Re: Window Managers
Re: Window Managers
- Subject: Re: Window Managers
- From: Nick Zitzmann <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 17:32:17 -0800
On Friday, February 21, 2003, at 06:54 AM, Lee Moffitt wrote:
Could someone explain the difference between Window Managers (ala
WindowMaker and quartz-wm)
Window managers handle the drawing of windows on the screen. If you run
an X server and don't load a window manager, then every "window" that
gets drawn on screen is just a big box that you might be able to
interact with, but you can't move it around, you can't click on a close
button to close the window (since there is no close button), you can't
minimize it, etc...
and Desktop Environments (ala GNOME and KDE)?
Desktop environments go beyond window managers by including integrated
applications, toolbars, GUI widgets, online help, and other things
you'd expect from a modern graphical working environment...
The X Window System itself ships with very minimal "default" GUI
widgets, e.g. scroll bars, buttons, text views, etc. That's where
libraries like Qt (used by KDE) and GTK+ (used by GNOME) come in - they
extend X by adding better & more functional widgets.
When we install X11/quartz-wm, does include a Desktop Environment?
No. Apple X11 only includes the quartz-wm window manager, a basic X11R6
base installation, the XFree86 window server (version 4.2.1 I think)
with OpenGL support, some scripts to run X11 stuff from Terminal, and
that's about it.
You may need to install GTK+ and/or the GNOME libraries to use some
popular X11 programs. Gimp, for example, uses GTK+. You can get stuff
like this by installing Fink: <http://fink.sourceforge.net/>
Is it worthwhile to install GNOME or KDE on top of quartz-wm?
That's up to you. But if I was to use GNOME or KDE, I'd use their
window managers and not quartz-wm.
One thing to keep in mind is Apple X11 currently doesn't support
running in "rooted" mode, so if you install KDE or GNOME or something,
you won't be able to see its desktop. If you need rooted mode, then
you'll have to use XDarwin instead.
Nick Zitzmann
AIM/iChat: dragonsdontsleep
Check out my software page: http://dreamless.home.attbi.com/
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