[conspire] Fwd: Re: Future of GNOME [ruben at mrbrklyn.com]

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Ruben Safir (ruben at mrbrklyn.com):

> I was never happy with the gnome/wmaker integration.  It kills the
> right click.

I never really tried it -- because fundamentally what characterises a DE
within the Unix/X11 world is that you're running an X11 session manager[1],
which in turn runs a metric tonne of 'service' processes that I have no 
particular wish to run.  So, when I've been obliged to live with a
situation like that, pretty much the first change I tend to make is to
shut off the session manager in order to make that noise go away.[2]
The second change I tend to make is to switch WMs to something that's
functional and not overblown -- something like Openbox, Window Maker,
Blackbox, etc.

If I really cared about GNOME3, I _could_ go round up a list of WMs that
are claimed to fully support it, i.e., to keep up with the latest
revolving-door changes at freedesktop.org.  'Awesome' and Window Maker
are apparently two.  I'm sure there are a bunch more.  GNOME Panel,
GNOME Shell, Mutter, Compiz.  Let's see....

It's probably primarily ICCCM support that matters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-Client_Communication_Conventions_Manual
The updated version of ICCM is EWMH.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Window_Manager_Hints

I can't help noticing that KWin is on both lists, creating the
wonderfully loopy situation where the WM most characteristic of KDE is
_also_ a fully qualified GNOME WM.  I think.

Try it.  You might like it.  ;->

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_session_manager
[1] On Debian and kin such as *buntu, it suffices to merely mv the
symlink /etc/alternatives/x-session-manager to something like
'x-session-manager.disabled'.  This is what I tend to do.