Fatdog 901 screenshots

[fatdoguser]

Fatdog 901, twm, lxqt tray/menu, 1366x768 laptop, 3000x2400 xrandr panning

[fatdoguser]

Tiling window managers are nice for those that predominately use the keyboard. Floating windows with panning is a reasonable choice for those that predominately use the touchpad/mouse. With panning the viewport (screen) is readjusted when you move the mouse to the screen edge, a window view within a larger display area. A tall browser for instance and you can 'move' down that view by a touchpad single finger mouse move at the bottom screen edge, until it hits the bottom and then switch to using two finger scroll. Combined with usual zoom in/out for the browser (ctrl and + or -).

That's also nice for windows that otherwise are off-screen, where instead of having to alt and mouse drag a window into view the mouse to screen edges brings things into focus.

I'm using

xrandr --output eDP --mode 1366x768 --fb 3000x2400 --panning 3000x2400 for my current setup, which gives a full desktop of around 2 x 3 'desktops' but where instead of switching between desktops you just pan around those in a smooth/progressive manner rather than a hard full-switch.

One factor is that you need to use an appropriate window manager and twm, that tends to be automatically built into X, is good for that despite its 30+ year age. The standard .twmrc is OK, however I like to add the following near the top of my .twmrc

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NoDefaults       # no default titlebar icons we define our own
LeftTitleButton  ":resize" = f.resize
LeftTitleButton  ":iconify" = f.iconify
RightTitleButton ":delete" = f.delete
SqueezeTitle
NoIconManager

twm can seem 'weird' at first, as each window opened presents a wire-frame outline that you move to wherever you want that window to be (click to) 'dropped', and then you use the resize taskbar button to press-hold and drag that first into the window and then outward in the direction you want the window resized. Typically you move the window (press-hold the title) to have the bottom corner where you want it, and then use the resize option to align the top with where you want it. A little awkward at first, soon becomes muscle memory.

Window controls such as raise/lower etc. are available by clicking/holding the mouse on a root window area and then drag down/to the option you want to invoke. For 'Delete' the mouse pointer changes to a skull and bones image that is prompting you to move the mouse to the window you want to close and then press enter to close that window. If that doesn't work you do the same but using the 'kill' option instead. You can alternative move windows around using the common alt and mouse press ... drag method (where the mouse can be anywhere within the window region), or use the twm menu (right press the root window) and select the 'move' option.

If you reconfigure lxqt panel/tray to be at the top of screen and limit its width then that works well, is more easily brought into view by moving the mouse up to the top left of screen to pan that into view.

Running xrandr command alone should indicate the maximum pan size you can set, mine indicates 16384x16384, but in practice that's unreasonable as it involves too much memory/data and any 'print screen' (mtpaint snapshots) would be massive amounts of data.

For setup ...

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echo twm >~/.fatdog/windowmanager

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echo xrandr --output eDP --mode 1366x768 --fb 3000x2400 --panning 3000x2400 > ~/.fatdog/xdesktop
xsetroot -solid DarkSlateGrey >> ~/.fatdog/xdesktop
chmod +x ~/.fatdog/xdesktop

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cp /etc/X11/app-defaults/system.twmrc ~/.twmrc

and then making any edits to .twmrc such as outlined earlier
(your xrandr output device (and screen size) will most likely differ, you might need to use --output default or VGA or something similar, according to whatever running xrandr command alone indicates as your current display device).

Note that if you do run rox-filer desktop, then it will display as a window. You'll likely however not be able to resize that, be limited to just move it around or iconize it.

[fatdoguser]

A couple of issues I've noticed with twm is that if you suspend (close laptop lid) its good practice to first switch to another tty (such as ctrl-alt-F2) before closing the laptop lid, and then ctrl-alt-F4 back to the gui after you open the laptop lid and press enter to restore from suspend. Otherwise the gui doesn't always automatically restore (you have to ctrl-alt-F2 and ctrl-alt-F4 back again to get it to show).

Also with chrome the 3 dot burger bar might not work, the chrome window has to be given focus - i.e. use the twm (press root window) to select the 'focus' option and then click in the chrome window area. Then the chrome burger menu works OK. That locks focus into chrome however, so you may have to use the twm menu again to select the unfocus option (and click the chrome window).

Seamonkey works fine, not had any issues with that, is more POSIX conformant.

Rox filer runs better IMO if you set it to not automatically resize its window, open rox and right click in a empty space and Options/Filer Window and un-check the Never Automatically Resize option. With the twmrc modifications I outlined earlier the taskbar will include a X (close) option, so there's no need to set rox's mini toolbar with a close button. Without that modification you would probably want to have rox include its own close window button option.

[fatdoguser]

[fatdoguser]

When you click a icon/menu item to open a program twm will initially display a 3x3 wire frame grid and you can move the mouse to position where to 'drop' that window onto the desktop. Pressing mouse button 1 (left) once you've moved the wire frame using the mouse to a desired position will drop it as-is at that location. Mouse button 3 (right) will do the same, but where the window is extended all the way down to the very bottom of the display area (likely off screen bottom most point of the available framebuffer). Mouse button 2 (middle) acts the same as when resizing a window, you can drag the mouse to size the wire frame to what size you prefer and into which the actual window will be dropped when the button is released.

So for example commonly I'll click seamonkey, position the top left wire frame corner to where I want it positioned, more often near the top right of the available area, just below where I have my lxqt panel/tray (and menu button) and then press the right mouse button so that it opens with the browser window extended all the way down to the very bottom of the available desktop area.

[fatdoguser]

4GB ram laptop, 600K of which is grabbed by Radeon video ram, with the standard FD64.sfs, devx sfs and a additional chrome sfs all copied to ram ... and is working well.

fd64.sfs extracted out of initrd i.e. is loaded with basesfs= kernel boot parameter

I don't use the regular fatdog chrome install, instead I download chrome directly from google and extract out the /google/chrome folder from the .deb file and drop that into /opt within its own sfs, so both devx and that chrome sfs loaded as separate "extrasfs" kernel boot parameters.

With no HDD's or USB's mounted, chrome playing a youtube, htop indicates around 770MB of ram used i.e. much of the 450MB fd64.sfs, 100MB chome sfs and 800MB devx sfs are 'cached' (pageable).

All sfs's compressed with xz high compression (minimized file size).