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

[Tony Godshall]

On Tue, Apr 16, 2013 at 9:35 AM, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:
> Quoting Tony Godshall (togo at of.net):
>
>> 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.
>
> No, wrong.
>
> Any such tool is _merely_ an X client application with dependencies.
> Install the application with your package management tools, and it
> should run just fine.  Of course, you must first know its package name.
> I notice that DE users most often have absolutely no idea what either
> the package or the binary name is of almost anything they install and
> use.  This trait is most particularly annoying when they're asking me
> for help with some graphical tool and I wish to install it so I can see
> how it works.
>
> 'What's the package name?'
> 'I don't know.'
> 'What's the name of the binary, then?'
> 'I don't know that, either.  You just go to the foo menu and pick bar
> from it.'
>
> Which is a lovely description for others who are using exactly the same
> DE configured in exactly the same way, but useless for anyone else.
>
>> What have folks found useful to manipulate networking and monitors?
>
> Me, I use mostly vi.
>
> Not the answer you wanted, I know.


And not a particularly useful answer for those wishing to divorce
themselves of Gnome or KDE.

I imagine once I determine what tools I can use to switch monitors
from commandline I'll use vi myself to make scripts that detect
location[1] and switch configuration appropriately and then I won't
use any gui tool at all.  If and when I do, I'll share that info here.

Anyone have any pointers for digging into what the gnome or kde
widgets actually do behind the scenes?

Tony


 [1]ifconfig 0.0.0.0 up followed by arping works well for wired
networks and iwlist scan works well for wifi)