Christian Marillat <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Sven Luther <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > On Wed, Oct 30, 2002 at 10:09:12PM +0100, Christian Marillat wrote: > > [...] > > > The gnome metapackage is broken ? If yes you should file a bug report. > > > Christian, do you believe that after having done an upgrade from gnome 1 > > to gnome 2 and having changed _no_ configuration file, having twm as > > default windows manager is a sane default ? Especially if you were using > > sawfish before ? > > As we said here before you should use the x-window-manger > update-alternative to select your window manager. This *work* in > gnome-session 2.0.8-4
But as a matter of fact, - inexpirienced users are unaware of this and regularly do run into the troubles, discussed here. It is a _real_ problem. - update-alternatives does not only affect Gnome but also determines, which window manager is used by default if you do "startx" or choose gdm's XSession . But as a standalone window manager, metacity is mostly useless, because it does not provide menus, backgrounds and other stuff you would expect to have. As "x-window-manager" I would rather use WindowMaker or icewm. In my view, defining a system wide default wm and defining a default wm for gnome-session are seperate issues. - Setting the environment variable or reconfiguring x-window-manager helps only if ~/.gnome2/session and the gconf-Setting do not yet exist. But since most inexpirienced users first start Gnome 2 which initially comes up with twm and only after that start looking for a way to get rid of it (i.e. twm), neither changing x-window-manager nor setting WINDOW_MANGER will help them. > > What was being discussed in this thread is that people should but an > > environment variable in order to set a windows manager for a user, while > > the problem is mostly that people complain (see the first post in this > > thread) about having twm as _default_ windows manager, not as the wm > > they did choose. > > > So, should i fill a bug for this reason ? > > I think you don't understand. If the environment variable WINDOW_MANAGER > is set to an window manager *this* window manager is used instead of > x-window-manager. But how and where is a user installing Gnome 2 expected to _learn_ about this? Debconf should _at least_ issue a clear warning when installing gnome-session. But the simplest way to prevent _lots_ of complaints and bug reports is to ensure a reasonable default setting. I also assume that this is, what upstream expects the packagers and distributors to do. Sorry for nagging, but I have already seen users turn their back on Gnome because of the WM issue, which makes me sad because else it is an excellent desktop! Thanks, Johannes -- ~/.signature under construction
