-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On April 20, 2004 11:57, s. keeling wrote: > No, I've borne the brunt of simply trying to use the supplied tools > ([xkg]dm, .xsession, .xinitrc, & etc.) and trying to change my desktop > from one of these monstrosities to another. They don't understand how > each other do things, so just saying (on the [xkg]dm login screen) > "Select $BLAH", and I end up with (maybe!) $BLAH, _plus_ various and > sundry other cruft from the old one still running. > > If you choose one and stay there, you can minimize the problem. If you > want to go between them to try them out, you end up with a mess.
ah, you are speaking of session managers, not display managers; they are completely different beasts. session management has to do with restoring and setting up sessions, display managers simply authenticate you and then start a given environment (usually just a shell script), which can be a simple window manager or a full blown desktop env. i know of some G* desktop apps that do some rather undesireable things with session management (at least, the last time i tried them), but i don't run into those issues as i don't normally run those apps. painting all desktop envs with the brush of a few occasional screw ups isn't completely fair IMO. it's like painting all OSes are useless because MS Windows isn't exactly a great OS. > Try this: run plain old fluxbox. Now start up irssi-gnome. Why do I > now have a gnome-panel on my screen?!? That's just a hint of some of > the stupid things I've seen these monsters do. i can't speak for GNOME, but apps should work properly in the environment they are started from. what you describe is certainly a misfeature at best, and probably what i'd call a bug. it may be because it wants a system tray, but that's why we have the NetWM hints: to avoid those kinds of issues. and again, nothing to do with display managers. if you wish to get into GUI misfeatures, we could walk down the X11 hall of shame for a year before ever getting to the desktop environments. first stop: Motif ;-) > Solution: "rxvt -e irssi &" =) > As for where I've run into these things: SuSE 7.0 Professional, SuSE > 7.1 Personal, Libranet 2.0, Debian Woody/stable. None of those are > flakily designed distributions. I've asked about this in debian-user > and they agree. hrm. not to meander into distro territory, but aside from some notable exceptions i haven't exactly found too many people in the larger Debian community who understand much about Linux desktop technology =) > None of the monstrosities understand how the others > do it, and just dance around each other trying to stay out of each > other's way. They can't even do that much right. we actually have standards for these things nowadays, and apps that "dance around" that are broken. that much we can agree on =) if you can point me to specific KDE apps that are broken in that way, i'll fix them. > > > Add in KDE and Nautilus and you have a mess. > > > My advice: rip it out. Choose a window manager you can control. > > > > lol ... by window manager, i assume you mean "desktop", and by "desktop" > > i > > No. By window manager, I mean "X Window Manager", as in twm, fvwm, > wm2, fluxbox, & etc. I can build my own damn desktop, with the apps I > want to run. the things you are complaining about have nothing to do with window managers, really. if you run metacity or kwin on their own you get much the same experience that you do with blackbox, fluxbox, icewm, windowmaker, etc. that was what i was pointing out. conversely, if you run fluxbox and certain desktop environment related applications, you will end up with the same challenges you are seeking to avoid. > I've been doing it since '93, and I never had much > trouble with Linux until kde and gnome arrived on the scene. which is why it's nice you get to choose, isn't it? > They may be perfect for dumbing down the interface to the point that Aunt > Tilly can use it. that isn't the only purpose of them. or perhaps the many power users out there who are far more accomplished than either of us will ever be use such things because it dumbs it down versus allows them to be more productive. who knows. > They're a lot like Wintendo's eye candy for me. lol... yes, it's all eye candy. no features here. nope. ;-) just like how object oriented languages are simply syntatic sugar applied to structural frameworks. lol. > > as for the term "you can control" that is highly subjective. > > When I started, I used fvwm. Everything was controlled by .fvwmrc. > Now I use fluxbox. To change anything, I edit ~/.fluxbox/init or > something. hmm.. see, with .fvwmrc you are managing one binary's behaviour. *one*. when you use Mozilla (or whatever you use for your web browser), where does it keep it's config info? in your .fvwmrc? in ~/.fluxbox/init? no. for each additional app you get additional configuration systems. stupid, stupid, stupid. as soon as you move past xterms on a screen you end up with the same complexity you rail against, only this time with no coherent structure or cooperation. =/ > What file do I edit to tell Nautilus to go away and never > return? your session manager file. > Which of the many .gnome-* directories contains the file that > controls what I want to change? Ditto for kde. no, not "ditto for kde". we actually have a very sane layout. > How many times have you heard someone say, "My KDE is screwed up. > What's the fix?" "rm -rf ~/.kde dude!" Brilliant. that isn't the fix. if someone tells you that, then they are wrong. your $KDEHOME (usually ~/.kde) holds bookmarks, notes, addressbooks, calendars, etc, etc... you really don't want to delete that directory. nor do you have to. ever. KDE has a nice, coherent structure for configuration which does not require `rm -rf $KDEHOME`. at WORST one may need / want to `rm -rf $KDEHOME/share/config`, but even then it's usually a much more specific file. but don't blame the tools for some random person on IRC's lack of knowledge. > > i don't agree with your summary dismisal of the utility of desktop > > panels, etc... however. the beauty of Free Software is choice, allowing > > each to choose what works best for them. the danger of choice is the > > myopic nature of humans to feel that their choice is obviously superior > > in general because it > > Blah, blah, blah. well, you've convinced me. =P look. if you don't like desktop environments, great! don't run one, and be happy. but walking out your evidently limited knowledge of their workings in an attempt to explain why they are generally evil isn't the smartest thing to do. > I got locked out of one too many servers running kde, by dcop-server. > Only months ago, I learned that the fix is to restart kdeinit. Life > is too damn short for that kind of silliness. If it doesn't get > started up, it can't get in the way. i thought we were talking about desktops. i, too, see no need to run a desktop environment on a server. aside from the annoyance of it, there are security and resource issues. but if one insists on doing so ...... excuse me if i'm a little skeptical of you being "locked out" of a server by dcop. you couldn't log in? you couldn't ssh in? you couldn't run anything? what, exactly, was the use case and what couldn't you do? - -- Aaron J. Seigo GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43 seems to me that if i could find the right music i'd never have to sleep again -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.2-rc1-SuSE (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFAhiZG1rcusafx20MRAi5+AJ4n31FfEVeqL1u6zDbFHWEQcf7MvgCeLJuB 8coyuVjNy4/mB/JcaqqhvsU= =/7UW -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca
