There are, to hopefully no one’s surprise, a lot of window managers and desktop environments available for your *nix system. From the full-featured desktops most people know about (KDE, GNOME), to lighter-weight but more flexible “traditional” window managers (Window Maker, Blackbox/Fluxbox, AfterStep, FVWM), to experimental programs that try to redefine the very concept of the GUI (9wm, ratpoison, wmii). Most of the best can be found here:

X Window Managers

What I want to talk about today is a window manager that falls into the third category above - the “experimental” variety. This one is called ion3.

ion3 is built around what I consider to be a very simple premise - there is too much clutter on the average user’s desktop. This program attempts to alleviate this by automatically apportioning screen space to each application as it launches. When it starts up, ion3 runs each new application in full-screen (save for a “taskbar” along the top of the screen). However, you can later divide the screen up into “frames,” where each app runs in its own little section of the overall screen, and (unlike the typical WIMP paradigm) none of these frames overlap each other. You can see some screenshots of what this looks like near the bottom of the ion3 page linked above.

ion3 is controlled entirely by the keyboard, which doesn’t do a whole lot for entry-level users. Some commands (such as F1 for a manpage, F2 to open the system default terminal, F3 to run any program from a command line, F12 for a Start Menu-like program launcher) are fairly easily mastered, and the mouse can still be used to change between open windows. However, to get the hang of properly resizing frames will take a while, and the command structure (Alt+K, then the letter of the function you want to use) will baffle anyone not familiar with the likes of GNU Screen.

Oh, and I wouldn’t try contacting the project maintainer for help in getting ion3 to run, nor to add this or that feature you might think is essential to the desktop experience. He is rather… “opinionated” in his beliefs of what a GUI should be and what it should not be, as you might be able to see from the manifesto on the project’s front page. He does not believe, for instance, in “font blurring” (also known as antialiasing, the practice of visually removing the sharp jaggies in onscreen fonts), and remains steadfast in the belief that if a certain piece of software is “broken” under ion3, then it is the program that’s broken, not his window manager, and thus that program shouldn’t be used by anyone. (This wouldn’t be as eyebrow-raising as it is if the list of “broken” programs didn’t include such things as The GIMP, mplayer, Gaim, or Inkscape!) His standard answer to a feature request is “Code it yourself,” and if you can’t code for whatever reason, it becomes “Don’t breathe my air.” And don’t even get him started about GNOME apps.

ion3 seems to be gaining a bit of a cult following among certain Linux user communities, however, who appreciate it for its quick, no-nonsense approach to the mundane task of window management. It’s lightning fast, doesn’t distract you from the task at hand with a lot of fun-but-useless eye candy, and with the proper care can eventually be tamed into a very effective, personalized work environment. I like such approaches because they can be used very effectively without your fingers ever having to leave the keyboard for mouse work; the mouse can be used, but as you gain proficiency with ion3 you’ll learn to appreciate the notion of keyboard commands. Less motion of your hands (including back and forth to a mouse or other such device) means less chance to develop RSI, and that’s a good thing.

Negatives? Quite a few, not the least of which is of course the rather high learning curve. It will take the average user about one full day of experimentation to become familiar with all of the window-management controls. It also is about as far removed from “eye candy” as it can possibly get. And as already extrapolated upon, the author is by no means “newbie friendly” and is rather bigoted in his approach to adding new features.

It’s certainly not for everybody, but if you ever get curious about other ideas in GUI interfaces to your data, I’d recommend setting aside some time to learn the basics (and I make it sound like a lot, but the truth is that most of the basics can be mastered inside of an hour or so) and giving ion3 a shot on your system. It’s apt-gettable or emergeable from a Debian/Ubuntu/Gentoo repository near you, so grabbing and installing it shouldn’t be a problem for most of us.

If you liked that, try...

1. Xgl/Compiz: New Vistas in Desktop Prettification
2. The Darker Side of Open Source?
3. Livin’ la Vidalinux
4. INX: Console Computing for Non-Console Users
5. Great Firewall of China Gets A Window

No Comments »

No comments yet.

Leave a comment