Re: Choosing among "Desktop Enviroments" and/or "Windows Managers"
On Mon, 16 Sep 2013 13:57:54 -0500
Richard Owlett <rowlett@cloud85.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >> 2. Given that internet is effectively non-existent and
> >> internal/external disk space is effectively unlimited, how can I
> >> make as many as possible of the DE &/or WM on the distribution DVD
> >> simply available to experiment with?
> >
> > apt-get install [metapackage name] for each of them. There's no
> > restriction to only having one installed at a time, you know.
> >
>
> I hoped/suspected apt-get was the answer. But that why I phrased
> it in an open ended manner.
>
> An implied questions include:
> how do I switch between them while comparing?
Your GUI login screen (display manager) will normally offer session
options. I use kdm, though I don't have the full KDE installed. Try:
update-alternatives --list x-session-manager
to see what sessions should be available. Using x-window-manager after
--list will, as you might expect, show you the list of available window
managers. I currently have blackbox, icewm, openbox, twm, xfwm4 and
metacity, though I think the last is a hangover from when I used to run
Gnome. The display manager will usually allow the option of making the
chosen session the default one or not, the latter being more useful
when experimenting. The /etc/X11 directory contains a lot of things
that are useful to study, including the configuration information for
xterm, if you use that.
> will thy potentially interfere with each other?
>
Maybe. This isn't a pre-digested, *integrated* operating system, so it
is possible. The intention of course is otherwise, each DE should have
completely separate configuration information, though they all run the
same applications, and two or more may use the same window manager.
I recently had a hiccup in LXDE, making it difficult to use. No
problem: I had most of Xfce installed, and I added the rest using the
metapackage and just selected it at login time. As it happens, both LXDE
and Xfce use the openbox window manager by default, but impose their own
sets of configurations.
There can be subtleties, particularly with regard to menus. I like the
Debian menu sub-tree, as it contains bits and pieces that the main menu
structure misses (presumably old stuff that doesn't have the
currently-standard menu installation hooks). LXDE in particular has an
aversion to it. My main workstation does have it (I'm back on LXDE) but
another sid LXDE installation doesn't, and when I have an hour or two
to spare I try to work out why not. I do know I had to do some work to
get it in my main workstation menu. NOTE: log everything you do. I
don't.
Remember that even while using one DE, you can usually make use of many
of the features or preferred applications of others. It does mean that
you need a lot of libraries installed, but they are mostly pretty tiny,
and as you say, drive space is fairly cheap and abundant. A minimal
installation might, for example, use PCManFM as the default file
manager, but I happen to like the rather heavyweight Nautilus,
similarly for leafpad and gedit.
--
Joe
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