Re: gnome2 and window managers
Michel Dänzer <daenzer@debian.org> writes:
> On Fri, 2002-07-12 at 15:28, Jack Howarth wrote:
> > Last night, after rebuilding Branden's XFree86 4.2.0 test packages
> > with some additional r128 patches, I noticed that the reinstallation
> > of the XFree86 packages caused the window manager to be reset to twm.
> > Having gdm2 installed, what I noticed was that when I logged in,
> > the Gnome 2 splash screen would show that the sawfish window manager
> > was loading. However when X started to open up windows for the gnome
> > session each item was in its own twm window (the panel dock, the
> > nautilus2 desktop, the menu bar, etc). I was able to fix this by
> > changing the symlink for /etc/alternatives/x-window-manager from twm
> > to sawfish.
>
> Ouch, man update-alternatives.
Well, but the point is - this should not happen at all. gnome-session2
should *not* by default start twm, WindowMaker or E (through the
x-window-manager symlink) but Sawfish or Metacity, since the former
ones do not cooperate well with gnome 2.
I experienced the same as Jack - on the initial startup gnome-session2
launched WindowMaker which completely messed up the desktop. Since
there is no more WM selection capplet in the new control center, I had
to kill wmaker manually and then launch Metacity.
Since on most systems, I assume, x-window-manager does not point to
Sawfish or metacity but to twm, fvwm, wmaker, e or something else,
most users will go through the same. And unless they already know that
they have to kill their WM and launch another one manually, they will
never come to see a usable desktop.
My conclusion is that the gnome-session program should disregard
Debian's x-window-manager and instead launch a gnome2-compatible WM
(sawfish or metacity), if available and no user configuration is
present yet. To make this possible, gnome-session2 should depend on
sawfish2 or metacity.
Thanks,
Johannes
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