Fed up with DE's

Guys, this is a rant. Unlike ordinary rants, I'm prepared to do
something about it.

Updating to KDE 4.8.3 made me have a little epiphany: When akonadi
dropped its guts all over my homedir (again, the fifth time this has
happened - why the hell a mail programme needs a database backend will
forever elude me and whoever decided to put the bits you need to delete
in .local and .config instead of .kde4 where you expect it to be needs
shooting) I realised I was spending more time getting KDE to behave
itself than I was actually using my desktop. This is not an efficient
use of my time. Compounding this insult to my getting things done was
all the "migrating this useless piece of crap to the latest pointless
schema" messages that appeared, then failed with cryptic dialogues like
"MySQL server not found" when an ls /var/db/pkg | grep mysql showed it
was lying through its time-wasting teeth.

I have now got rid of anything in /var/db/pkg with "pim" in its name
(bye-bye, akonadi, I will not miss you at all. If I could give that
package a Viking funeral, I'd waste the hour or so it takes to light
the fire), along with all the other redundant crud KDE4 drags in with it
and replaced knode (so long old friend, it was nice knowing you) and
kmail with Claws.

What I really want to do is get rid of this bloated mass of fail
completely and replace it with something that isn't going to fall flat
on its face every time a Lunix developer scratches his arse. Most of my
applications are non-KDE anyway. Okular was useful, but I've replaced
that with epdfviewer. I need a decent jukebox/FLAC player but VLC will
fill the void until I find one as it reads all my playlists lovely-like.
Yakuake is proving to be a challenge to replace; I'm still hitting F12
and wondering why my nice command prompt isn't appearing - I've had
years to get used to that and I miss it.

It's the window manager I'm struggling with. I'm thinking
Enlightenment, but I have specific needs: I use gEDA a *lot* and having
twin monitors really is a must so I can have gschem open on one and a
datasheet or three on the other while I work. Enlightenment seems to
treat two monitors as one big one, with all the dialogues appearing
right where the bezels are, which is damned annoying to say the least.

I also want eye candy. I'll make no bones about this; my desktop needs
to look good and I must want to use it. Windows 7 users mocking me is
likely to end up with me staying at Her Majesty's pleasure for a
very long time. Kwin with desktop effects turned on actually fitted
this description. The work it takes to keep it running outweighs the
benefits, though.

Any suggestions on a decent WM or getting E17 to behave itself nicely
with twin heads? I don't mind using the old emerald --replace & line if
that's what it takes to get the goodies...

*Please* don't say "GNOME." That's more of the same that I want away
from.

Note that *none* of this is a reflection on the KDE-on-FreeBSD team.
They do their best under difficult circumstances where development is
driven by another platform. I'd like to thank them for the years of
desktop delight. Sadly it just doesn't fit my needs any more and it's
time to move on.
--
Radio glossary #52
Lies: "You're 59," "Hope to see you again," and "QSL sure via bureau."

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