F9 for Eeepc

[Jon Nettleton]

On Wed, 2008-01-30 at 19:49 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> Jon Nettleton wrote:
> 
> > 
> > For other eeepc users I just wanted to mention that I hacked on
> > devilspie to include matching on the geometry attributes of a window.
> > Long story short you can use it now to say if a window is taller than
> > 480 pixels you can either set it to resize smaller or maximize
> > vertically.
> > 
> > This still doesn't work for dialog's yet, I am looking at gtk and a
> > few other places that I might hack around fixes to make them fit on
> > the small resolution better.
> 
> FYI, there was a discussion in
> 
> https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-advisory-board/2008-January/msg00277.html
> 
> If you are interested in contacting them for merging back changes, let 
> the board know.
> 

Thanks for the heads up.  I am not directly working with the Eeedora
project.  I am really most interested in getting the most functional low
resolution desktop as possible.  Xfce is fine, however I find that
desktop environment a bit restrictive.  Here is the environment I am
building/using right now on my eeepc ( by the way this is > 2GB's ).  I
know I know, but I am more interested in functionality than space.

1)  Devilspie to better customize size and position of windows.  Overly
large windows are still problematic and I am trying methods to fix this.
I am thinking maybe scaling the window with a compositing manager might
be the way to go.  Oh and some kind of gui to configure devilspie, it is
said that one doesn't exist yet.  I am thinking angelcake would be a
good name.
2)  Provide the best functionality for a low res screen.  This includes
things such as, changing nautilus default icon view to 75%, defaulting
to "Icons only" for gtk Toolbar buttons, etc etc.
3)  Use Avant-Window-Navigator by default for the lower bar.  Awn has a
behaviour which can be set so it drops behind windows that cover it and
then comes forward when you bring the mouse to the bottom of the screen.
This behaviour is excellent for a low res screen.
4)  Update asus_acpi so it provides input events that can be configured
by hal for the acpi keys.  This will allow things like the volume up and
down to work out of the box and give the nice composited gnome onscreen
hints.
5)  Provide better on and off control for the Microphone and Webcam.  I
am thinking awn plugins for now, but I am not sure.
6)  Boot speed - It has got to be fast fast fast.

I think that is enough for now.  I don't plan on using the fedora
branding on my project as I plan to break enough stuff out of the fedora
repos that it won't be acceptable.  Hopefully this project will be more
of a test bed of what a streamlined desktop can be rather than a "Spin"

Jon