Linux Debian support - gnome to kde and back

Author

gnome to kde and back

Marty

2007-05-08, 7:13 pm

Hi all,

I've had a bit of unix/linux command-line experience, and now I've installed
Debian on a spare home computer next to my windows box, which I'm getting
tired of. I'm having pretty good luck with getting everything working, and
I like using it. But I need a nice, friendly place to get answers to
questions, and learn new things without wading through the wreckage of
religious wars. This forum looks pretty good, so I thought I'd give it a
try.

My first question has to do with desktop environment questions.

I started with the default gnome, and wanted to try out KDE, which has some
nice features and apps. After trying both, I think I may want to stick with
gnome - for one thing, it recognizes the extra buttons on my cheap logitech
keyboard, such as volume control, and a few web buttons, but KDE doesn't
seem to, as far as I can see.

But I do like Kontact, the email/organizer program much better than gnome's
(Evolution?). I also occasionally like to use Konqueror in file browser
mode.

My questions...
1. Is there an easy way to hide all those KDE apps in the menu? I've been
moving them into sub-menus, but it's a bit slow. Can I uninstall KDE, but
still use selected KDE apps?
2. Is there a penalty running a KDE app under gnome?

I thought I had seen a command or program that would hide one or the other
set of programs, but I can't find it now.

Also, are there any keyboard macro programs that will work independently of
the desktop env? Under windows, I had one that could take a combination of
keystrokes to create a macro (like ".h " could expand to "hello world", for
example - useful because you don't normally type a period and then a
character with no space).

Thanks for any tips you can offer.

--
Marty - public.forums @ gmail . com
"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them...
well, I have others." - Groucho Marx

ray

2007-05-09, 1:14 am

On Tue, 08 May 2007 15:29:52 -0700, Marty wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I've had a bit of unix/linux command-line experience, and now I've installed
> Debian on a spare home computer next to my windows box, which I'm getting
> tired of. I'm having pretty good luck with getting everything working, and
> I like using it. But I need a nice, friendly place to get answers to
> questions, and learn new things without wading through the wreckage of
> religious wars. This forum looks pretty good, so I thought I'd give it a
> try.
>
> My first question has to do with desktop environment questions.
>
> I started with the default gnome, and wanted to try out KDE, which has some
> nice features and apps. After trying both, I think I may want to stick with
> gnome - for one thing, it recognizes the extra buttons on my cheap logitech
> keyboard, such as volume control, and a few web buttons, but KDE doesn't
> seem to, as far as I can see.
>
> But I do like Kontact, the email/organizer program much better than gnome's
> (Evolution?). I also occasionally like to use Konqueror in file browser
> mode.
>
> My questions...
> 1. Is there an easy way to hide all those KDE apps in the menu? I've been
> moving them into sub-menus, but it's a bit slow. Can I uninstall KDE, but
> still use selected KDE apps?

You should be able to uninstall KDE and then selectively install the
components you want. Installing components will pull in required
libraries, etc. but not all the other components.

> 2. Is there a penalty running a KDE app under gnome?

no.

>
> I thought I had seen a command or program that would hide one or the other
> set of programs, but I can't find it now.
>
> Also, are there any keyboard macro programs that will work independently of
> the desktop env? Under windows, I had one that could take a combination of
> keystrokes to create a macro (like ".h " could expand to "hello world", for
> example - useful because you don't normally type a period and then a
> character with no space).
>
> Thanks for any tips you can offer.

Marty Fried

2007-05-09, 1:14 am

Somewhere around Tuesday 08 May 2007 07:18 pm, while hiding out in
alt.os.linux.debian, ray wrote:

> On Tue, 08 May 2007 15:29:52 -0700, Marty wrote:
>
>
> You should be able to uninstall KDE and then selectively install the
> components you want. Installing components will pull in required
> libraries, etc. but not all the other components.
>
>
> no.

Great, that's what I was hoping.

I've gone to great pains to move most of the kde items to their own submenu,
so I'll wait a little while, and try some of them out to see if some are
useful before getting rid of them. By the time I try them all, there will
probably be a new version!

By the way, I tried choosing "Metacity" at the login screen, but every time
I've done this, it comes up with a blank screen, and I have to reboot. Am
I missing something?

Thanks for the help.

sk8-365

2007-05-09, 1:14 am

Marty Fried said:
<snip>
> By the way, I tried choosing "Metacity" at the login screen, but every time
> I've done this, it comes up with a blank screen, and I have to reboot. Am
> I missing something?
>

Do ctrl+alt+backspace instead of whacking the file system with a
forced boot. You'll find yourself at a command line interface (CLI)
after pressing those keys but wait about 30 seconds, I guess, and the
login screen will reappear.

I haven't done anything with metacity yet I would suppose one most set
up a config file or something. What you may not know is that the Gnome
log in is a metacity all set up - as I understand.

--
sk8-365

Marty

2007-05-09, 1:13 pm

Somewhere around Tue, 8 May 2007 23:30:53 -0600, while reading
alt.os.linux.debian, I think I thought I saw this post from sk8-365
<sk8-365@sk8r.invalid.org>:

>Marty Fried said:
><snip>
>
>Do ctrl+alt+backspace instead of whacking the file system with a
>forced boot. You'll find yourself at a command line interface (CLI)
>after pressing those keys but wait about 30 seconds, I guess, and the
>login screen will reappear.
>
>I haven't done anything with metacity yet I would suppose one most set
>up a config file or something. What you may not know is that the Gnome
>log in is a metacity all set up - as I understand.

Thanks; I assumed that because it was already present as an option on the
login screen, that it was ready to use. I probably would rather make sure
I'm not using it than actually use it, but I wanted to see the various
options. I personally like more choices, not fewer.

How can I tell what windows manager I'm running?

-- Marty Fried - public.forums @ gmail . com

ray

2007-05-09, 1:13 pm

On Wed, 09 May 2007 08:46:39 -0700, Marty wrote:

> Somewhere around Tue, 8 May 2007 23:30:53 -0600, while reading
> alt.os.linux.debian, I think I thought I saw this post from sk8-365
> <sk8-365@sk8r.invalid.org>:
>
>
> Thanks; I assumed that because it was already present as an option on the
> login screen, that it was ready to use. I probably would rather make sure
> I'm not using it than actually use it, but I wanted to see the various
> options. I personally like more choices, not fewer.
>
> How can I tell what windows manager I'm running?
>
> -- Marty Fried - public.forums @ gmail . com

ps -ef | grep wm

Marty Fried

2007-05-10, 1:13 am

Somewhere around Wednesday 09 May 2007 10:33 am, while hiding out in
alt.os.linux.debian, ray blurted out:

> On Wed, 09 May 2007 08:46:39 -0700, Marty wrote:
>
> ps -ef | grep wm

Well, that wasn't very useful. I just got:
marty 6315 6292 0 21:21 pts/0 00:00:00 grep wm
where marty is my login name.

But, I ran gnome-system-monitor and it lists metacity as running (well,
actually, sleeping). The command line is:
/usr/bin/metacity --sm-client-id=default0

So, I guess I must be running it; is this the default wm? Is there another
one that might be interesting?

BTW, what is the 'f' option for ps? the help only showed 'F'; I didn't see
a lowercase f.

Thanks,
-- Marty Fried
public.forums @ gmail . com

sk8-365

2007-05-10, 1:15 pm

Marty Fried said:
>
> So, I guess I must be running it; is this the default wm? Is there another
> one that might be interesting?
>

Gnome is the default. There are several GUI to chose from:
http://tinyurl.com/643b3
--
sk8-365

John Hasler

2007-05-10, 1:15 pm

Marty Fried said:
> So, I guess I must be running it; is this the default wm? Is there another
> one that might be interesting?

sk8-365 writes:
> Gnome is the default.

Gnome is a "desktop environment", not a window manager. I believe that the
default Gnome window manager is Metacity.

> There are several GUI to chose from:
> http://tinyurl.com/643b3

The GUI is The X Window System. There are several "desktop environments"
available in Debian and many window mamagers. Of course, you can run
whatever combination of window manager and other applications you choose.
You are not forced to select a "desktop envirironment" and then run only
applications written for it.
--
John Hasler

sk8-365

2007-05-10, 1:15 pm

John Hasler said:
>
> Gnome is a "desktop environment", not a window manager. I believe that the
> default Gnome window manager is Metacity.
> The GUI is The X Window System. There are several "desktop environments"
> available in Debian and many window mamagers. Of course, you can run
> whatever combination of window manager and other applications you choose.
> You are not forced to select a "desktop envirironment" and then run only
> applications written for it.

John, I knew somebody would say something about my loose use of the
word "GUI" - I didn't wish to bother detailing the differences.
--
sk8-365

Marty Fried

2007-05-11, 1:13 am

Somewhere around Thursday 10 May 2007 07:41 am, while hiding out in
alt.os.linux.debian, John Hasler blurted out:

> Marty Fried said:
>
> sk8-365 writes:
>
> Gnome is a "desktop environment", not a window manager. I believe that
> the default Gnome window manager is Metacity.
>
>
> The GUI is The X Window System. There are several "desktop environments"
> available in Debian and many window mamagers. Of course, you can run
> whatever combination of window manage
> r and other applications you choose.
> You are not forced to select a "desktop envirironment" and then run only
> applications written for it.

I know there are window managers and desktop environments. What I didn't
know for sure was which one Debian etch was using with Gnome, and what the
alternatives might be.

What I don't understand is why, when I log in, I have a choice of sessions
which are a mixture of WMs and DEs, but not a combination. So, I choose a
window manager, and I get very few choices. And Metacity was one of the
session choices, even though it did nothing by itself.

This is all just exercises in learning for myself what's going on. I like
to get my hands on something to understand it.

Thanks for all your help so far.

-- Marty Fried
online.forums @ gmail . com

Harold Stevens

2007-05-11, 7:13 am

In <4643eae4$0$14131$742ec2ed@news.sonic.net> Marty Fried:

[Snip...]

> one of the session choices, even though it did nothing by itself

Shot in the dark...

It's not exactly clear what you mean ("did nothing by itself") but to me
it sounds like you got a minimal X session running without "tools" (like
taskbars and panels, or mounseclick menus and such).

If so, it might be for lack of a complete "environment" file to define a
minimal "desktop" for you. I'm not sure about Metacity, but I use twm (a
very minimal window manager), and every distro I have ever installed has
a basic *system-wide" twm "environment" file--but IMO, not too much:

/etc/X11/twm/system.twmrc

Users can copy and customize it in their homespace (note "."):

~/.twmrc

so that various mouseclicks bring up browsers, editors. etc.

In my case, I downloaded a more useful (to me) ~/.twmrc template:

http://www.tecneeq.de/files/dotfile...karsten/_.twmrc

Now, twm is NOT "sophisticated" eyecandy, but IMO that's ideal.

(IIRC, fvwm is another "old" manager which might give you some tips)

Again, I don't use Metacity, but maybe someone else does. HTH; YMMV...

--
Regards, Weird (Harold Stevens) * IMPORTANT EMAIL INFO FOLLOWS *
Pardon any bogus email addresses (wookie) in place for spambots.
Really, it's (wyrd) at airmail, dotted with net. DO NOT SPAM IT.
Kids jumping ship? Looking to hire an old-school type? Email me.

Marty Fried

2007-05-12, 1:13 am

Somewhere around Friday 11 May 2007 03:19 am, while hiding out in
alt.os.linux.debian, Harold Stevens blurted out:

> In <4643eae4$0$14131$742ec2ed@news.sonic.net> Marty Fried:
>
> [Snip...]
>
>
> Shot in the dark...
>
> It's not exactly clear what you mean ("did nothing by itself") but to
> me it sounds like you got a minimal X session running without "tools"
> (like taskbars and panels, or mounseclick menus and such).
Actually, it truly did nothing - nothing obvious, at least. The screen
was totally blank, there was a mouse cursor, but no response by left,
middle, or right clicking. Even ctrl-alt-backspace did nothing.

The other window managers at least responded to certain mouseclicks, or
had some simple screen elements.

I simply didn't understand why metacity was listed with the desktop
environments, since by itself, it appeared to do nothing. It runs with
the gnome desktop environment, evidently, just fine.

It would be nice to have a minimal system for times when I want to just
get some work done without a lot of overhead, but mostly, I like the
extras. I know how to get around using xterm only, but it gets boring
fairly quickly.

Thanks for the input. I may look into some of the basics later.

-- marty fried
public.forums @ gmail . com

Harold Stevens

2007-05-12, 7:13 am

In <46455763$0$14124$742ec2ed@news.sonic.net> Marty Fried:

[Snip...]

> The other window managers at least responded to certain mouseclicks, or
> had some simple screen elements.

I agree that's not exactly "user friendly" but again, I'm not familiar at
all with Metacity. So I can't blame it (or you), of course.

> Thanks for the input. I may look into some of the basics later.

Certainly--I just wish there was more Metacity experience available, even
though I realize it's not really a Debian-specific topic here. Might be a
thread for a more general Linux group, like comp.os.linux.misc (etc.).

--
Regards, Weird (Harold Stevens) * IMPORTANT EMAIL INFO FOLLOWS *
Pardon any bogus email addresses (wookie) in place for spambots.
Really, it's (wyrd) at airmail, dotted with net. DO NOT SPAM IT.
Kids jumping ship? Looking to hire an old-school type? Email me.

sk8-365

2007-05-12, 1:13 pm

Marty Fried said:

<snip>>
> I simply didn't understand why metacity was listed with the desktop
> environments, since by itself, it appeared to do nothing. It runs with
> the gnome desktop environment, evidently, just fine.
>

I gotta agree with you on this one !

> It would be nice to have a minimal system for times when I want to just
> get some work done without a lot of overhead, but mostly, I like the
> extras. I know how to get around using xterm only, but it gets boring
> fairly quickly.

Well then you should have twm and two gnome options for a session - at
least my install of Etch does. twm is pretty nice, IMO.

--
sk8-365

AJackson

2007-05-12, 1:13 pm

On May 12, 4:40 pm, sk8-365 <sk8-...@sk8r.invalid.org> wrote:
> Marty Fried said:
>
> <snip>>
>
>
> I gotta agree with you on this one !
>
>
> Well then you should have twm and two gnome options for a session - at
> least my install of Etch does. twm is pretty nice, IMO.

Or just login failsafe and start twm& in the terminal that pops up.
THAT is minimal

Linonut

2007-05-13, 1:13 pm

After takin' a swig o' grog, ray belched out this bit o' wisdom:

>
> no.

Actually, there's a little startup delay while KDE services start up.
In practice, it isn't enough to worry about.

Some WM's will start KDE and Gnome services ahead of time, if you want
them to. Examples are XFce and fluxbox.

--
[ Intel Trusted Computing Module Inside ]

Linonut

2007-05-13, 1:13 pm

After takin' a swig o' grog, Marty Fried belched out this bit o' wisdom:

> By the way, I tried choosing "Metacity" at the login screen, but every time
> I've done this, it comes up with a blank screen, and I have to reboot.

You don't have to reboot. Either do Ctrl-Alt-Backspace,
or log onto a virtual console window as root and restart your favorite
display manager (xdm, gdm, kdm...):

/etc/init.d/gdm restart

> Am I missing something?

Maybe you manually deleted some components needed by metacity?

Maybe it "metastisized" <evil grin>.

--
[ X ] Check here to always trust content from Linonut.

Linonut

2007-05-13, 1:13 pm

After takin' a swig o' grog, Marty Fried belched out this bit o' wisdom:

>
> Well, that wasn't very useful. I just got:
> marty 6315 6292 0 21:21 pts/0 00:00:00 grep wm
> where marty is my login name.

pstree is better:

$ pstree
. . .
|-gdm---gdm-+-.Xclients-+-fluxbox-+-firefox---run-mozilla.sh---firefox-bin-++
. . .

--
:read ~/.signature

Marty Fried

2007-05-13, 1:13 pm

Somewhere around Sunday 13 May 2007 06:27 am, while hiding out in
alt.os.linux.debian, Linonut blurted out:

> After takin' a swig o' grog, Marty Fried belched out this bit o'
> wisdom:
>
>
> pstree is better:
>
> $ pstree
> . . .
> |-gdm---gdm-+-.Xclients-+- ...
> . . .
Nice little utility... but it didn't have anything like the line you
mentioned. It does have metacity by itself, but for gdm, I only have:
├─gdm───gdm─┬─Xorg
│ └─gnome-session───ssh-agent
(hope that lines up).

Anyway, it does seem that Debian defaults to Gnome with metacity. It's
pretty nice, but as a long-time computer user, I like to know what's
going on for myself, especially in the UI world, since that's been
somewhat of a specialty of mine in my programming jobs.

-- Marty Fried
public.forums @ gmail . com

Marty Fried

2007-05-13, 1:13 pm

Somewhere around Sunday 13 May 2007 06:25 am, while hiding out in
alt.os.linux.debian, Linonut blurted out:

> After takin' a swig o' grog, Marty Fried belched out this bit o'
> wisdom:
>
>
> You don't have to reboot. Either do Ctrl-Alt-Backspace,
> or log onto a virtual console window as root and restart your favorite
> display manager (xdm, gdm, kdm...):
>
> /etc/init.d/gdm restart
Actually, I tried all of that, but nothing worked, except (IIRC)
Ctrl-Alt-Delete.

>
>
> Maybe you manually deleted some components needed by metacity?
>
> Maybe it "metastisized" <evil grin>.
>
Must be the second - I had tried it early on, before mucking up^H^H^H^H
customizing anything.

-- Marty Fried
public.forums @ gmail . com
Keyboard error - press Enter to exit.

Marty Fried

2007-05-13, 1:13 pm

Somewhere around Sunday 13 May 2007 06:23 am, while hiding out in
alt.os.linux.debian, Linonut blurted out:

> After takin' a swig o' grog, ray belched out this bit o' wisdom:
>
>
> Actually, there's a little startup delay while KDE services start up.
> In practice, it isn't enough to worry about.
>
> Some WM's will start KDE and Gnome services ahead of time, if you want
> them to. Examples are XFce and fluxbox.
>
The one thing I still haven't learned is how to use KDE or Gnome, plus a
WM of my choice. I've played around, and even opened a 2nd X session
on :1 and got an xterm window. If I type in "gnome-session", I end up
with my full desktop. I haven't yet learned how to run gnome without a
window manager yet. I can find info, but most of it is outdated,
and/or doesn't work as advertised. I can eventually figure it out, but
it would be nice to get pointers to the most direct way to do it, or an
example or two to start with (hint, hint).

I have managed to get two x sessions running, and ran fluxbox on one,
which seemed like it might be worth learning more about. I tried
running gnome-session from that, and it worked, although not very
cleanly. Then, when I exited, it left me with my nice wallpaper.
I guess that was a benefit. :-)

Thanks for all the help.

-- Marty Fried
public.forums @ gmail . com

sk8-365

2007-05-13, 1:13 pm

Marty Fried said:
<snip>
> Nice little utility... but it didn't have anything like the line you
> mentioned. It does have metacity by itself, but for gdm, I only have:
> ├─gdm───gdm─┬─Xorg
> │ └─gnome-session───ssh-agent
> (hope that lines up).
>

The parent is gdm and following are its children.

> Anyway, it does seem that Debian defaults to Gnome with metacity. It's
> pretty nice, but as a long-time computer user, I like to know what's
> going on for myself, especially in the UI world, since that's been
> somewhat of a specialty of mine in my programming jobs.

Nice place to start getting under the hood is, IMO, with the Debian
User Reference Manual ... get it here:

http://tinyurl.com/uuykv

--
sk8-365

Chris Game

2007-05-13, 7:13 pm

On 2007-05-13, Linonut <linonut@bellsouth.net> wrote:

> Some WM's will start KDE and Gnome services ahead of time, if you
> want them to. Examples are XFce and fluxbox.

So what are we winning (and loosing) by unticking those 'load
KDE/Gnome services' boxes in settings in Xfce?

--
Chris Game

If debugging is the process of removing bugs, then programming
must be the process of putting them in. -Dykstra

Mumia W.

2007-05-13, 7:13 pm

On 05/13/2007 11:53 AM, Marty Fried wrote:
> The one thing I still haven't learned is how to use KDE or Gnome, plus a
> WM of my choice. [...]

You are learning that a lot of work has gone into making KDE and Gnome
unified desktop environments whose parts work together almost
seamlessly, and when you decide to use a different WM with either KDE or
Gnome, you end up learning a little bit of what the maintainers had to
learn about those environments.

I've played around a little bit with the idea of using alternative WM's
with Gnome. Here's a script that starts a gnome-like environment within
IceWm:

#!/bin/sh
xsetroot -solid lemonchiffon
icewm &
nautilus &
gnome-settings-daemon &
rxvt-xpm -rv

Save that script to a file and start it like so:
xinit /path/to/script -- :1

I've written that script so that it exits when the terminal emulator
exits; however, it's traditional to write such scripts so they exit when
the window manager exits:

#!/bin/sh
xsetroot -solid lemonchiffon
nautilus &
gnome-settings-daemon &
rxvt-xpm -rv &
icewm

The nautilus should set the background color or image; however, I like
to set a default background color anyway, and I use xsetroot to do that.

However, if you have the blackbox window manager installed, you have
access to the program bsetroot, which can give you gradients. Try this
in an X terminal:

bsetroot -gradient verticalgradient -from steelblue -to lemonchiffon

When you write the "xinit" scripts like the ones above, you have to
decide what pieces of the desktop environment you want active. Each
"piece" adds bloat.

If you want a truly minimal "Gnome" environment, you could try this
(untested):

#!/bin/sh
xsetroot -solid steelblue
metacity &
gnome-panel &
rxvt-xpm -rv

However, you will find that the gnome-settings-daemon makes things look
better, and the nautilus adds some other desirable features.

Good luck and have fun.

Linonut

2007-05-14, 1:14 pm

After takin' a swig o' grog, Marty Fried belched out this bit o' wisdom:

> I have managed to get two x sessions running, and ran fluxbox on one,
> which seemed like it might be worth learning more about. I tried
> running gnome-session from that, and it worked, although not very
> cleanly. Then, when I exited, it left me with my nice wallpaper.
> I guess that was a benefit. :-)

I used to use gnome-session with fluxbox, but now I use
xfce-mcs-manager. My .xsession (or ~/.fluxbox/startup):

# Start the XFce MCS manager to get the application fonts and other GTK+
# user-interface items, such as themes. Could start the XFce session
# manager, but that takes over the desktop!

xfce-mcs-manager

# Increase the keyboard repeat-rate:

xset r rate 195 100

# Mouse (glidepoint)

xset m 3

# Make the damn PC beep less obnoxious, at least while X is running.

xset b 30 3000 30

# Your favorite system monitor

gkrellm &

# Use feh to load the last wallpaper you set as root background using feh

eval `cat $HOME/.fehbg` &

# Start the bluetooth applet, needed to enter passcodes for new devices.

/usr/bin/bluetooth-applet &

xscreensaver -no-splash &

# And last, but not least, we start fluxbox.
# Because it is the last app you have to run it with ''exec'' before it.

exec /usr/local/bin/fluxbox -log /home/ahlstrom/.fluxbox/log

--
The Microsoft $3 upgrade treadmill -- "If we don't get 'em in the wash,
we'll get 'em in the rinse. Either way, they'll get soaked."

Linonut

2007-05-14, 1:14 pm

After takin' a swig o' grog, Chris Game belched out this bit o' wisdom:

> On 2007-05-13, Linonut <linonut@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>
> So what are we winning (and loosing) by unticking those 'load
> KDE/Gnome services' boxes in settings in Xfce?

Don't know about KDE, but in Gnome you lose font settings and
user-interface settings.

So I added a call to xfce-mcs-manager, which is more lightweight than
xfce-session or gnome-session, and let's fluxbox handle more of the
desktop.

Nautilus? Too much for me!

--
So, Bill, what do you think of the execution of Microsoft's Vista team?
Sounds like a good idea to me, Steve.

Linonut

2007-05-14, 1:14 pm

After takin' a swig o' grog, Chris Game belched out this bit o' wisdom:

> On 2007-05-13, Linonut <linonut@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> Display manager? I thought gdm was managing the login ('greeter')
> and the window manager was metacity, or whatever. I do know that
> without gdm you have to manually enter 'startx' or 'startxfce4' at a
> console prompt, part way through the boot-up process.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_display_manager

It also starts the window manager.

$ pstree

|-gdm---gdm-+-Xorg
| `-fluxbox-+-audacious---6*[{audacious}]

--
So, Bill, what do you think of the execution of Microsoft's Vista team?
Sounds like a good idea to me, Steve.

Chris Game

2007-05-14, 7:13 pm

On 2007-05-14, Linonut <linonut@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>
> Don't know about KDE, but in Gnome you lose font settings and
> user-interface settings.

These aren't services though. And xfce has it's own settings which
are quite flexible.

> So I added a call to xfce-mcs-manager, which is more lightweight than
> xfce-session or gnome-session, and let's fluxbox handle more of the
> desktop.

What's xfce-mcs-manager?

> Nautilus? Too much for me!
>

--
Chris Game

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

Linonut

2007-05-16, 1:14 am

After takin' a swig o' grog, Chris Game belched out this bit o' wisdom:

> On 2007-05-14, Linonut <linonut@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> These aren't services though. And xfce has it's own settings which
> are quite flexible.
>
>
> What's xfce-mcs-manager?

It's one of the components of the XFCe (version 4) window/desktop
manager. XFce is a very modular system, and you can mix and match its
various modules (e.g. add a panel, provide a pager, etc.)

I've seen a number of Live CDs or system-rescue CDs that run fluxbox
plus various components of XFce (such as xfce-panel and thunar, the new
XFce file manager).

I'm currently back on a fluxbox kick, but XFce is my other favorite.

--
Knowledge workers unite!

Marty Fried

2007-05-20, 1:13 am

Somewhere around Wed, 16 May 2007 01:35:56 +0000, someone claiming to be
Linonut posted this tidbit:

> After takin' a swig o' grog, Chris Game belched out this bit o' wisdom:
>
>
> It's one of the components of the XFCe (version 4) window/desktop
> manager. XFce is a very modular system, and you can mix and match its
> various modules (e.g. add a panel, provide a pager, etc.)
>
> I've seen a number of Live CDs or system-rescue CDs that run fluxbox
> plus various components of XFce (such as xfce-panel and thunar, the new
> XFce file manager).
>
> I'm currently back on a fluxbox kick, but XFce is my other favorite.
>
Well, I've decided to really check everything out for myself, so I've
recently installed and deleted a lot of distros, etc. I'm probably going
to upgrade my linux computer soon with a faster cpu, new motherboard, more
memory, and maybe a basic 3D video card to check out some of the new UI
stuff, like Beryl, etc. Kind of the opposite direction from fluxbox and
XFce, I suppose. :-) Anyway, until then, nothing is really permanent, so
I get to really play around and learn by destroying without being too
bummed out at the results.

I've tried Fedora, ubuntu, kubuntu, suse with gnome (I already tried KDE),
and I'm getting a taste for what's different. I still like Debian best, I
think, although ubuntu is also nice, for me as a beginner. When I get a
new system installed, I'll decide which one to go with permanently.

I think I like gnome better than kde now, and I may want to learn one of
the lighter-weight window managers more in the future.

Thanks to all for the tips, etc. It really is nice to have knowledgeable
people to help, and I'm enjoying learning a lot of new stuff. I even
wrote Canon to let them know I'm not happy that they don't support Linux
for much of their stuff.

-- Marty Fried - leftcoast, usa
public . forums @ gmail . com