Re: preserving window manager selection on upgrades.
>
> On Sun, May 21, 2000 at 09:54:09PM -0500, Jesse Jacobsen wrote:
> > Sorry to nose into a thread here... but the change to wm alternatives
> > was a slight nuisance for me. AFAICT, under the alternatives system,
> > there's no way to have a per-user setting for x-window-manager, is
> > there?
>
> echo 'PATH=$PATH:~/bin" > .bashrc
> mkdir ~/bin
> ln -s /usr/bin/X11/your-favorite-wm ~/bin/x-window-manager
>
> --
> G. Branden Robinson | I've made up my mind. Don't try to
> Debian GNU/Linux | confuse me with the facts.
> branden@ecn.purdue.edu | -- Indiana Senator Earl Landgrebe
> roger.ecn.purdue.edu/~branden/ |
This surely works but it isn't the easier and the most general way to do it.
There is a better method of allowing users to choose their favorite wm and
even be able to use a different one for each X session startup.
The idea is to install a "sensible-window-manager" script which can be
controlled by an environment variable, like the sensible-editor script.
The script should try in this order the following alternatives:
1. the WINDOW_MANAGER environment variable if defined by the user
2. the x-window-manager command, setup with update-alternatives
3. the default X window manager (twm) if none of the above is executable
The same algorithm should be used also by Xsession, in case the user doesn't
have a .xsession script.
In this way each user can simply put the following line in his .xsession:
exec sensible-window-manager
and define his favorite wm in his .profile with:
export WINDOW_MANAGER="my-favorite-wm"
or just use the default wm configured by the system administrator.
One can also use a different wm for one session by starting X with:
WINDOW_MANAGER="another-wm" startx
If someone is interested I have a debian package which implements this.
I've been using it for an year at it works fine for me.
--
Massimo Dal Zotto
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