On Mon, 01 Apr 2002 13:20:44 -0500 Cheshire Cat <cheshirecat@covad.net> wrote: > > Can XFree86 run as a no-desktop X server? It's not clear what you mean by "desktop" here. You can certainly run X with no window manager, try it. Just start an xterm instead of a window manager in your .xinitrc or .xsession. I think you'll find that when you start more clients, all the windows will be placed at 0,0 and you'll have no way to switch focus among them or move them around. > That is to say can it > behave like Hummingbird's eXceed version 6.x, where there isn't any X > desktop or window manager to speak of - X apps just popup onto the > Windoze environment (I guess there's still a window manager, but it > just manages each X window - not a desktop; perhaps that behavior is > due to an eXceed proprietary wm (?) I believe what's going on here is that window management services (focus and placement) are provided by MS-Windows. What are you trying to accomplish? I think you'll find that if you want to run more than one client concurrently, you'll want some sort of window manager. There are some very small, simple, light-weight ones out there. I personally like Blackbox, but there are some that are even smaller and simpler. Look around at http://www.plig.org/xwinman/ Also bear in mind that the window manager has no more need than any other client to run on the same host as the server. You can put your window manager on any convenient host and start it automatically when you log into the X server host. > I'm wondering if anyone knows of a 'xstart' clone (another eXceed > feature - it manages an rsh/ssh/whatever login and scripts commands > to, say, start a remote X app.) Uh, how much management does rsh/ssh/whatever require? Hummingbird provides xstart because a) MS-Windows doesn't come with proper rsh/ssh/whatever clients and b) MS-Windows users seem to prefer graphical programs with configuration dialogs over command-line programs that can be used conveniently in scripts. With Blackbox as an example window manager, you would specify an rsh/ssh/whatever command line, including host and X11 client to be run on that host, to be run as a menu selection. Click mouse button 3 on the root window and the menu pops up, showing all the choices you've previously specified. Pick an item from the menu and the rsh/ssh/whatever command runs. If the command needs a password you'll probably have to do something a little more sophisticated; "man ssh-agent" should get you started on that. -- Remember, more computing power was thrown away last week than existed in the world in 1982. -- http://www.tom.womack.net/computing/prices.html
