[TriLUG] Newbie question...Desktops

[Kevin - The Alchemist - Sonney]

On Mon, 2002-01-14 at 00:21, Vestal, Roy L. wrote:
> I'd like to ask how do I change Desktops? I have Gnome and KDE and I've
> added BlackBox. The only way I've ever changed is
> switchdesk-kde/switchdesk-gnome/switchdesk. I've tried these, but BlackBox
> is not there. I've tried their site, but I can not get to the instructions.
> I've looked on LDP, but nothing there is working either.
> 
> any suggestions? Am I getting my Windows Managers/Desktops confused?

Ben is absolutely correct. Blackbox is a window manager (like Sawfish is
in Gnome). This means that it has all the abilities to create desktop
menus and window frames, but no button panels, desktop icons, & etc. 

Switchdesk changes your entire X environment by modifying the .Xclients
files in your home directory. The main .Xclients file looks for other
.Xlcients files :

.Xclients-$HOSTNAME:$DISPLAY
.Xclients-default

First, it looks for one for yuore current host & display. For example,
if you're on a machine called "fubar.rti.org" and display :0.0, it will
look for :

.Xclients-foobar.rti.org:0.0

If it can't find that file, it will fall back .$Xclients-default. 

In either case, the file is basically a shell script that is executed
when X starts. So : 
- if you wanted to run blackbox by default, you can change the
.Xclients-default to read :

# Default Window Manager
blackbox

And voila! you get blackbox.
- If you share your home directory among many machines, you may want to
to run twm (eww) as your default (because twm is on most *nix systems, I
think), you would make .Xclients-default read :

# default wm
twm

But twm sucks, so you really want to run blackbox on fubar, since that's
your primary Linux box. So, you create a .Xclients-fubar.rti.org:0.0
that reads :

# fubar's wm
blackbox

See? That's not so bad. 

Now, running blackbox is what I almost consider an "advaced topic" for
new-er users, like yourself. if you have any questions ("Ahh! Where are
the desktop switching hotkeys!" "Hmm. I miss my gnome panel" and etc)
ask away!

-- 
--------------------------------------------
--      Kevin "The Alchemist" Sonney      --
--  New email : alchemist at darkcanvas.com  --
--  http://www.darkcanvas.com/~alchemist  --
--  ICQ: 4855069            AIM: ksonney  --
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