[techtalk] Gnome and window managers

[Jeff Dike]

jcoolman at gladstone.uoregon.edu said:
> I approach you now to ask, as I am running Gnome and Windowmaker,
> where can i find out which parts of the GUI i see are Gnome's fault
> and which are the fault of my window manager?

Kill your window manager and see what parts of your GUI go away.

Also, "Gnome" is not one single thing.  The overall session is provided by 
gnome-session, and I think it ties itself into the menus and stuff.  The 
little bar thing at the bottom is provided by something else, and a lot of the 
things inside that little bar are provided by still further processes.  Do a 
'ps uaxwww | grep gnome' to see all the excitement.

> While this _works_, it's frustrating when something in the GUI is
> broken, and also when I'm eager to know what gets changed when i click
> those widgets. 

Kill off those little gnome-* processes one at a time and see what goes away.  
This usually isn't fatal.  You can restart them from an xterm and be back 
where you started.  Killing off gnome-session will log you out, though :-)

If you're not happy about killing things, stop them with 'kill -STOP', do a 
screen refresh and see what doesn't repaint itself.  And then 'kill -CONT' 
them when you want them back in the land of the living.

				Jeff