Surfing the web last night I came a cross a piece about Linus Torvald's problems with GNOME. He distinguished between "being simple to use" -- i.e., not ruling out configurability -- and "being only simple to use" -- seeing simplicity as incompatible with configurability -- and accused GNOME of being about the latter.
I moved mostly to Kubuntu because GNOME wouldn't let me force application windows to remember their size and position. I've had partial success doing it under KDE, but I'm still learning. But [1] I've been partially successful, [2] I have a sense that in at least some of the areas where I haven't been successful I will eventually figure out a way, and [3] it seems more difficult than it should be, e.g., in this connection, Windows is much better than either GNOME or KDE.
What I've learned: if you right-click on the top of a window and go to advanced/special application or special window settings, click on the window tab, click on detect, move the "+" cursor to the window you want to customize and click on it, check "match also window title," click on the geometry tab, check position and size, select "remember" from the drop down menu for each, and then save the settings, the window will remember the settings IF THE TITLE OF THE WINDOW IS SPECIFIC TO ITS FUNCTION ONLY, i.e., if each window in the class does not have a unique title.
The problem is that there are many "special" windows, windows related to doing different things, that are in the same class, and so you end up setting a whole class of windows to function in the same way when functioning the same way is inappropriate.
E.g., the main Thunderbird window, message windows, and compose windows are all "normal" windows, and the title of each varies depending on what folder you're in or the subject heading of the message.
I don't know how Windows handles this, but it is certainly much simpler. Almost all windows, if not all windows, remember their last size and position. Occasionly the last size and position is inconvient and you hve to move or resize, but that's occastionally.
Even in Kubuntu I'm constantly having to resize and reposition windows, e.g., because I don't want Thunderbird to be the same size as message windows and I don't want message windows to be the same size as Thunderbird itself.
It would help if there were more classes of windows, e.g., if Thunderbird, message windows, and composition windows weren't all the same class. Or if the title of a window was taken from its function, i.e., so that instead of each message having a different title, the title was always "message," or "compose."
Maybe there's a solution to the problems I'm having within the present window configuration set up, but it's certainly not transparent.
I moved mostly to Kubuntu because GNOME wouldn't let me force application windows to remember their size and position. I've had partial success doing it under KDE, but I'm still learning. But [1] I've been partially successful, [2] I have a sense that in at least some of the areas where I haven't been successful I will eventually figure out a way, and [3] it seems more difficult than it should be, e.g., in this connection, Windows is much better than either GNOME or KDE.
What I've learned: if you right-click on the top of a window and go to advanced/special application or special window settings, click on the window tab, click on detect, move the "+" cursor to the window you want to customize and click on it, check "match also window title," click on the geometry tab, check position and size, select "remember" from the drop down menu for each, and then save the settings, the window will remember the settings IF THE TITLE OF THE WINDOW IS SPECIFIC TO ITS FUNCTION ONLY, i.e., if each window in the class does not have a unique title.
The problem is that there are many "special" windows, windows related to doing different things, that are in the same class, and so you end up setting a whole class of windows to function in the same way when functioning the same way is inappropriate.
E.g., the main Thunderbird window, message windows, and compose windows are all "normal" windows, and the title of each varies depending on what folder you're in or the subject heading of the message.
I don't know how Windows handles this, but it is certainly much simpler. Almost all windows, if not all windows, remember their last size and position. Occasionly the last size and position is inconvient and you hve to move or resize, but that's occastionally.
Even in Kubuntu I'm constantly having to resize and reposition windows, e.g., because I don't want Thunderbird to be the same size as message windows and I don't want message windows to be the same size as Thunderbird itself.
It would help if there were more classes of windows, e.g., if Thunderbird, message windows, and composition windows weren't all the same class. Or if the title of a window was taken from its function, i.e., so that instead of each message having a different title, the title was always "message," or "compose."
Maybe there's a solution to the problems I'm having within the present window configuration set up, but it's certainly not transparent.
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