ROX Desktop Update

tal197 writes: "More than two years since the ROX desktop (a desktop based around the filesystem) was last mentioned on slashdot, the second stable branch of the central ROX-Filer component has just been released. It's still pretty light and fast, despite all the changes, and integrates well with other desktops too."

Rox -rocks

[Lumpy]

I;ve been using windowmaker with Rox-filer in the desktop mode for quite a while now on machines Like a P-MMX 200 with only 64 meg of ram. It works great, abiword runs under it nice. and the whole thing feels faster than Xp on a 2 processor 2ghz each machine.

I placed one of these in the general sales work area and I have recieved tons of comments on how fast it is. One person asked if it was prototype hardware that you couldnt buy yet because it was so fast.

I reccomend everyone give Rox a try. it mates with several light windowmanagers and makes an awesome desktop that is easy to lock down and configure.

They support MacOS X style app wrappers!

[jeske]

Wow, I just took a look and the ROX Filer is truly revolutionary. This is the first simple example of the powerful Nextstep and MacOS X concept of "app wrappers" brought to Linux.

App-wrappers are a system which solves many of the application installation problems associated with the Windows Registry and systems like RPM. By locating all of an applications files under a single relocatable directory, installing an application is as simple as dropping the "app wrapper directory" on your filesystem.

Lets all hope this concept finally takes off on Linux, so it can pave the way for simple 3rd party application distribution.

Re:Rox -rocks

[prmths]

I totally agree... I've been using rox for quit a bit of time.. and it screams on my athlon 1.5 and P3 1.13
windows, nautilus, konqueror, -- all have the same problem -- laggy and non-responsive when you have tons of files in a directory.. rox just blazes through it.. my only complaint -- when a file has an executable flag - it automatically runs it -- but i'm sure there's a option somewhere to turn that off... I just havn't looked..

sure, windows XP, nautilus, etc might be an eyeful.. but... performance is what I prefer.

Re:Isn't this reminicent of...

[Dasher42]

Why don't you try ROX out first? It has toolbar functionality. In fact, it's the kind of lean and mean program that has been sorely missed in computing for years.

Re:Rox -rocks

[Lumpy]

But it's a nice example of how people are used to seeing new hardware run slow. The brand spanking new machines I rolled out here last month are slow compared to this Rox machine. Why? W2K is bloated, Office is bloated, ie is bloated. Outlook is just a joke, a really really cruel joke.

I even have wine on there running one of the special research apps (nielsen data) and they like it's speed. (granted it crashes more, but it's because of the same bug that crashes the app on windows.)

If users demanded that their new P7 with 2 terebytes of ram ran unbelieveably fast instead of putting up with the added bloat that slows down that super fast machine to regluar speeds again, things would be different.

KDE is un-useable on this machine... That's what I tried to install on it first. ROX+windowmaker makes is super fast, and look nothing like Microsloth.

Re:Isn't this reminicent of...

[seann]

That was an SGI system running the 3d file manager which they borrowed from SGI.
You can download the source code for it and compile the program yourself. FSV. File System Viewer [sourceforge.net] A Remake of FSN. The original from jurassic park [sgi.com]

Re:They support MacOS^H^H^H^H^HRiscOS wrappers

[tjwhaynes]

Wow, I just took a look and the ROX Filer is truly revolutionary. This is the first simple example of the powerful Nextstep and MacOS X concept of "app wrappers" brought to Linux.

Funny you should call them MacOS X style app wrappers because they are based on a much older system from Acorn RiscOS :-) Hence ROX - Risc Os on X.

Other really nice things are the Drag-and-drop save - why the hell hasn't this caught on elsewhere? After all, we drag things into windows to indicate the movement of data from one window to another. We drag files into apps to load them. Why hasn't dragging a 'file' out of an app to a filer window caught on as the most obvious way to save a file?

As an avid user of Acorn RiscOS back in its hey day (when men were Real Men, women were Real Women and real furry creatures from Alpha Centuri were Real Furry Creatures from Alpha Centuri), ROX allows me to get passed all the normal windowing cruft and really allow me to use the desktop.

As someone else has already said, ROX rocks.

Cheers,

Toby Haynes

Macintosh philosophy

[markj02]

The ROX desktop seems much closer to the Macintosh philosophy than other desktops. On the Mac, too, much of the interaction with the system is through a single paradigm built around the file system. This, to me, is a far more promising direction for a usable Linux desktop than complex megaprojects like KDE or Gnome.

Re:Macintosh philosophy

[thehamster]

Its even closer to the RISC OS desktop - the icons are very similar, the drag file to a Filer window to save action. The names are even the same - Filer, Pinboard etc. ;)

The RISC OS Ltd. webpage [riscos.com] - they are the people who develop the RISC OS since Acorn Computers disappeared. There are some pictures of RISC OS 3 and 4 somewhere on the web (search for Graphical User Interface gallery in google, and lok in the mirror of the site that somes out top (if it hasn't returned)).

Beats Gnome 4.0

[radulovich]

I think Miguel, Redhat, Sun, et. al. should seriously consider this for future versions of Gnome. "Why," you might ask?

First, it is VERY fast. No, make that EXTREMELY FAST. For once, my PIII-866 feels like a fast machine. Running Linux or Windows, my computer feels considerably slower. Rox put a smile on my face with that.

Second, this allows people to run multiple versions of applications, just like the mono project is supposed to.

Third, it's easy to configure - is it SIMPLE, but effective. You can copy an application by copying a simple directory. It simplifies the dll hell by making applications self contained. You could even have multiple versions in one directory if you wanted to. (http://rox.sourceforge.net/appdirs.php3 shows a simple example with tgif).

Finally, it works today. Mono is still several months off at the earliest, and requires chasing MS all over the place with regard to changes.

What ROX Lacks

[tjw]

First let me say that ROX is my favorite graphical
file manager for X. With that said, let me
tell you why I don't use it. It lacks the ability
to save view preferences on a per-directory basis.
A directory with one file opens up with the same
default view preferences as a directory with 200
files. There needs to be a way to save window
size, icon size, sort order, etc.

Actually, the real reason I don't use it, is
because a modern shell seems so much more
efficient at file operations than any
graphical file manager could be.

Re:What ROX Lacks

[Junta]

What you say is true about ROX needing per-directory prefs, but I would say that isn't too far off.

The thing about the shell is true too, but ROX is so much closer to shell flexibility than any file manager I have seen.

Every action can quickly and easily be assigned a single key shortcut. And those actions range from opening up a terminal in the current directory, to filemask based file selections, to running arbitrary command lines in current directory, to navigation through typing paths with tab completion. Granted, you can't do the fancy things
like while and for loops with really fancy stuff, but with well written apps that can accept multiple drops, this becomes less of an issue. Now for applications such as highly configurable completion that extends beyond filenames into arbitrary sets, zsh is the command line shell of choice to complement ROX-Filer. Never been so satisfied with a User Interface design in my life.

Rox is SOOoooo easily extensible!

[SCHecklerX]

Here's a neat one I wrote to create 'filter folders' Basically a ROX object that will show stuff in a folder based on a perl regexp using symlinks. Check it out:

ROXFilter [homeip.net]