Re: gnome-wm

[Johannes Rohr <j.rohr@comlink.apc.org>]

Christian Marillat <marillat.christian@wanadoo.fr> writes:

> Sven Luther <luther@dpt-info.u-strasbg.fr> writes:
> 
> > On Wed, Oct 30, 2002 at 10:09:12PM +0100, Christian Marillat wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
> > The gnome metapackage is broken ? If yes you should file a bug report.
> 
> > Christian, do you believe that after having done an upgrade from gnome 1
> > to gnome 2 and having changed _no_ configuration file, having twm as
> > default windows manager is a sane default ? Especially if you were using
> > sawfish before ?
> 
> As we said here before you should use the x-window-manger
> update-alternative to select your window manager. This *work* in
> gnome-session 2.0.8-4

But as a matter of fact, 

- inexpirienced users are unaware of this and regularly do run into
  the troubles, discussed here. It is a _real_ problem.

- update-alternatives does not only affect Gnome but also determines,
  which window manager is used by default if you do "startx" or choose
  gdm's XSession . But as a standalone window manager, metacity is
  mostly useless, because it does not provide menus, backgrounds and
  other stuff you would expect to have. As "x-window-manager" I would
  rather use WindowMaker or icewm. In my view, defining a system wide
  default wm and defining a default wm for gnome-session are seperate issues.

- Setting the environment variable or reconfiguring x-window-manager
  helps only if ~/.gnome2/session and the gconf-Setting do not yet
  exist. But since most inexpirienced users first start Gnome 2 which
  initially comes up with twm and only after that start looking for a
  way to get rid of it (i.e. twm), neither changing x-window-manager
  nor setting WINDOW_MANGER will help them.

> > What was being discussed in this thread is that people should but an
> > environment variable in order to set a windows manager for a user, while
> > the problem is mostly that people complain (see the first post in this
> > thread) about having twm as _default_ windows manager, not as the wm
> > they did choose.
> 
> > So, should i fill a bug for this reason ?
> 
> I think you don't understand. If the environment variable WINDOW_MANAGER
> is set to an window manager *this* window manager is used instead of
> x-window-manager.

But how and where is a user installing Gnome 2 expected to _learn_
about this? Debconf should _at least_ issue a clear warning when
installing gnome-session.

But the simplest way to prevent _lots_ of complaints and bug reports
is to ensure a reasonable default setting. I also assume that this is,
what upstream expects the packagers and distributors to do.

Sorry for nagging, but I have already seen users turn their back on
Gnome because of the WM issue, which makes me sad because else it is
an excellent desktop!

Thanks,

Johannes

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