WindowManager
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How-to: Picking a Window Manager in Linux
When using Linux, or just about any open source operating system out there for that matter, there's a proverbial Santa's knapsack of graphical user interfaces (GUIs) available. When you boil this topic down on the basic level, you've got two choices: Use a fully featured Desktop Environment (DE) with tons of bells and whistles, or alternatively you can use a slimmed-down and streamlined Window Manager (WM). We're going to get you up to speed on what each of these actually are, some reasons why you'd want to choose a WM over a DE, as well as some of the options you have among the Window Managers out there. Catch us after the break to join the age-old battle of choosing your GUI.
Chrome OS update pushes Aura desktop UI to devs
When the Aura UI first reared its rather ugly head back in November it was unclear what the future of the project was. Now, though, the hardware accelerated window manager and desktop has grown up (at least a little bit) and is being pushed out to owners of Acer and Samsung Chromebooks running on the dev channel. It's becoming clear that Google is prepping to take on the desktop OS market on more familiar ground. The updated UI includes a taskbar, a Launchpad-like launcher and individual overlapping windows, while hardware acceleration allows for those new components to feature slick animations. Chrome OS 19 also gains support for a few new file types, including .gz and .tar, as well as a slightly updated media player. The only truly unfortunate thing is it seems Cr-48 owners are left out in the cold. One more screenshot after the break.
Witch window manager on sale for 48 hours
The folks over at Many Tricks have put Witch on sale for US$10 (normally $19) until 7 AM Pacific Time on Friday, January 28. It's been awhile since we talked about Witch on TUAW, but it's a perennial favorite utility to switch between windows. Witch shows you not just which applications are running, but it also shows you all of the different windows that are running in those applications. For example, right now I have three different windows open in BBEdit; if I use Cmd+Tab switching to move between applications, I can switch to Safari and then back to BBEdit, but Witch doesn't just let me switch to BBEdit, it allows me to specify that "I want to switch from Safari to the BBEdit window that has the article I'm writing about Witch." If you haven't seen it in action, you can download a free trial from the Many Tricks website, which also has some screenshots available. Witch is available for purchase either through the website or through the Mac App Store.
