|
Home > Archive > Linux Debian support > November 2005 > Desktops vs. Window Managers
You are viewing an archived Text-only version of the thread.
To view this thread in it's original format and/or if you want to reply to
this thread please [click here]
| Author |
Desktops vs. Window Managers
|
|
| Dave M 2005-11-21, 2:46 am |
| I installed Debian Sarge for the first time about a month ago, and have been
happily tinkering ever since. I want to play with customizing my
"desktop". I may be misguided here, but it seems to me that GNOME and KDE
don't offer a lot of opportunity for customization (?), and that I should
try using a window manager without a desktop environment, so that I can
have more "fiddle" room.
On the other hand, I use a few applications that seem to be built
specifically for KDE or GNOME. So I guess my questions are:
1. Will my KDE and GNOME apps work if I run X with a window manager like
fvwm or Sawfish or something, without a desktop environment? How about
openoffice?
2. Can I use other window managers with GNOME (instead of Metacity) or KDE
(instead of whatever it uses)? Can I switch them easily? Will the result
be worth working with?
3. Just what *will* I lose by working with a straight WM and *no* desktop
environment? Can you get all the same functionality by tinkering with WMs,
or do desktop environments really add functionality?
Thanks!
p.s. Oh, I'm not all that comfortable with *where* to ask questions aobut
Linux. Can anyone point me to good newsgroups/websites/lists/etc? Thanks
again!
Dave
| |
| gregor herrmann 2005-11-21, 5:47 pm |
| On Mon, 21 Nov 2005 00:31:56 -0500, Dave M wrote:
> 1. Will my KDE and GNOME apps work if I run X with a window manager like
> fvwm or Sawfish or something, without a desktop environment?
As long as the KDE libraries resp. GNOME libraries are still
installed they should work.
> How about
> openoffice?
No problem.
> 3. Just what *will* I lose by working with a straight WM and *no* desktop
> environment? Can you get all the same functionality by tinkering with WMs,
> or do desktop environments really add functionality?
I guess you lose some eye-candy and gain some functionality ;-)
But I have to admit that I don't like desktop environments and use
ion3 myself. Other interesting WMs are IMO ratpoison, wmii, evilwm,
.... All of them tiny and keyboard focused.
> p.s. Oh, I'm not all that comfortable with *where* to ask questions aobut
> Linux. Can anyone point me to good newsgroups/websites/lists/etc? Thanks
> again!
Debian has a lot of mailing lists, too:
http://lists.debian.org/
gregor
--
.''`. http://info.comodo.priv.at/ | gpg key ID: 0x00F3CFE4
: :' : infos zur usenet-hierarchie at.*: http://www.usenet.at/
`. `' member of https://www.vibe.at/ | how to reply: http://got.to/quote/
`-
|
|
|
|
|