Well... I don't want to install Easy Debian on top of Hildon and then xfce4 on top of Easy Debian.
I just want to replace Hildon with something which wouldn't have too much black color, transitions, blur, shadows, png decorations, etc.
And as any desktop environment for Fremantle has to be compiled, I think about matchbox-desktop: matchbox-window-manager already works on Fremantle.
Silver spoon much good sir?
What you will not find is a simple drop in .deb file. You want this, you're going to have to do a lot of the work on your own because 1990 is not calling out to any of us - nobody beyond an exceedingly small number of people want something so minimalistic.
If you don't want any gradients, patterns, or eyecandy, then just delete the transitions and uninstall all your themes, that way you'll be left with bog standard ugly GTK in all its light boring goodness.
What you will not find is a simple drop in .deb file. You want this, you're going to have to do a lot of the work on your own because 1990 is not calling out to any of us - nobody beyond an exceedingly small number of people want something so minimalistic.
Yes, I understand. I'm ready to do a lot of work - I don't know how. I'm not desperate enough to try to install Minix dual-boot with Maemo :-/. I'm not ready to crash N900 yet.
And I have neither time nor knowledge for writing an operating system, based on Gecko (where all applications would be written on XML and HTML and JavaScript; no ELF's, no binaries; drivers would be handled in a manner similar to plug-ins in Firefox; and still, I would then like to simplify Gecko, to make it smaller and smaller).
If you don't want any gradients, patterns, or eyecandy, then just delete the transitions and uninstall all your themes, that way you'll be left with bog standard ugly GTK in all its light boring goodness.
How do you imagine that? Do you know a way to uninstall all GTK themes without losing key bindings? Besides, GTK will still remain a large complex object, looking around for themes and transitions. I would like something which cannot even think about transitions or themes.
I would like something with black-and-white interface. Maybe, even without multitasking. Just nothing fancy.
One example: right now Ovi Maps take a long time to load. Why? I suppose, having everything black-and-white, including maps, would speed them up a bit (and don't show this progress bar! It's not pleasant to look at it whilst I cannot even switch to another window or desktop while these maps load themselves).
Hi.
This is my first post here. I too have an n900, and would prefer to run fluxbox instead of Hildon.
I feel that Hildon is part of what is keeping my n900 from running as a true computer. I have fluxbox running in the easy-debian chroot, but this seems redundant and needlessly resource intensive.
I suppose ideally, I would abandon Maemo altogether and simply run debian natively, with FSO as a means of accessing GSM telephony, and probably zhone as an interface as in the following link.
However, this does not seem to be trivial to install at present, so I am stuck with Maemo.
However, I would like to at least abandon Hildon, and surprisingly this is the only thread that I've found so far. I would have thought that by now someone would have found a way to replace the default window manager.
I don't like Hildon because it forces every window to be maximized, which nullifies the concept of multitasking in many ways. I can't view two windows simultaneously, and I can't resize them or move them.
For me, open source is largely about the freedom of choice; choosing a window manager is kind of a big deal, and I've always sided with fluxbox for it's minimalism and flexibility. So where is the first step to take? There is no .xinitrc in Maemo, so what starts Xorg? I'm thinking it might be somewhere in /etc/init.d, but I would appreciate any advice.
I feel that Hildon is part of what is keeping my n900 from running as a true computer.
File manager is too limited, Sketch can neither resize nor zoom image, Photographs' editor saves edited png into jpg, etc... Too much eye-candy and not enough functionality. I use Fennec to see the files which aren't seen by File Manager, and vi to edit them if needed.
I suppose ideally, I would abandon Maemo altogether and simply run debian natively, with FSO as a means of accessing GSM telephony, and probably zhone as an interface as in the following link.
However, this does not seem to be trivial to install at present, so I am stuck with Maemo.
Yes, to run Debian natively you need:
1. to make a backup;
2. to find a Debian image for your type of hardware, or to make it yourself;
3. put this image onto a memory card or something like that and follow instructions from Debian repository;
4. If N900 doesn't work, reflash it and start again.
However, I would like to at least abandon Hildon, and surprisingly this is the only thread that I've found so far. I would have thought that by now someone would have found a way to replace the default window manager.
I don't like Hildon because it forces every window to be maximized, which nullifies the concept of multitasking in many ways. I can't view two windows simultaneously, and I can't resize them or move them.
It's due to window manager, Matchbox. It's mostly used for devices with such small screens that there is no point in having two windows opened simultaneously. However, N900 has quite large screen, so yes, for multitasking matchbox isn't the best choice.
For me, open source is largely about the freedom of choice; choosing a window manager is kind of a big deal, and I've always sided with fluxbox for it's minimalism and flexibility. So where is the first step to take? There is no .xinitrc in Maemo, so what starts Xorg? I'm thinking it might be somewhere in /etc/init.d, but I would appreciate any advice.
Yes, I suppose that on start-up everything is called from /etc/init.d. At the same time, the scripts in /etc/init.d call out other scripts from /etc/osso-af-init and binaries from /usr/bin. Right now I suppose that Hildon is started in /etc/init.d/hildon-desktop. Before editing it, backup everything from N900, so that you can re-flash it in case of problems.
