:1)
How exactly does sawfish and / or metacity relate to Gnome? I'm having a hard time differentiating desktops vs. windows managers vs. windowing systems...
%^)
Chris
Everyone here is missing the point.... (Score:3, Insightful)
If I am running a production server, there won't be shit for a GUI on there. Who needs it...
--Jon
Another screenshot of GNOME 2 desktop w/ Metacity (Score:1)
Oroborus (Score:3, Insightful)
The thing that bugs me about Gnome is that it doesn't have its Very Own window manager. Well actually, it seems like it doesn't have a lot of things of its own, like a file manager, to name one. Everything is someone else's project. Gnome will adopt Metacity, and then, like with Enlightenment and Sawfish before it, the developer will head in some other direction, leaving Gnome in search of a new one.
You've got Gnome with gmc, you've got Gnome with Nautilus. Which one is the real Gnome? Why doesn't the Gnome project unify and maintain its own components? To me it seems that they're really lacking in this area. I like how organized KDE is. The wm and file manager are built as part of the kdebase tarball. All one neat package.
This is not meant to fan any kind of KDE vs. Gnome flames, however. I think Gnome is pretty neat, but I just keep waiting...and waiting...for it to "get there".
There are already enough WM, please! (Score:1)
Another WM thread is not what Linux needs by now. We just need a good one, not thousand half-finished, IMHO.
As an aside note, could this be part of some clever strategy by Sun to delay the wide adoption of Linux on the desktop?
Unmaintained? (Score:1, Informative)
2002-05-13 John Harper * sawfish/wm/gnome/integration.jl: admit defeat and go back to loading xterm module all the time
Nah, Sun just wants to avoid the complexity of the project and get a WM that does the basics (and just the basics, cos Sawfish does too, but is also highly expandable, so can do more than the basics). Sawfish is also famous for crappy defaults and configuration strings, both of which can be fixed if people agree a bit instead of pushing unconsistency and weird phrasing.
For example, until recently eveyone complained that the menu was slow too appear... cos Harper took ages to accept that the var that keeps the menu running always should default to on, and leave those with few RAM set it to a timeout.
Dialogs (cycle window, quote event, etc) are crappy, but there are improvements (search Merlin and Sawfish in Google, or search for the Sawfish Wiki)... maybe next century they will be accepted in core.
multihead... (Score:1)
Metacity is chosen why? (Score:2)
So why Metacity? IceWM is older, has the features that some people here crow for, and also has sane defaults. When I migratet to Linux from OS/2, I found that IceWM did a nice job of replicating the OS/2 PM/Win32 WM keyboard accelerators (which is very important, not just because it helps you use the computer faster, but because you have muscle memory for that action).
Did Sun even consider IceWM? It's fully Gnome compliant; I've used it since forever with Gnome.
Re:Enlightenment (Score:2, Insightful)
I tested it out about a month ago and it was freakin' incredible. If what I poked around with is any indication, it's going to have the best themeability of the lot (and a great theme-writing program, too!). It has a lot of great things going for it. But it's quite a ways off, I wouldn't expect even a beta this year.
Re:Sun is dying (Score:1, Informative)
Yanno, I used to think Sun was stupid, over-priced crap of a unix machine -- but then I have now seen their high-end boxen in a production enviroment and they are damned nifty. Hot-swappable drives and all; maybe not the best unix around, and maybe not cheap, but their not overly bad.
Re:GNOME 2.0 Desktop Screenshot (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Enlightenment (Score:1)
look like it'll be good. no guesses on when it
will be done tho.
Re:where can i buy gnome ? (Score:2, Informative)
-jag
Re:Sun AMD Linux (Sorry. This time with the links) (Score:3, Informative)
Um... at last count, sun is selling at least 17 (!) models of Sparc-based servers, and four different Sparc-based workstations. They have six products in the Cobalt line. I don't think you're quite right when you refer to Sun's Sparc-based systems as "its last products."
In other words, no.
Re:Screenshots? Just try it :) (Score:2)
Installing Metacity... done!
Thank you for using apt-get.
Please reboot for changes to take effect.
Now, while I am rebooting, can I see a screenshot or two? Please? I want to see before I try.
Re:Just more wasted effort and time (Score:4, Insightful)
I absolutely agree with you. I get so discouraged when I run into things like the 90 items [freshmeat.net] listed under "Window Managers" on Freshmeat, and not a one of 'em especially useful.
That's the problem with the current state of open source development. Rather than putting 10,000 brains on one project, you put one brain each on 10,000 projects. Net result: almost zero result for a vast amount of work.
Maybe the only way to get programmers organized is to get a bunch of them in one place and wrap a company around them.
Re:Sun AMD Linux (Score:1)
Last year they sold ~100 E10ks in the UK, making ~$1,000,000 per system. That's ~$100,000,000. In the UK.
No, they aren't `about to drop their last products', whatever that means. Don't be an idiot.
Re:Just more wasted effort and time (Score:2, Interesting)
One of the only reasons Open Source development has worked so far is that Linux supports modular development allowing some prity impressive applications to be put together; however in the case of desktop environments we are seeing the limitations of what can be accomplished with this approach. The XWindows desktop that I am using now, is NOT that much more superior to the one that I was using in 1994; Yes there are more apps, different apps and some better apps but compare 1994 XWindows desktop and a 1994 Windows desktop to a 2002 XWindows and Windows desktop.
Seriously it has been MS who have made the huge improvements whereas with XWindows you may just find yourself wondering what anyone has actually DONE in development terms over the last 8 years.
Re:Enlightenment (Score:5, Insightful)
Frankly me and probably 99% of other GNOME users don't give a crap what WM they're running as long as it doesn't get in the way of GNOME. It should be as unobtrusive as possible and limit its features to window-manager-y things.
I suppose E would be a good fit if you didn't want to run GNOME, or could put up with the bloat, or wanted to run kewl gigeresque desktops with metal knobs and shit, but for the rest of who just want to run some GNOME apps, then Sawmill is a perfectly usable and functional WM.
Ultimately I'd like to NOT KNOW what WM I'm running. I don't really care that much as long as it moves windows around and is reasonably skinnable. If Metacity is a move in that direction then that fine by me. The sooner I don't need to know what WM is running the better.
Re:Enlightenment (Score:4, Insightful)
Enlightenment was briefly part of gnome, but the dependencies and politics killed that. At that point E ran on a variety of platforms, and the gnome people of the time didn't have any short term plans to move off x86 hardware and linux. Raster et al more or less had a choice between personally porting the rapidly moving target of the gimp tool kit (gtk) to Solaris etc, or just keeping the window manager seperate. Gnome at the time was sadly dominated by politics over functionality, but thankfully moved on to where it is now. There were actually arguments at the time over whether it should ever be ported to any kind of commercial OS for idealogical reasons. In hindsight, the Enlightenment project was better off without that, and other themed window managers were developed to work with gnome and kde. E v0.16 of course works with both.
E was always about "kewl fx" as well as funtionality anyway - the alternatives were fvwm (not fvwm2) which looked pretty horrible and was time consuming to configure, and windowmaker, which had a few cool features like the dock.
That, I believe, is the long range plan. E at the time was simply a window manager with icons, menus, and a pager. The filemanager etc comes seperately, as whatever one you pick from kde, gnome or myriads of unconnected projects.Re:Metacity screenshots, right here.. (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Metacity screenshots, right here.. (Score:2, Flamebait)
Re:Enlightenment (Score:1)
Dear God! (Score:2)
Re:Glad to hear it (Score:1)
Re:enlightenment (Score:1)
then I use KDE 3 or Helix Gnome when I want some spiffy bells and whistles to play with. By the way, KDE 3 is really slick... I hope Gnome 2.0 is super spiffy also, I haven't tried the betas yet.