Greetings all,

This may not be exactly a programming question as it is kind of a hacking/modding question, but this seemed like the forum where I would likely get a good response. Please be patient with me if this is too long winded.

I have been doing a little experimenting with GUI's. Ultimately, I'm trying to figure out how to build an interface where all there will be is a few tabs, and 1 application at a fixed window size running under each tab. The closest thing I can find to what I'm talking about in practice is the Plate UI used by xPUD, but xPUD is a very barebones distribution, and I'd like to run this GUI on a more main-stream distro with better driver and package support (like Debian or such). I've been working on getting Plate to run on top of Debian to no avail as of yet.

I was wondering, does anyone have any suggestions on how I could do this easily without heavy coding or modification of an existing window manager? It seems many of the Netbook distros have managed to heavily modify existing window managers; any tips on how to get started doing something similar so I can accomplish my goal?

Thank you for your time in reading this!

I can't really answer your question, but have you tried a tiling window manager such as wmii (my personal favourite) or awesome? The behaviour you describe (if I understand you correctly) can be quite easily set up using rules in your config file under wmii

I was completely unaware of either of those wm's. Good to know!

The tricky thing is, this interface is not for me. I'm trying to put together something that a very computer illiterate person can handle. I'm talking VERY computer illiterate. Like, I-might-click-the-wrong-thing-and-lose-my-window-and-freak-out illiterate. Perhaps with some scripting, wmii might work. I'll have to give it a look, but I think I might be more comfortable with a more mainstream window manager if possible. The trick is, the system has to be able to boot, work for a few simple tasks (email, web browsing, photos), and not break or do anything to freak out a very computer illiterate user.

Thank you for the advice, Snark!

Ah, yes, in that case I definitely do not recommend wmii. It's an amazing WM, but if you hit the wrong key, then you can do things like switch windowing modes, and unless you're astute enough to notice small changes in the display then it could be rather confusing. Best of luck - I tried to do something similar for my Nanna (who was pretty much completely computer illiterate) using GNOME, but I'm sure there are better solutions.