FVWM: Pros and cons of different ways of starting fvwm
I'm running fvwm2 as my wm on two fedora 7 installations. Currently I'm running it by setting the runlevel to 3 and then, after logging in, I run startx manually which executes fvwm from .xinitrc. What would be the advantages (if any) of changing the runlevel to 5 and getting the (default) gnome desktop to run fvmw2 as its window manager? As I see it the advantages of my current method are:- It's relatively simple. If X fails for some reason then I'm quite likely to see the error message and I also get a working command line to fix it from. It's lightweight in use of resources. The advantages of running from gdm (or whatever) in runlevel 5 are:- It's more streamlined to start up (though this, for me anyway, is a trivial advantage). It's the more common way of doing things so getting help can sometimes be easier. Gnome services running in the background (are there any?). It's the last item in each list that I'm asking about really. Is there any significant difference in resource usage when running fvwm2 from .xinitrc in runlevel 3 compared with running it from gdm in runlevel 5? ... and does Gnome run anything useful for me if I start using runlevel 5 rather than runlevel 3? (OK, I know I'm mixing the use of runlevel with what's really different, starting using gdm rather than startx, but I think it's fairly clear what I'm on about) -- Chris Green
Re: FVWM: Pros and cons of different ways of starting fvwm
On Wed, 3 Oct 2007, Chris G wrote: I'm running fvwm2 as my wm on two fedora 7 installations. What would be the advantages (if any) of changing the runlevel to 5 and getting the (default) gnome desktop to run fvmw2 as its window manager? I am not familiar at all with fedora and gnome, I use suse (whose default is kde) with fvwm. And start it from kdm, When I first moved to such environment I did some experimenting (I created from scratch separate accounts for kdeuser, wmuser, fvwmuser and logged in as each one of them selecting from the KDM login one of the window managers offered, to see what files were created in home ... then I modified the various .login and .cshrc to print to a file a trace of the situation at their start and end ... by trace I mean a dump of set,printenv and ps, the latter with appropriate switches). This way I was able to see the transient processes which disappear after starting other processes, or which transform in other processes via exec. The sequence for fvwm started by kdm seems pretty lightweight, A ps -A -H -o ppid,pid,user,command --sort=ppid,pid,user shows at the end the following surviving chain /opt/kde3/bin/kdm /usr/X11R6/bin/X ... -:0 /usr/bin/X11/fvwm ssh-agent /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc each of the applications started in .fvwm There is no leftover at all of the kde desktop. There are occasionally some kde related processes when I use some k applications under fvmw (essentially kdiff3 or some system administration tool). This way I diverge from the local standard, but not much. -- --- Lucio Chiappetti - INAF/IASF - via Bassini 15 - I-20133 Milano (Italy) For more info : http://www.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/personal.html --- () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ http://arc.pasp.de/
Re: FVWM: Pros and cons of different ways of starting fvwm
On Wed, Oct 03, 2007 at 10:30:11AM +0200, Lucio Chiappetti wrote: On Wed, 3 Oct 2007, Chris G wrote: I'm running fvwm2 as my wm on two fedora 7 installations. What would be the advantages (if any) of changing the runlevel to 5 and getting the (default) gnome desktop to run fvmw2 as its window manager? I am not familiar at all with fedora and gnome, I use suse (whose default is kde) with fvwm. And start it from kdm, When I first moved to such environment I did some experimenting (I created from scratch separate accounts for kdeuser, wmuser, fvwmuser and logged in as each one of them selecting from the KDM login one of the window managers offered, to see what files were created in home ... then I modified the various .login and .cshrc to print to a file a trace of the situation at their start and end ... by trace I mean a dump of set,printenv and ps, the latter with appropriate switches). This way I was able to see the transient processes which disappear after starting other processes, or which transform in other processes via exec. The sequence for fvwm started by kdm seems pretty lightweight, A ps -A -H -o ppid,pid,user,command --sort=ppid,pid,user shows at the end the following surviving chain /opt/kde3/bin/kdm /usr/X11R6/bin/X ... -:0 /usr/bin/X11/fvwm ssh-agent /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc each of the applications started in .fvwm There is no leftover at all of the kde desktop. There are occasionally some kde related processes when I use some k applications under fvmw (essentially kdiff3 or some system administration tool). This way I diverge from the local standard, but not much. Thanks, that's useful information. -- Chris Green
Re: FVWM: Pros and cons of different ways of starting fvwm
On 10/3/07, Chris G [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It's the last item in each list that I'm asking about really. Is there any significant difference in resource usage when running fvwm2 from .xinitrc in runlevel 3 compared with running it from gdm in runlevel 5? ... and does Gnome run anything useful for me if I start using runlevel 5 rather than runlevel 3? (OK, I know I'm mixing the use of runlevel with what's really different, starting using gdm rather than startx, but I think it's fairly clear what I'm on about) Although I don't think gdm or kdm adds that much overhead (e.g. they don't force you to use the desktop managers), you can always use xdm as a very simple X login manager. Emilie
