Window manager for gnome

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Newsgroups:  comp.os.linux.x
Date:        21 Oct 2003 23:14:44 GMT

> I'm doing customized RH installation. Now my gnome has comes to a weird
> situation that it uses twwm for its window manager. You can tell exactly
> that it is twwm by it distinct window frame, icons, and especially you
> need to place *every* window, including the gnome-panel and
> gnome-root. Kind of funny, my gnome. :-)
>
> So, which window manager gnome default uses? Which rpm package have I
> left out?

Gnome uses twm if it can't find anything better, e.g. sawfish-1.3, icewm-1.2.13, fvwm-2.5.x or enlightenment-0.16.6-pre8.

Try xfwm4, it is much better than the default wm (metacity)
www.xfce.org/en/xfwm4_themes.html
www.xfce.org/archive/xfce-4.0.0/rpm/rh9/

to replace twm, type

killall twm && xfwm4 &

and save the session.

Achim Linder

Window manager for gnome

> > This is not a weird question, :-), I though gnome is *the* window
> > manager too before.

GNOME and KDE are desktop environments, not window managers. A window manager is a relatively small piece of code that lets you place, move, and resize windows in X. A desktop environment provides services above and beyond what a window manager does, like KDE's interapplication communications protocol DCOP, and a set of programs that all work together and follow similar GUI styles.

> > I'm doing customized RH installation. Now my gnome has comes to a
> > weird situation that it uses twwm for its window manager.  So, which
> > window manager gnome default uses? Which rpm package have I left out?

X runs whatever window manager you have configured X to run. GNOME has _exactly nothing_ to do with that.

Um. GNOME starts a window manager from its startup script when it is invoked from xdm/kdm/gdm. That script is probably under /etc/X11/Sessions/gnome* . You can peek at that startup script and see what exactly is going on.

KDE, when invoked with "startkde", runs a window manager called kwin by default—you can run others, but kwin is installed by default with KDE and such.

GNOME can run a number of different window managers. sawfish was the default for a while, but IIRC the window manager that GNOME uses now is called metacity. If "which metacity" returns "no metacity in $PATH", then try installing metacity from your distro CDs. HTH,

Matt G