xfwm4

[Jannis Pohlmann]

Am Sun, 13 Jul 2008 15:00:56 -0300
schrieb "Diego Jacobi" <jacobidiego at gmail.com>:

> 2008/7/13 Olivier Fourdan <fourdan at gmail.com>:
> 
> > Hi,
> >
> > On Sun, Jul 13, 2008 at 6:39 AM, Diego Jacobi
> > <jacobidiego at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I just wonder why xfwm4 is different of Metacity.
> > >
> > > I have found that both takes mostly the same amount of RAM, and
> > > does
> > seems
> > > to be really faster.
> >
> > Well, speed of a window manager is definitely the hardest thing to
> > measure, so I am not sure how you came to that conclusions (please
> > don't tell me about torture-wm which is one of the most stupid
> > benchmark I have ever seen).
> >
> > I believe xfwm4 is faster than metacity because of the way it's
> > coded and how redraws are done. That may not show depending on the
> > hardware you use though.
> >
> 
> I dont know about torture-wm, but i agree that is difficult to
> messure. By my side, i "messure" the speed with the feeling that i
> can get from it. Months ago i was using ubuntu with compiz with
> mostly all efects shoted down, and with quick
> minimizing/maximizing/moving effects. The i disabled compiz i found
> in gnome an option with effects but without compiz, that was pritty
> enought to me. I guess that that was handled by metacity.
> Now i moved to a debian distro with xfce by default, i happy with the
> ammount of resources taken, this distro with the same theme have 90
> Mb for XFCE and 120 Mb for gnome, which is not MUCH more than xfce,
> but i beliebe that xfce programers are better in resources
> management, than the gnome ones. I great example is thunar.
> But often some applications of xfce seems to be just a duplicate from
> the ones already developed for gnome, and i dont like to see
> duplicated efforts in linux just because there are lots of beautiful
> projects that are not even started.
> Now i am on xfce, i see that when minimizing windows i have no
> effect, so it requires more focus from the user, to know what button
> corresponds to what window. Of course that is not a big issue, but if
> openbox haves it, i guess that is not a big resources hole.
> Also i have an nvidia GF7025 card, and when moving windows around
> with xfwm4 or resizing, i can see the slow refresh of the content,
> which is an indicator to me of being slow.
> So instead of developing a entire new WM as all the people does, what
> is the reason for what the xfce developers didnt choose to use
> metacity and optimice it.

First of all: I have a Thinkpad with a crappy graphics card and still I
don't notice any performance issues or whatsoever with xfwm. No idea
what's wrong with your setup.

The answer to your last question is easy though: When xfwm was first
released (that must have been 1997 according to wikipedia), metacity
didn't even exist. Comparing metacity to xfwm is a joke. Metacity isn't
half as configurable as xfwm. I don't know which version of Xfce you
are running, but you have to be pretty ignorant not to take notice of
that.
 
> >
> > > They both have mostly the same theme functionalities but are not
> > compatible
> > > due to language conventions.
> >
> > Well, I really don't understand what you mean here...
> 
> 
> Recently i was trying to use a cool gnome theme in xfce, so i started
> a new one, and i am not an artist, but i made it to work by just
> renaming the files. But gtk theme are more complicated to me and i
> abandoned it. Also having 999 themming scheme, one for each program
> in the linux word, is duplicated efforts for the artists, and
> differences are not too big.

Having a similar window manager theme system is only a very small part
of the whole functionality. And by the way: Xfce and GNOME both use
GTK+ and thus, the whole user interface theming is part of GTK+
already. No duplicate efforts here.

> > > I am using openbox now, because it is much faster than xfwm4,
> > > more easy
> > to
> > > configure with obconf, and have a great number of themes which
> > > integrates well, and also it haves some minimum animation when
> > > minimizing apps.
> >
> > I do not know about openbox (i am not interested in the numerous
> > blackbox derivatives anyway), but xfwm4 ships with 96 themes by
> > default, not counting the themes from www.xfce-look.org. But is that
> > really a point? I don't think so, I am somehow dubious about the
> > goals of your post here anyway.
> >
> 
> I did have downloaded some themes from that page, but i found that
> some themes increases the memory consumption, so i goed back to my
> distro default, also it seems like my distro have remove 90 default
> theme, because it only comes with a few. :(
> Also some themes requires to get an xfwm4 theme, an icon theme, a gtk2
> theme, etc.etc. and founding them, installing them, and with a litle
> of magic it will work nicely with xfce, because most icon themes and
> gtk themes are made for gnome applications.
> Maybe a theme tracker for xfce will be a nice new application.

There are websites like xfce-look.org, there are settings dialogs
listing all the themes installed. What else do you need?!

> So, you prefer metacity over xfwm4 and you are using openbox, fine.
> 
> 
> I DIDN'T say that.
> If i would i wouldn't send this mail.
> But i do believe that openbox-WM is better than xfwm4 when i dont
> require themes with images in the title bar for the buttons.
> 
> 
> It's your choice and free software is all about choice, so what is
> > point of your post on this list, really?
> >
> 
> My point is clear.
> I havent found any page about why xfwm4 is different of others and who
> better to ask than the xfwm4 developers?

Just ... use it, play with the config options and you'll see how it is
different. Either you like it or you don't. You have the choice between
many alternatives. If you have problems to figure out the differences:
try them.

If you really wanted to know what separates xfwm you could have just
asked. Questioning the purpose of Xfce is senseless unless we as
hobby developers do it. 

  - Jannis
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