Josh Triplett <j...@joshtriplett.org> writes: > Based on some conversations on #debian-devel on the purpose of > x-window-manager (as launched by > /etc/X11/Xsession.d/50x11-common_determine-startup), it seems like a > window manager that just manages windows, and expects a separately > launched menu/taskbar program or desktop environment to provide the > ability for the user to launch programs or otherwise do anything useful, > shouldn't register an x-window-manager alternative at all. Otherwise, > the user might end up staring at a desktop they can't interact with at > all.
Er, this seems to imply that twm shouldn't register as x-window-manager, which sounds wrong and isn't how Debian has ever worked. Or am I misunderstanding what you mean by "just manages windows"? I realize that nearly everyone uses a desktop environment these days, but it used to be very common to just launch a windows manager and then use ~/.xsession to launch some xterms, and I don't think we want to break that functionality unless something is actually broken now. I'm sure someone is still doing this. Last time I checked, startx relies on the x-window-manager alternative to figure out what to start, so removing that alternative would break such a setup. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
