Re: [tlug] X11 Session Manager Setup

[Edward Middleton <emiddleton@example.com>]

Curt Sampson wrote:
>> Something like Xfce 4[1] and Gentoo might be less painful and possibly
>> more like what you are after.
>>     
>
> This is what I don't get about Linux guys. Why is it that every time I
> want to use a different program, or even don't want to use a particular
> program, they want me to change distributions?  

Probably because you keep asking why its so difficult to perform brain
surgery with a sledge hammer ;)

Linux is all about choices,  the question was what motivated your
choices.  Having the same setup as everyone in your office - but not -
is probably going to cause you some pain.

The reason I originally recommending Gentoo over Ubuntu was that you can
easily compile out anything you don't want.  If your reason for choosing
Ubuntu was to be just like everyone else in your office then that might
be less important to you.  With Ubuntu you are most stuck with the
package dependencies.  You could modify distribution Ubuntu packages but
you will have to carry forward you modification when new packages are
released.

If all your computers are basically the same, making a single install
image then taring it up and copying it to all machines with the few
modifications like hostname will be all you need to do to install Gentoo
on multiple machines.  There are obviously more sophisticated ways of
doing this but that is the simplest.

XFce4 is fairly minimalist.  There is the base system and a lot of
optional parts, at least if you are using Gentoo.  Gnome is pretty heavy
and they seem to assume everything will be installed and running.

>> There is a tool for handling session management with gnome but it never
>> seemed to work properly for me, and as I have removed gnome I can't even
>> tell you what it is called.
>>     
>
> It's gnome-session-properties. Seems to work ok, after a bit of getting
> used to the interface. (You may have tripped over some of the interface
> issues.)
>   

I don't use xfce4-session so can't tell you how well it works.  When I
tried gnome-session it didn't work for all application.

Edward