John L. Cunningham wrote: > peasthope@shaw.ca wrote: > > In all the screenshots I've seen, the xmonad windows occupy the > > whole screen with nothing else visible at the edges. So I wonder > > whether xmonad can run on X without a desktop environment. > > Explanations? > > xmonad is a tiling window manager. The windows expand and/or contract so > that the entire screen is always filled. (Unless you have configured it > to behave otherwise). You may want to search for xmonad on youtube to > see it in action. Additionally there are (at least) three layers when looking at this topic. The X Window System itself, window managers, desktop environments, in that order. X can be run by itself, albeit not very usefully. Window managers need X. You can run very well with X and a window manager and without a desktop environment. Desktop Environments need X and usually need a window manager. This is implementation dependent. GNOME 2 definitely worked in conjuction with a window manager such as sawfish in the earlier days and then metacity in the later days. Desktop environments are often criticized for being very heavy and bloated. Xmonad is a window manager. It may run on X and under a DE. But it does not require a DE. It is perfectly functional by itself on X without a DE. Xmonad should run fine under LXDE. I believe that by default LXDE uses openbox as the window manager. That means that before switching to xmonad you should kill exit openbox first. LXDE is a desktop environment. It is relatively lightweight when compared to GNOME and KDE. But relatively heavy when compared to X and a light window manager by itself. I personally don't like the heavy desktop environments. I run X with a window manager but without a desktop session manager. For the previous couple of decades it was fvwm. A very nice environment. These days I am using awesome window manager. I am also exploring stumpwm and xmonad too. All tiling managers. All without a desktop environment such as LXDE, KDE, or GNOME. > > Does anyone here use xmonad? How do you start it? > > How does xdm know to start LXDE if you don't have a ~/.xsession file? On Debian the default /etc/X11/Xsession will use a default if you don't have one of your own. The Debian one must handle different packages being installed and removed therefore it uses the command x-session-manager as an "alternatives" management system. Various window managers install alternatives to it. It always points to either the highest priority installed one, the last installed one if there are equal priorities, or the manually selected one. Run this: $ update-alternatives --display x-session-manager The output will be different depending upon what you have installed and the order you installed them. Bob
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