Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (3959 mails)

[Anders Johansson <andjoh@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 2003-01-21 at 22:39, Kevin McLauchlan wrote:
> On Tuesday 21 January 2003 16:17, Matt Stamm 
> wrote:
> > With all the opinions on desktop environments,
> > it begs the question (at least from a beginner
> > like myself!), how easy is it to switch
> > desktops, and can it be done on the fly? Can
> > you run them at the same time?
> 
> This question also interests me.
> 
> I know that I can exit to kdm (or gdm if I'm 
> running that...) and select any of the other 
> Desktop managers or Window Managers that I 
> previously installed, but this raises questions 
> about what is being loaded.
> 
> If I load Enlightenment or Ice or fvwm2 (etc.) 
> from kdm, am I also running a bunch of KDE 
> structure that would NOT be present if I were 
> to boot into xdm and start the same window 
> manglers from there??

No

> 
> Similarly, what's supposed to happen if I boot 
> into xdm and start (say...) Blackbox, and then 
> launch KMail?   And, what about when I quit 
> KMail... is there a lot of K stuff still 
> loaded/active?

Yes

At least for a while. The kde daemons will die when the last client has
exited, but there is a timeout before that happens.

> 
> Is there a difference in what's loaded/running 
> if I invoke Ice from kdm, versus from gdm?

That depends on how it's set up. The *fact* of kdm or gdm won't make a
difference, but they are different programs with different
configurations. They will load what they are told.

> What about if GNOME is running when I launch 
> Ice?

I wonder if it's possible to "run" Gnome without a window manager. I
don't think so. And you can't run two window managers at the same time.

Having said that, it's a part of the documentation of garnome that to
switch from sawfish to the new metacity you should

killall sawfish; sleep 1; metacity &

I guess something similar could be done to swap in icewm.

> Does some GNOME stuff shut down? or 
> is it all still there behind the Ice curtain?

The curtain would be held by Gnome in this case. Ice would sit quietly
in the background and maybe draw a window title bar or two.

There is a big difference between Desktop Environments and window
managers. Check out http://freedesktop.org for a brief description.

> 
> Finally, what about starting GNOME from kdm
> or KDE from gdm?

No problems.

> Silly? Possible problems? 
> Any difference from using xdm?

Yes, in xdm you can't really select anything. You have to edit config
files manually. That's why kdm, gdm, wdm, elogind etc etc etc were
written.

> 
> I assume that the major desktops are best started 
> from their respective managers, but what's the 
> functional difference?

None.

Their respective environments will have config tools for them, so it
might be a good idea to have them installed, but apart from that there's
nothing tying kdm to kde. Look'n'feel on the login screen and config
tools, that's all.

-- 
Anders Johansson <andjoh@xxxxxxxxxx>