your KDE (screenshots)

[claydoh]

All you guys with icons and conkys and widgets on your desktops -- don't you ever, like, open windows and stuff? Or do you just stare at your wallpaper and CPU temperature widget all day?

I know, I don't get it either
However, I often keep an activity chock full of widgets and doodads just for show.


Sent from my DNA using Tapatalk, like that really matters

[richb]

Some are actually useful.

[dibl]

All you guys with icons and conkys and widgets on your desktops -- don't you ever, like, open windows and stuff? Or do you just stare at your wallpaper and CPU temperature widget all day?

For me, having the temps and resource usage showing on the conky actually lets me do my productive work without worrying about what is going on under the hood. For example, there is a database reindexing operation that takes around 10 minutes and ties up a couple of CPU cores, so I can go to another desktop and run a browser for a while, and when the CPU cores settle down on the conky display I'll know I can proceed with the database work.

[GreyGeek]

What's a "window"? Everything I need is on my desktop!

[claydoh]

All you guys with icons and conkys and widgets on your desktops -- don't you ever, like, open windows and stuff? Or do you just stare at your wallpaper and CPU temperature widget all day?

Actually, I think many might just do that, considering the popularity of wallpaper containing scantily clad people/automobiles/fantasy creatures lololol!

[richb]

Actually, I think many might just do that, considering the popularity of wallpaper containing scantily clad people/automobiles/fantasy creatures lololol!

Careful placement of widgets gives the best of both worlds!

[claydoh]

Careful placement of application windows still covers up all the interesting bits

[SteveRiley]

Make every window 90% transparent! That way, you can still get stuff done, while avoiding any periods of non-distraction. hahahahaha

[SteveRiley]

there is a database reindexing operation that takes around 10 minutes and ties up a couple of CPU cores, so I can go to another desktop and run a browser for a while, and when the CPU cores settle down on the conky display

I rely on the noise level of my fan for these kinds of things. When my laptop stops billowing thousand-degree air and the fan calms down, I know my Android compile has finished

[richb]

My fan is so quiet, I cannot hear it..

[SteveRiley]

Never? Lucky you. On my T520, the fan is normally nearly silent -- however, I use ThinkFan and have configured it to keep the fan running at its lowest speed all the time. Makes the laptop more comfortable to rest in my lap. But whenever I do anything that taxes the CPU or GPU -- whoosh! The fan kicks in. Could be because I have fairly aggressive rampups in my ThinkFan configuration, because I don't want this laptop to cook itself.

root@t520:/# [B]cat /etc/thinkfan.conf [/B]
#  Syntax:
#  (LEVEL, LOW, HIGH)
#  LEVEL is the fan level to use (0-7 with thinkpad_acpi)
#  LOW is the temperature at which to step down to the previous level
#  HIGH is the temperature at which to step up to the next level
#  All numbers are integers.

sensor /sys/devices/virtual/hwmon/hwmon0/temp1_input
sensor /sys/devices/virtual/hwmon/hwmon3/temp1_input
sensor /sys/devices/platform/coretemp.0/temp1_input
sensor /sys/devices/platform/coretemp.0/temp2_input
sensor /sys/devices/platform/coretemp.0/temp3_input

fan /proc/acpi/ibm/fan

(0,      0,      1)
(1,      1,     63)
(2,     60,     66)
(3,     63,     69)
(4,     66,     72)
(5,     69,     75)
(7,     72,     32767)

[richb]

Pretty much never. What is your idle temperature and max temp under load? I run about 120 F idle for core 0, and 150 F max under highest load I have seen. In either case the fan is silent, and the laptop comfortable on my lap.

[SteveRiley]

Currently, my machine is at near-idle. Kmail is open, Rekonq is open, VMware Player is running one instance of a Windows 7 VM, in which Outlook is running.

steve@t520:~$ [B]sensors -f[/B]
acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:       +123.8°F  (crit = +208.4°F)

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Physical id 0: +123.8°F  (high = +186.8°F, crit = +212.0°F)
Core 0:        +118.4°F  (high = +186.8°F, crit = +212.0°F)
Core 1:        +118.4°F  (high = +186.8°F, crit = +212.0°F)

thinkpad-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
fan1:        1982 RPM

pkg-temp-0-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:       +123.8°F

PowerTOP 2.4      Overview   [U]Idle stats[/U]   Frequency stats   Device stats   Tunables                                     


          Package   |             Core    |            CPU 0           CPU 1
                    |                     | C0 active   2.7%            2.5%
                    |                     | POLL        0.0%    0.0 ms  0.0%    0.0 ms
                    |                     | C1E-SNB     0.2%    0.5 ms  0.0%    0.2 ms
C2 (pc2)    4.4%    |                     |
C3 (pc3)    0.1%    | C3 (cc3)    0.1%    | C3-SNB      0.1%    0.5 ms  0.0%    0.4 ms
C6 (pc6)    9.6%    | C6 (cc6)    0.0%    | C6-SNB      0.0%    0.0 ms  0.0%    0.0 ms
C7 (pc7)   69.3%    | C7 (cc7)   92.2%    | C7-SNB     95.7%    6.7 ms 96.9%    8.5 ms

                    |             Core    |            CPU 2           CPU 3
                    |                     | C0 active   5.4%            3.2%
                    |                     | POLL        0.0%    0.0 ms  0.0%    0.0 ms
                    |                     | C1E-SNB     0.2%    0.6 ms  0.0%    0.1 ms
                    |                     |
                    | C3 (cc3)    0.1%    | C3-SNB      0.1%    0.4 ms  0.0%    0.3 ms
                    | C6 (cc6)    0.0%    | C6-SNB      0.0%    0.0 ms  0.0%    0.0 ms
                    | C7 (cc7)   89.9%    | C7-SNB     93.2%    6.1 ms 96.1%    7.8 ms

Next time I do something intense, like compile a batch of drivers, I'll grab these measurements and show you the difference.

[tek_heretik]

All you guys with icons and conkys and widgets on your desktops -- don't you ever, like, open windows and stuff? Or do you just stare at your wallpaper and CPU temperature widget all day?

I've been using gkrellm since the dinosaurs roamed the earth, hardware costs money, losing data is a major pain in the keester, that's why people have utilities like that running, keep the health of their system in the corner of one eye, hope that solved the mystery for ya, lol. BTW, this pure KDEbian is smoking fast, the kernel is 3.11.x, *buntus are becoming blobs. I can configure gkrellm faster than you can blow your nose.

[Teunis]

About utilities on the desktop, most of the time I do my things on a 24" external screen and use the laptop's own screen for paraphernalia like small edit screens or a terminal.