[BUGS] x11 & window managers

[Andrew Reilly]

Hi Jonathan,

On Tue, 11 Dec 2007 22:41:27 +1100
> i have (i think) gotten my desktop to teh point where i would
> like it to be, before i start to followup all those error
> messages some applications constantly fill teh log files with
> upon startup, but that is for another story/day/something like
> that .. 
> 
> i have setup basic freebsd desktop using the gnome school of
> thought, though i may be changing to kde sooner that latter, i
> think. but, for the moment my problem is not being able to
> change (forced or otherwise) the underlaying window manager.
> 
> my prefered/faverite is fvwm2 (no preaching, i've used it for
> 10 plus years and its too hard for me to change) i have read
> that if you set teh window_manager=fvwm2 and restart x11, even
> if i shutdown 1/ x11, 2/ teh computer as a whole .. it still
> comes back with metacity as teh underlaying window manager ...
> grrrr.
> 
> how do i change this wiout tearing it all down and rebuilding
> .. i am not sure if i can do that again ?? not at this point in
> time, other problems bearing  down.

GNOME has replaced, or rather: obviated the need for,
the old .xinitrc script. I think that it is still run, if it's
there.  In its place is the "session manager", which both starts up the things that need to be started at boot time, it also remembers what was running when you logged out or shut down, and restarts those the next time you log in (optionally: it's configurable).  It also (supposedly) watches the things that it starts, and if they're marked "restart", then it will/should restart them if they exit unexpectedly.  The window manager is one such "marked for restart" application.  You can see what's on the session manager list by pulling up the System>Preferences>Sessions dialog, and click to the second "Current Session" tab.  You can probably see that metacity is up there as a restart task.  Now, I don't have any window managers that I would rather run[1], so I'm not going to try this suggestion on myself, but the general approach is to get focus in a terminal window and issue a command something like:
killall metacity && fvwm2 &

You might need to tell the session manager that you want metacity
to be a "normal" application before this step, and you'll
probably have to tell it that fvwm2 should be a "Restart"
application of appropriate priority after it has taken over.

Let us know how you go?

> ideas plans appreciated

At the GDM login, which you don't seem to be using, so this
advice probably isn't all that helpful, there's usually an
"emergency twm session" option, which, if selected, will fire up
twm in the usual, old-school way, leaving gnome mostly turned-off.

[1] I liked sawfish, for a while: I could see some good uses for
a dynamic, lispy configuration language, but ultimately I couldn't
be bothered tweaking the config files.  I had previously enjoyed
wmx (not in ports, but check out wm2 and follow the links on its
home page, if you're interested), and that convinced me that it
was essentially possible to have a window manager that didn't
have a configuration file that I had to keep futzing with.
Metacity claims to have been influenced by wm2, and while it's
visually less interesting, I like its good integration with GNOME
and it's theme engines, and the fact that it doesn't get in the
way.  I'm firmly in the GNOME camp: my computer should get out
of my way and let me get on with my work.  Obviously, ymmv, but
I'm not going back to a config-file driven window manager any
time soon.

-- 
Andrew