[conspire] running without a DE- ancilliary tools? [was Re: (forw) Re: InstallFest on Apr. 13th]

[Tony Godshall]

> My _personal_ preference is to use no Desktop Environment whatsoever,
> and just a nice clean window manager with no DE.
> (The 'tl;dr' version is:  DEs appear to mostly appeal to people who like
> drag and drop file handling.  Since I don't, I would rather eschew DEs.)
>
> More about that (recommended, if I may be so bold):
> http://lists.svlug.org/archives/svlug/2013-March/057971.html
> Note in particular the recommendation to visit Matt Chapman's
> site comparing DEs and various window managers:
> http://xwinman.org/


of particular importance in these modern days, what with mobile
devices and all, is ability to configure networks (esp wifi) and
external monitors, tools for which DE's often include and but window
managers often do not.  What have folks found useful to manipulate
networking and monitors?  For scriptability of course there's ifconfig
and iwconfig and xrandr.  What about interactive front ends?