[Techtalk] Window managers and desktops

[Carla Schroder]

On Friday 21 June 2002 02:47 pm, BUNTER MATTHEW wrote:
> --- Reçu de       VITEUR.BUNTERMA 04 72 96 57 77             21/06/02 16.47
>
> Gurus,
>
> I have become completely confused by something that someone told me
> regarding a window manager and a desktop 'system'.
>
> How I understood it :
> Desktop 'systems' only KDE and Gnome for Linux, can also have CDE for
> Solaris
> Each desktop 'system' requires a window manager to enable it to work
> A window manager like Sawfish, FVWM etc creates, places, keeps track of,
> and draws borders around the windows on the screen. It can't actually do
> any work without a desktop 'system'.
>
> Now I just got told that I can install just Window Maker, no need of KDE or
> Gnome and this will give me 'windowing' functionality.
>
> I only use a few apps that require a gui : gvim, Ethereal, Gnumeric,
> Abiword, xpdf, Opera and/or Mozilla and of course some terminal windows.
> 99% of my time is spent in one of these environments.
>
> So, can the stuff mentioned above be run with just Window Maker? Since I'm
> running Gnome I'll need directions to an idiots guide to changing the
> desktop if someone could point me in the right direction.
>
> Have a good weekend,
>
> Matt
>
>

As long as you have all dependencies satisfied, any app will run in any X 
environment. I haven't found an exception yet. Red Hat comes with a nice 
little utility called 'switchdesk', or get it from rpmfind.net, simply type 
switchdesk at a prompt and up pops a menu of all your installed window 
managers and desktop environments. Click the one you want and there you go.

I'm hazy on the difference between a window manager and a desktop system- 
bottom line is you can use what you want. Windowmaker is very nice,  it's a 
good option for lower-powered machines that bog down under KDE or Gnome. 

Even run bare nekkid X just to see what it looks like- boot to runlevel 3, no 
X running at all. Type xinit. You'll get a whole xterm window, and even here 
can run any graphical app, such as Kmail, Mozilla, whatever. It's not a real 
working environment, can't resize or move windows.  The X Windows System is 
the Linux graphical API, all graphical environments run on top of it. Window 
managers run on top of X, mondo "desktop environments" run on top of window 
managers. So we get to do what poor dumb Windows users can never ever do- 
have ultimate control and flexibility. 
-- 
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Carla Schroder, Bratgrrl Computing
Plain English Spoken Here
www.bratgrrl.com
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