Re: Choosing and changing a window manager

[Keith Winston <kwinston@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Charles wrote:
> I am interested in shifting away from both GNOME and KDE and trying out 
> a light weight window manager. I have read through the archives and I 
> haven't seen anything that gives me the information (or the confidence) 
> on how I actually get xwindows to bring up fluxbox, say, or icewin.
>
> Googling didn't seem to help me, either.
>
> Would someone be willing to point me to the information I need to 
> accomplish this?
>
> If anyone want to make a suggestion as to a good, light-weight manager, 
> I am all ears. :-)
Here is how I switch between Icewm, KDE, and Windowmaker in Red Hat 8.0:

First, I boot into runlevel 3 (no GUI) so I can pick which environment I 
want to use, or maybe none at all.  You can set this in /etc/inittab with:

id:3:initdefault:

Next, I set these aliases in my $HOME/.bashrc:

alias x='WM=kde; export WM; startx'
alias ice='WM=ice; export WM; startx'
alias wm='WM=wmaker; export WM; startx'

Finally, I modified my $HOME/.Xclients-default (if you have not run 
switchdesk, then change your .Xclients) to check value of the $WM 
environment variable and start the right window manager.

# Keith Winston 10.21.2002
# Added code to check for different window managers.  The
# WM variable is set in .bashrc aliases.

if [ $WM == "ice" ]; then
    gkrellm &
    xterm -geometry +10+30 &
    xterm -geometry +350+400 &
    xscreensaver -no-splash &
    exec icewm
elif [ $WM == "wmaker" ]; then
    gkrellm &
    xterm -geometry +85+15 &
    xterm -geometry +350+400 &
    xscreensaver -no-splash &
    exec wmaker
else
    exec startkde
fi

Note that the programs started in the background (lines that end with &) 
are not needed.  Now, when I want to start Icewm, I just type "ice" at 
the command prompt, to start WindowMaker, I type "wm", and to start KDE, 
I type "x".

By the way, Icewm is my favorite for speed and flexibility, but you may 
like something else better.

Best Regards,
Keith
--
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