RE: dumbass wm question

[Stephan Engelke <engelke@math.uni-hamburg.de>]

Dominic Blythe writes:
> thanks very much stephan - that clears it up a bit.
> 
> so i could survive with, for instance X + sawmill + midnight commander, but
> then I wouldn't necessarily have all the handy taskbar/configuration
> utilities?

sort of :-)
Since neither KDE nor GNOME are mopnolithic block of software but
consist of a ton of small programs, there is no reason, why you cannot
start the relevant programs for the taskbar.

If you installed GNOME, try running "gnome-panel" after starting up X.
This will give you the panel, and it will also start up an instance of
the GNOME Midnight Commander, a filemanager.  You will not have the
session management by GNOME, i.e. saving and resorting the desktop
status and you will have to configure each application indiviually,
whereas when  using GNOME right away (starting gnome-session as your
window-manager) you are able to use the gnome control center to
centrally configure everything.  You should be able to use sawmill as
you Window Manager and have all the other neat stuff.

As usually, there's more than one way to do it.

Have fun -- Stephan
-- 
Stephan Engelke                                    engelke@math.uni-hamburg.de
       *** "He's dead, Jim. You grab his wallet, I'll grab his tricorder." ***