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In contrast, if you don't like tweaking your system or if you like out-of-the-box bells and whistles, awesome probably isn't for you.Īwesome has a small code base and memory footprint and is fast. Because of this, awesome is primarily targeted at power users, developers, and anyone who wants to have fine-grained control over their graphical environment. By " framework window manager" they mean that users actually build their own window manager with awesome: while it's usable with the default configuration, it is meant to be extended and configured by the user. A framework window managerĪwesome is called " a highly configurable, next generation framework window manager for X" by its developers. This makes it even more interesting that a mainstream distribution like Sabayon chose to include an edition with awesome. In contrast to those desktop environments, awesome doesn't want to appeal to non-expert users, doesn't offer an Apple-like experience, and doesn't come with all kinds of bells and whistles.
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It's not so surprising that awesome isn't popular, as it's going up against modern desktop environments like GNOME 3, KDE 4 and Unity. The third desktop choice, however, is surprising: the awesome window manager.Īwesome is no stranger to me: I have been using it for three years as the window manager on my main work computer because it's highly configurable and visually minimalistic, so I can focus on my work without any distractions.
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Two of the new experimental editions are equipped with unsurprising desktop environments: LXDE and E17 (Enlightenment). Sabayon Linux, the easy-to-use Linux distribution built on top of Gentoo Linux, recently announced three new experimental editions that supplement their previous GNOME, KDE, Xfce, and Core releases. This article was contributed by Koen Vervloesem
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