On Sun, 2005-02-13 at 02:11 +0100, Holly Bostick wrote:If you do the latter (change GNOME's WM) you still have all the infrastructure of GNOME running on the backend (most notably Nautilus,
to draw the desktop, for one example).
Just this example is one I dislike, since I personally run it without
Nautilus on the desktop.
Maybe you do, but many/most users who run GNOME itself do use Nautilus on the desktop, either because it's the default config which they don't know how to change (many avoid delving into gconf-editor), or because if you don't use it this way, there's not all that much point in running GNOME (rather than another, lighter, desktop such as OB or flux with some GNOME components addded, or just switching to XFCE or ROX or something).
Basically, the fact that you run some GTK programs does not mean that you need to run the entire GNOME backend if you don't want to, any more than running some QT-based programs means you have to run KDE (I'm very fond of Krusader, but not KDE). Most of the GNOME "frontend" (features specific to GNOME) turns out to be useless to me; the day that I realized that all I really wanted from GNOME was gnome-panel and the supportive backend for the GTK apps that I do commonly run, was the day I switched to OB (and stopped trying to use OB as the GNOME WM).
If you run gnome-panel under a different WM (but not gnome-session),
the GNOME backend is much minimized, which really speeds things up a
lot.
For a few things, however not all. You instead postpone the load of a few factors until after program initialization.
Yes, I did oversimplify. But again, even postponing the load of a few factors until after WM initialization is a big benefit, because you may not run the programs that load these additional few factors until later in the session, if at all, in which case the resources remain free for other use until such time as you do (as opposed to being automatically eaten up by the DE *just in case* you run these features).
The one I really like is the gnome-settings backend, which sets fonts, DPI theme and so on, (and that I cheatingly use to set my background, rather than a configfile where I had bsetbg before) Why? Because I liked the gui. ;)
Yes, I use that too (trading overhead for convenience. It's not a horrible drain imo, though many dislike it). How do you use it to set your BG?
The other thing that is nice about having the session managing the backend rather than the windowmanager, is that you can restart the WM without risking anything. ( good for openbox when you muck up the xml syntax. What? You've never done that? I hope you're kidding me, that is one of the ... ugh. :p )
Umm... I don't know how you are doing this, but when I use the Openbox
"Reconfigure" menu item, only OB itself is restarted, no currently open programs are closed or disturbed in any way (except for redrawing), so using that (which is specifically hard-coded in the default menu for just that purpose) does not risk anything. And since there's not much else to change but the menus or the keybindings, there's not much to be mucked up anyway (all my "Autostart" type functionality is handled by a completely "outside" script, which requires a real logoff to re-run-- but I understand that and do not object to logging off and back on if I've edited this script).
The other reason that I don't want gnome-session managing OB is that if I then log into GNOME, the session is messed up/different/changed, as getting gnome-session to differentiate between "the default session I want to load if I am using openbox" and "the default session I want to use if I am using GNOME" appears to be an impossible dream for me. You are supposed to be able to do this, but I have not been able to get it to work.
gconf-d will run anyhow. you have the panel, panel needs its configuration.
Yes. I never said that no portion of the GNOME backend would run if you use GNOME components under other WMs. But many fewer of them run (just the ones needed for the components you are running) than when you run GNOME directly (where all the backend for all components runs, whether you need/want that component or not, unless you specifically disable the given component, which reduces GNOME's functionality, making it less reasonable to run GNOME directly at all).
If you don't use gnome-panel, what is the point of running GNOME? If you want another panel, there's plenty of them that can replace the taskbar, not to mention starter bars for quicklaunching. If you disable Nautilus drawing the desktop (either to have no icons on your desktop, or to replace it with idesk), what is the point of running GNOME specifically, as opposed to WindowMaker or ratpoison, or XFCE? You can run any installed program from a Run box (I like gmrun), the terminal, an alternate panel, or (in the case of OB) a right-click desktop menu, so the only benefit you really have by running GNOME directly, without actually using GNOME features, is Metacity. Which is nice enough, but not really a reason to run a whole desktop environment you don't use (I wouldn't run KDE just because I liked kwin either).
the vfs-daemon will run if its needed by an application, not started by the session.
So if you don't run an application that needs it, it won't run, but the default gnome session does most likely run an application that needs it (nautilus), and further, because the other major point of a session manager is to reopen the applications open in the last session, probably the session probably will be opening an application that runs such a daemon.
Other things might want the sm-proxy (if you launch other items from the session) but to avoid clobbering, I keep my session to a few defaults, and don't save it at exit.
Yes, you can do it that way. But you're eviscerating the session manager's functionality while still retaining its entire backend overhead. You could run a script at WM startup to "just run a few defaults" (which is what I do)... and if you don't save changes at exit, what use is a session manager that has a whole backend specifically to support this feature that you do not use?
Hopefully a bit clearer on what the session manager actually does :)
:-)
Holly
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