[Gllug] What is the Gnome & KDE difference??
Steve Nelson
sanelson at gmail.com
Thu Mar 30 09:09:13 UTC 2006
On 3/29/06, Nix <nix at esperi.org.uk> wrote:
> The sort of people who complain about bloat
> tend to be people (like me ;) ) who use X as a platform to run a heap of
> xterms and and a text editor or six: these people aren't *using* any of
> the apps that would need the features that that extra code provides, so
> from their POV it's pure bloat.
Indeed - and for this reason I find Debian to be a joy to use for
setting up a workstation. I have no need for any of the gnome or kde
chuff, I just get the core X stuff installed, and add ratpoison and
openbox as my two window managers - the latter for rare occasions when
overlapping and tiled windows are useful (gimp is the normal example).
Given that I spend my entire life in xterm+screen with an occasional
foray into a graphical browser if its not just text I'm reading, I
have no need for anything else.
If you (the OP) want to get an idea of the difference between desktop
environment and window manager, try adding bits a piece at a time.
For example, just starting X with no window manager at all, and seeing
what that does. Then add metacity. Now try to work out how to launch
new applications? If we were following a modular approach what might
we do? In gnome world, you could add a panel. Now remove metacity,
and install something like openbox. Then try fvwm2. This way you get
a feel for what does what. If you want, you could install nautilus
with some other window manager. Its all like lego - and playing like
this helps you understand how it all fits together. Incidentally,
fvwm is a really super window manager with excellent documentation -
using and configuring this for a while is a great learning experience.
S.
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