Post your desktop(s)!

There’s nothing much more “Gallic” than wild boar - back in the day - they just used to eat 'em :

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Like the idea but a bit of a scare when out walking in the woods, we have a right to chase and shoot them at different times of the year, you always know when as you hear the dogs and gun shot. Not sure which is worse as every year someone gets shot by accident

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Here’s one of my desktops (15" FHD USB powered “portable” HDMI monitor) running Pop!_OS 22.04 on a Pi4 with 8 GB RAM and booting / running off a “fast” USB 3.1 USB drive - managed to get Brave for aarch64/arm64 installed on there and everything just works - can watch stuff on youtube in Brave - no issues with lag or audio…

I’m actually surprised just how usable this is!

And yeah - I usually spend (waste) about 15-30 minutes each time I build a Linux system making it look and feel like MacOS…

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I standardize mine too, but not like MacOS. It saves time later on. It only takes a few minutes to remove all the rubbish distros add to Xfce and make it look like plain Xfce as in Gentoo.

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Funny i love the mac look and yet i standardise everyone i do towards windows 7 style as that is what clients are used to

I did find a docker app to add which set it up like a mac but then was frustrated when i wanted to change it so dropped using it, but cannot remember its name

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There’s a few out there - “docky” and “cairo-dock” - which I found could be heavy on resources - plank is the best one out there IMHO - except AFAIK it doesn’t work with Wayland… In Gnome 3 and 4 I just use the dock / panel - in Pop! it’s called Cosmic Dock I think… Nothing special - comes with the DE…

On XFCE I usually install plank - I don’t mind the bottom panel in XFCE except it’s not dynamic - i.e. launchers are “static” and running applications show a separate icon from the launcher…

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I dont get it… what is the difference between a dock and a panel?
I only ever have panels.

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Terminology? The terms are nearly interchangeable…

Default XFCE from memory is 2 panels - one at the top from left edge to right edge, with things like the time and maybe network settings (if you’re lucky) and a menu for launching applications… By default (in my experience) in XFCE, the bottom panel looks more like a dock (i.e. it doesn’t extend to the sides of the display) - it looks like a dock - but it’s not dynamic like the dock in Gnome 3 and 4, or MacOS (or Plank).

In most other use cases (Gnome etc) the dock is dynamic, a running application won’t add more icons - if you have an item “pinned” or “favourite” in the dock - it might if you’re lucky, have dots or some other indication to show its running, and maybe a number of dots to show how many windows a running application is using.

i.e. XFCE “dock” at the bottom - it a “static” panel, with pre-set launchers (or you can add more). I’ve seen screenshots where people have made the bottom panel in XFCE feel more like a dynamic dock, but I never figured out how and shelved that for the “too hard basket” and just installed plank…

This is a “dock” :


(it’s my dock on my x86_64 Pop!_OS 22.04 desktop - there’s 3 dots below the MPV icon - showing I have 3 MPV sessions running [ABC TV “free to air” from TVHeadEnd running on a Pi3, and my two RTSP IP camera feed/streams). All the apps I would usually run I’ve added to the dock - that’s where I launch apps from…

Here’s an XFCE bottom panel :
image
Those icons are just static launchers…

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Thanks for that. I am getting left behind with old age

I do use Xfce bottom panel… I put my load monitors there.

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Thanks for the clear explication and images

Yes mine looked similar but less on the dock as i dont do that much work of a different nature.

I tend now just to use the panel along the bottom of my screen without needing extra

Funny how we all use it differently

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To confuse things even further - I just installed Ubuntu 24.04 arm64 Pi4 (onto external USB 3 SSD) and it makes mention of the “Dash”…

So - dash, dock or panel - take your pick… In ubu 24.04 - adding a favourite to the dock is called “pin to dash” and removing is called “unpin”…

Anyway - I swapped the Pi5 from my kitchen (what I was using for TimeMachine backup target for MacOS) with the Pi4 I’d installed Ubuntu 24.04 on (i.e. just swapped location - so the Pi4 is now my kitchen server)… That TimeMachine function does’t need the horsepower of a Pi5 and it’s headless…

So I’m unning Ubuntu Noble Numbat 24.04 desktop on a Pi5 (8 GB) - and - it’s HEAPS better than on the Pi4… Pi5 with 8 GB RAM really could be a desktop replacement… I’m sure there is better, more capable arm64 (e.g. RockChip, Exynos) hardware out there (with more cores and RAM) - but the Raspberry Pi ecosystem is fairly well supported… Also the Numbat is my state’s faunal emblem - they were once numerous from NSW across to WA - their last habitat is in wandoo forest (dry forest) in Western Australia.


I’d been planning to do the above since yesterday - but it’s taken me 24 hours to find my 1 TB Samsung T5 USB 3 SSD - and wouldn’t you know it? I found it when looking again, in the first spot I tried yesterday to find it!

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Going to be really sexist here and say i prefer wife in kitchen over raspberry pi. Better at telling me what to do …

Ha ha ha, only joking!

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It gets worse as you age. I just spent 3 days looking for a die grinder. Not successful yet.
my brother in law summed it up when asked what it was like to be 90.
" Its like a continuous game of hide and seek"

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Occasionally, I will drop one of the three key rings I carry (2 vehicles, house) in the right pocket instead of the left pocket. Care to know how many places I look in to find the lost keys. Don’t–you’ll get dizzy counting them. Aging isn’t for wimps, I tell ya!

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Don’t feel bad. I lost my car keys and spent days looking. In the end they were still in the car ready to go. Lucky we have almost no crime in our area so quite safe.

Just in case now every car key ring has a house key on it. We have two sets we carry plus a key box outside hopefully we know the code.

Now what was the question…

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Now what was the question…

I think we lost the question too.

Last time I lost my keys, I left them hanging on the PO box in town. Some kind person handed them in at the Post Office.
Now I use a dog clip and put keys on my belt.

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I lost my set of keys for a motorcycle (Yamaha 750) - this was when I was a spritely 30 year old…

I ended up having to take the lock barrel to a Yamaha dealer that could also do key cutting and got a new spare key made up for it. The key “disappeared” as I was making my way out the door of an evening to attend night school (comp sci)…

About a week later - I found the original key (with some other keys) - it was crammed inside one of my text books - a dreary treatise on 6800 (not 68000!) processor, instruction set and assembly language…

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Hey I used that assembler. We built a device like a caliper with a linear resistor in it for recording measurments on a projection microscope screen. Its output was on a teletype. The microprocessor that controlled it was a 6800.

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Still a dreary book… I only had to open it up and I could feel a yawn coming on :smiley: - gimme War and Peace anyday (not kidding - I love Tolstoy :heart: ) .

On a further note - I’m really impressed with the performance of the Pi5 vs the Pi4… Not kidding - I’ve seen it being written up as 2x as quick as the Pi4 - and - they’re not wrong! Or was it 50% faster? Anyway - feels a lot more performant than the Pi4.

It’s just like a proper PC running Linux!

Listening to Sayonara arm64 playing FLAC files - watching youtube… No buffering or stalling - nada… Noticed youtube in Brave on Pop!_OS on the Pi4 was a bit “dodgy” - still useable - but not noticed ANYTHING like that on the Pi5 (the “/” os disk is a USB 3 Samsung T5 1TB SSD…

I don’t think I need another SBC… But I’d like to see how the Pi5 goes with an NVME disk (yeah - the Pi5 has a PCIe bus - but you need an adaptor with a ribbon cable to make use of it - few months ago I saw someone demo running an AMD GPU on the Pi5 PCIe bus).

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Laughing with you, gents, not at you.

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