[ Thanks to Timothy R. Butler for this
link. ]
In previous articles, I’ve focused on helping users of older
hardware get the most from it. While most of the FOSS world uses
one of the two major desktop interfaces–KDE or Gnome–there are
plenty of folks using interfaces that are less resource hungry.
While it’s important to note here that hogging resources is what
one pays for all the nifty automatic features found in KDE or
Gnome, in reality there are few other compelling reasons to use
either. While XFce is a much lighter competitor for them, the
latest version (4.x) disappoints me with its lack of a sound
module.“If you have a sound card and speakers, there’s no reason to
neglect that fuller experience that comes from a GUI that provides
auditory cues for various events. My real favorite desktop/window
manager is IceWM. If you’ve tried it, you already know whether you
like it or not. One complaint I’ve often heard about it is that
setting up the sounds associated with GUI events is really
difficult. In fact, many people aren’t even aware that sound is
possible with IceWM. Some distributions of Open Source OSs are
notorious for excluding the sound module by default…”