On 04/26/2018 09:45 AM, Beartooth wrote: > On Wed, 18 Apr 2018 23:07:05 +0100, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote: > >> On Wed, 2018-04-18 at 17:30 +0000, Beartooth wrote: >>> On Tue, 17 Apr 2018 22:42:53 +0100, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote: >>> >>>> The details differ according to which desktop manager (DM) you're >>>> using (which is *not* the same as the Desktop Environment). > > Wikipedia seems to conflate them. Got a link to something better? > And where do window managers come into all this? Is that just an already > obsolete term of art, or are they a third thing? DMs (display managers such as lightdm, kdm, gdm) start up the windowing environment (such as Wayland or X). They also put up the "greeter", which is what asks for your username/password combination and (if you have multiple desktop environments) which one of those you want (Xfce, Gnome, KDE, etc.) and possibly which session (if you've saved multiple ones). Note that not all DMs support both Wayland and X (example: lightdm does not support Wayland yet and may never do so). The window manager (WM, such as mutter, xfwm4, uwm, etc.) is what manages the desktop environment's windows, decorations, themes and the like. Each environment has its preferred WM (Gnome likes mutter, Xfce prefers xfwm4). The main thing to keep in mind is that they are separate things that do different jobs and at different layers. In a simplified view, Wayland and X are at the lowest level and actually drive the display. The DM is the next layer up and initializes Wayland or X, presents the greeter, authenticates you and starts the desktop environment's window manager (WM) and your desktop session. The WM makes requests of the DM, which eventually wends its way down to the windowing system (Wayland or X) for actual display. Like I said, that's sort of a simplified way of looking at it and it's not 100% accurate (these things are a bit incestuous) but it helps keep it straight in your head (well, mine at least). [snip] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- - Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer, AllDigital ricks@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx - - AIM/Skype: therps2 ICQ: 22643734 Yahoo: origrps2 - - - - Squawk! Pieces of Seven! Pieces of Seven! Parity Error! - ---------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ users mailing list -- users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
