On Sun 04 May 2014 at 18:39:11 -0400, Stefan Monnier wrote: > As for significant changes, I'd welcome some way to make it easy for > people to use ctwm as their window manager under existing DEs. E.g. I'm > using XFWM and currently end up doing "login; open an xterm; killall > xfwm4; ctwm&" which is rather inconvenient.
There must be easier ways of course, but I've been looking around on my netbook with an old version of Ubuntu on it, and it already has a maze of seemingly X- or gdm-related startup files. I'm sure they are not all used, for instance there are non-identical files /etc/gdm/Xsession and /etc/X11/Xsession... I searched around, and I found that I could make an extra "session" type for the benefit of gdm (and hopefully that works for lightdm and other poplular display managers too), by putting an extra file in /usr/share/xsessions (I named it xsession.desktop). [Desktop Entry] Name=.xsession Comment=This session logs you in with $HOME/.xsession Exec=$HOME/.xsession Icon= Type=Application X-Ubuntu-Gettext-Domain= This gets you back to the well-known session startp; actually it sticks some stuff before it: for me it runs /usr/bin/ssh-agent /usr/bin/dbus-launch --exit-with-session /home/rhialto/.xsession This is done in the files sourced from /etc/gdb/Xsession in /etc/X11/Xsession.d. The value from Exec=... is given to Xsession as an argument. It could be that the Xsession script recognizes "custom" as a special case to run .Xsession, but this way seems more direct to me. It's all shell scripts, so I expect the expansion of $HOME to work properly. By googling for "xubuntu alternative window manager" I found some advice for people who want to keep file icons on their desktop, or a background picture (hint: use ctwm's DontPaintRootWindow too), or the usual menu bars at the top and/or bottom. We could create some example .xinitrc file containing some of those, for people only wanting to replace the window manager. (For the old netbook where I tried this, gnome's startup procedure is apparently also doing something with xinerama. With an external screen attached, with bare ctwm the displays show the same thing, where with gnome startup it made a big desktop.) I have tried somewhat to experiment with using gnome-session to start a modified gnome session, with just the window manager replaced, but so far not with much success. My try below (inspired by reading /usr/bin/gnome-wm) leaves me without a window manager. I can start it from a terminal though, # ~/.xsession # get gnome-wm, which is called from gnome-session, to start ctwm WINDOW_MANAGER=/usr/bin/ctwm export WINDOW_MANAGER # This above doesn't work, try this: gconftool-2 -s /desktop/gnome/session/required_components/windowmanager $WINDOW_MANAGER --type string # gconftool-2 -s /desktop/gnome/applications/window_manager/default $WINDOW_MANAGER --type string exec gnome-session # We should not get here, but just in case: $(WINDOW_MANAGER) -W & xterm -ls I think we want at least "Top Expanded Edge Panel" and "x-nautilus-desktop" to be without borders and title bar. And some key bindings, since the root window is all covered by the x-nautilus-desktop window. I wonder why the above gnome settings don't seem to work, but there must be somehting along those lines to replace the chosen wm less intrusively than I've tried. -Olaf. -- ___ Olaf 'Rhialto' Seibert -- The Doctor: No, 'eureka' is Greek for \X/ rhialto/at/xs4all.nl -- 'this bath is too hot.'
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