In a message dated: Thu, 10 Aug 2000 19:59:56 EDT
Tom Rauschenbach said:
>Suppose one wanted to log in as usera and have KDE come up and then log in as
>userb and run Gnome.
>Assuming a PC type machine, essentially a single user at a time workstation,
>does anyone know how to do this ? I'm not talking about running Gnome apps
>under KDE or vice versa, but really having both environments on one machine.
>Any hints ?
Well, assuming you're using either KDM or GDM as a log in GUI, you can just
log each one in and choose which one you want them to use the first time
(there's a drop down menu that allows you to choose). This will become the
default for them for future sessions.
> And while I'm asking, how does the "startx" command know which to
>start ? I looked and didn't see anything.
'startx' runs xinit, which looks for a file in the user's homedir called
either .xinit or .xsession. This file contains commands to be exec'ed at
"log in time". There's also a default Xinit file somewhere which it will fall
back to if it doesn't find anything in the user's homedir.
>I admit that still have not really
>figured out what XFree86 is doing and why it is used in both environments.
>X is still s puzzle to me.
XFree86 is an Open Source/Free Software implementation of Xwindows.
Xwindows is windowing framwork which allows a user to have multiple "windows"
on their desktop. It provides for basic things like the concepts of windows,
colors, position, size, network connections, etc. But that's it. A user has
very little direct interaction with Xwindows
The window manager is layered on top of Xwindows. The window manager sw makes
use of libraries which contain "widget sets" which define things such as title
bars, scrollbars, borders, buttons, etc. You interect much more with the
window manager than anything else. Examples of window managers are:
ctwm
Enlightenment (default for Gnome)
fvwm (originally "Feeble" Window Manager)
fvwm2 (this is what I use)
kwm (KDE Window Manager)
mwm (Motif Window Manager)
olwm (Open Look Window Manager)
olvwm (Open Look Virtual Window Manager)
twm (the original)
Gnome and KDE are Desktop Environments. They provide an underlaying
application framework which allows *applications* to communicate with each
other (think of embedding a spreadsheet table into a word processor document).
Both are layered on top of window managers, which are in turn layered on top
of Xwindows. Each piece is a completely separate entity. You can use X
without a window manager, you can use a window manager without a desktop
environment. Within Gnome (not sure about KDE) you can switch which window
manager you use. The default is Enlightenment, but you can use fvwm or
sawmill, or any other one.
There is an entire set of O'Reilly books on X, if you're really interested,
you may consider picking one up.
Hope that helps,
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