Re: [gentoo-user] Alternative Window Managers

[Holly Bostick]

Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. schreef:
> I'm wanting to experiment with some alternative window managers.
> I've already emerged them, but I'd like to have them available as
> separate sessions when I log in, and possibly migrate to one of them
> as default (or only) session available.

FWIW, I started out with GNOME (as I, like Peter, could not stand the
huge amount of bloat, since that's what all the "features" are to me),
but that was still too heavy (I really don't like desktop icons and I
find Nautilus about third on my list of "most annoying file manager
possible"), so I switched to Openbox 3. Liked it a lot (since it's
neither GNOME nor KDE-dependent, I could use the GTK or KDE applications
I wanted without fear of conflicts), and I would still be using it had I
not discovered fvwm-crystal.

Lightweight, insanely configurable (since it is ultimately fvwm), and
way, way, way better looking than fvwm "normal". This is the one for me;
so much so that I disabled GDM (loved it for a DM, but really a DM is
just waste of resources after you're logged in), and set fvwm-crystal as
my XSESSION in /etc/rc.conf (now I just use startx).

But of course, if you still use a DM, the different sessions will be
availble as separate sessions; they may only not be visible in your DM's
session list (because the *.desktop file created during install was not
copied to the correct one of the three [!!!] different paths that any
given DM may look for the list of available session types). If that
happens to you, just find the <wm_name>.desktop file and copy it to the
correct folder, which may be: /usr/kde/<version>/apps/kdm/sessions,
/etc/X11/Sessions, or /usr/share/xsessions. All DMs are supposed to read
from one of the 'general' folders (either the one in /etc/ or the one in
/usr/share/, but I have found that this is not always the case, or else
that the install routines are not necessarily current with the most
recent changes in the base setup (i.e., where the folder that all DMs
always read from actually is, which I think has changed with the changes
in X), so may not put their *.desktop file in a folder where all DMs
actually see it. But just copying it works a treat.

And of course if you don't use a DM, you can just type "whatever"
(startkde, fluxbox, openbox3, gnome-session, fvwm-crystal, fluxbox,
whatever the executable is) at the command line after login to start the
session with the WM of your choice (which ought to start X for you), or
conversely make a bunch of scriptlets/aliases to start X with different
WMs (don't know how to do this myself, but it should be possible with
~/.xsession or ~/.xinitrc, and/or links to copied-modified-and-renamed
'startx' binary scripts).

HTH,
Holly
-- 
gentoo-user@g.o mailing list