mDuo13

I'm home sick from work today, in case you're wondering why this post is happening so early. Actually, I only woke up about an hour ago. Friggin' colds. But that's not what I'm here to talk to you about. I'm here to tell you about my computer. See, the thing is, over the years I've developed a somewhat unusual setup for my computer, and I noticed that when other people sit down at my computer, they tend to be totally lost. Where's the start menu? Where are the icons? How do I get to internet? The truth is, I'm a little bit of a minimalist, especially when it comes to computer interfaces. My setup makes perfect sense to me and is very efficient, but without knowing the principles behind it, it's far from intuitive. So I thought I'd explain how to use my computer, not because I want to make it easier for other people to use, but because I thought some people might be interested in seeing how others interface with a computer, and might get some ideas for things to try out themselves. Similarly, if you have any cool tricks you want to share, please add them in the comments!

Additionally, I would be lying if I said I weren't proud of all the work I put into the computer and how it works.

First off, it's probably best to give a brief rundown of what my computer is. This is a desktop PC, built last year, with pretty powerful hardware and two monitors. It runs Arch Linux, which is a rolling-release OS; currently that means I'm running on a 2.6.35 kernel. It's a one-user machine, and I use Openbox as my window manager, so a lot of my tricks will be tailored to that. However, I had a similar setup back when I was on Windows with Litestep, so a lot of it can be applied to different OSes and window managers.

Next, let's take a look at my desktop - or one of them, pictured above. (Click for full-size screenshot.) My two monitors are completely different resolutions, pixel densities, and even sit at different heights. (The 1080p LG one is on top of a drawer with miscellaneous stuff in it.) The height is so that I can rotate the LG monitor around so that I can see it from my bed, where it becomes the only monitor I can see. I also use it to display output from my various game consoles. I use an RCA-to-3.5" cable to pipe sound from the game consoles through my computer's Line In; sound from my whole computer goes to a stereo that's probably older than me, with bookshelf speakers in the corners of my room.

The actual images on my desktop are rotated randomly by a cron job every 30 minutes, using a script I wrote myself that resizes and arranges images from two folders based on aspect ratio. To make sure it doesn't interrupt video playback, it doesn't run if it detects that Mplayer is running. I have 6 virtual desktops, which I use to group windows relating to various tasks: the first holds persistent apps like my IM buddy list, music playlist, and mail client; the next two are general purpose "workspaces"; the fourth is where I usually watch anime; the fifth holds a VirtualBox with Windows XP guest, usually with Photoshop running; and the final is reserved for terminals, though I never use it and should probably come up with a new use. I can middle-click on any empty part of the desktop to see a menu of open windows and which workspaces they're on, and a right-click brings up the Openbox menu, where the only thing I regularly use is my to-do list.

Going back to the picture of my desktop for a moment, there are a few apps highlighted:

1. Pidgin - I hated how Pidgin looked until I disabled a lot of the stuff (like Show > Buddy Details). Now it's fine.
2. Audacious - I recently switched from using the Winamp-skinned Audacious to the GTK-based UI because they finally improved it enough to be basically equivalent in functionality and nicer-looking.
3. Conky - This little window spans all my desktops and gives me a readout of the current date and time, CPU usage, volume level, and what's playing in either Audacious or Mplayer.
4. Stalonetray - Openbox doesn't come with a system tray by default, so I installed this very simple little app to hold them. In it right now, you'll see Qjoypad (for using my USB gamepad as a remote control), SCIM (Japanese text input), Thunderbird (email), Liferea (RSS), Dropbox (remote file sync), Deluge (BitTorrent), and Pidgin (IM). Like Conky, this is always-on-top and visible on all desktops.

So how do I actually do stuff? Truth is, mostly I just use the keyboard. Luckily, Openbox makes this a snap. Here, let's pick apart my keyboard layout:

1. Windows key - this is the swiss-army-knife of my system. I've got an army of keyboard shortcuts mapped, and most of them use this key. See my list of keyboard shortcuts below.
2. Caps Lock - re-mapped to be a Compose Key so I can type things like ♥, ¥, ß, and ™ without having to memorize obscure alt-key sequences or look them up in a character map.
3. Numpad - I have keyboard shortcuts here that let me quickly move windows to line up with other windows and screen edges
4. Multimedia keys - not used. I have other keystrokes mapped to do this anyway.
5. Win+Menu keys - I have a shortcut mapped so that I can press these together to toggle what monitor a window is on. Super-handy, especially when I can see just one of my two monitors for whatever reason.
6. Scroll Lock - The host key for my VirtualBox
7. (Not pictured) - Ctrl+Space - toggle 日本語 (Japanese) input.

Table of Keyboard Shortcuts

Keystroke	Description
Ctrl+Alt+R	Restart Openbox
Win+L	Log out
Alt+F2	Open GMRun
Ctrl+Alt+Left	Switch to previous virtual desktop
Ctrl+Alt+Right	Switch to next virtual desktop
Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Left	Move current window to previous virtual desktop
Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Right	Move current window to next virtual desktop
Ctrl+Alt+Left	Switch to previous virtual desktop
Win+D	Show desktop (toggle)
Win+(Function keys)	Jump to virtual desktop (Win+F1 to desktop 1, Win+F2 to desktop 2, etc.)
Ctrl+Alt+Left	Switch to previous virtual desktop
Alt+F5	Maximize window (toggle)
Alt+F6	Resize window to 640x480
Alt+F7	Move window (with arrow keys or mouse)
Alt+Space	Show window menu
Print Screen	Save screenshot to /trace/graphics/screen.jpg (Try not to do this while entering credit card information on websites!)
Win+(Numpad keys)	Move window to match next window or screen edge in 4 directions
Win+Menu	Swap to other monitor
Win+A	Open Thunar file manager (Once upon a time I was using a file manager whose name started with A, so this made sense. Now it's just habit.)
Win+M	Open Pidgin instant messenger
Ctrl+Alt+T	Open Sakura terminal
Win+T	Open Thunderbird email
Win+P	Open Gedit notepad
Win+S	Open minimal Twitter client (say)
Win+V	Open VirtualBox
Win+Z	Open GFTP (carryover from when I used Filezilla)
Win+C	Open Sound Juicer CD ripper
Win+U	Open Mumble
Win+Shift+V	Open Skype (voice chat)
Win+Space	Pause/play music in Audacious
Win+Left	Previous song in Audacious
Win+Right	Next song in Audacious
Win+Up	Increase master volume
Win+Down	Decrease master volume