Quoting Joon Guillen ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):
> I'm planning to depart from my KDE desktop environment and try to make
> my own custom one. As I understand, one needs to start with a certain
> window manager, and then build his/her desktop domain from there.
> Please correct me if I'm wrong.
There may be some confusion about parts of the above, maybe not on your
part but among some readers (which is my excuse to write about the
subject <grin> ).
The concept of "desktop environment" isn't really present in X11 at all,
but rather is kind of a marketing concept on the part of the KDE and
GNOME people. In X11, there is an X11 "server" (a graphics engine,
which serves up to applications its ability to draw things on an output
device), all manner of X11 clients (application, which themselves lack
any notion of how to deal with output devices), and one special X11
client called a "window manager" that provides control over all the
other devices and furnishes their scrollbars, close boxes, menus, etc.
(Optionally, there may also be a "display manager" that provides
graphical login and spawns X11 sessions after authentication, and maybe
a "session manager" that remembers what was open when the user was
last running X11, so those can be reopend next time.)
Those are the basic parts of X11, and are always present. KDE and GNOME
overlay that fundamental structure with a component software facility
(a CORBA broker) and a set of standard libraries. KDE provides a
default window manager ("kwm"), while there isn't one specific one for
GNOME. Also, both "desktop environments'" login scripts default to
autostarting a rather large number of X11 utility applications.
Which brings us back to your situation. You want to change something,
but aren't all that clear on what you want to change and why. One
approach you could take is to stay within the KDE framework and
substitute a different window manager (in place of kwm). For example,
you could try my personal favourite window manager, Window Maker, which
happens to support KDE "hinting". Alternatively, if what you're trying
to fix is KDE's bloat and its habit of autoloading larges amounts of
fairly pointless utilities into RAM, you could find the script file that
does that, and pare it down. Or you could do both.
On the other hand, you might have no real use for the "desktop"
facilities KDE offers (such as its component software capabilities),
and so want to revert to a traditionalist X11 environment, such as I
describe three paragraphs up. If so, you could start _just_ a window
manager of your choosing (such as Window Maker <grin> ), and not use
the KDE framework to do so. E.g., if you're starting X11 from a
console-mode command line (as opposed to a display manager), you could
just do:
$ which wmaker > ~/.xinitrc
And then, subsequent invocations of "exec startx" will start an X11
session with Window Maker as your window manager.
If you'd like to compare various window managers, instead, try this:
1. Kill your display manager, if any, so that X11 isn't running at all.
2. Do "which xterm > ~/.xinitrc
That step sets up X11 to start _only_ an xterm, with no window manager.
3. Do "exec startx".
Notice that you will see a mottled, plain X11 screen and a single xterm
with no control features on it whatsoever.
4. Do "wmaker &".
Notice that you now see on the edges of the xterm the characteristic
controls of Window Maker (which was directly inspired by NeXTStep), plus
you should see the Dock applet in the upper right, and the paper clip
panel in the upper left. Note that mouse button 2 brings up the Window
Maker menu. Play with it. Figure out how the multiple Workspaces work.
(Notice how Alt-1, Alt-2 work when you have multiple Workspaces. Note how
Alt-Tab works within a workspace. Notice how these jointly let you
avoid having to use the mouse at all, if you're a keyboard junkie.
5. Do "killall wmaker". Do "blackbox &". (If such window managers
aren't on your user's PATH, you might need to provide full pathspecs.)
You'll now see the Window Maker features disappear, and Blackbox's
replace them. You can repeat these steps as desired, to compare and
contrast all the window managers you know about on your system.
--
Cheers, "On the face of it, Microsoft complaining about the source license
Rick Moen used by Linux is like the event horizon calling the kettle black."
[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Adam Barr, former Microsoft Corp. programmer
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