[wplug] Enlighten me!

[Carl Benedict]

On Wed, 2005-02-09 at 14:47, Brandon Kuczenski wrote: 
> As per the advice of people on this list and elsewhere, I thought I would 
> try running a different window manager.  Specifically, I thought I would 
> try running 'enlightenment'.  Unfortunately, right now I'm running Gnome 
> 2.6 and Gnome doesn't seem to want me to switch window managers.
> 
> I've done a considerable amount of googling and found that nearly every 
> page has a different solution.
> 
> First, there is no mention anywhere in the documentation of how to change 
> window managers in gnome.  I take this to suggest that they don't want you 
> to do it, but this seems somewhat like a violation of trust between the 
> gnome developers and their intended userbase.
> 
> First, I tried editing my ~/.xsession file so it now reads:
> 
> #!/bin/sh
> xterm -title "Debian GNU/Linux" -ls -geometry 80x24+70+135 &
> #exec gnome-session
> exec enlightenment
> EOF
> 
> That didn't work.  So I tried running gconf-editor from the command line 
> and changing /desktop/gnome/applications/window_manager/current to 
> /usr/bin/enlightenment.  I left the default setting as /usr/bin/metacity 
> because the online help suggested that 'default' was a misnomer, and what 
> it really was was a 'fallback'.  I don't want to nuke my gnome-session, so 
> I left that be.
> 
> That didn't work.  I tried running "killall metacity && enlightenment &" 
> and that actually started enlightenment okay, but it was less than useless 
> because nautilus and the gnome-panel didn't know how to interact with 
> enlightenment.  I couldn't close any windows that had been open before, 
> and I couldn't use the gnome-panel to logout so I ended up with 
> ctrl-alt-backspace.
> 
> It seems like enlightenment is more like a DE than a WM, but nothing 
> indicates that that is formally true.  Furthermore, Enlightenment is 
> referred to in more than one place as a "gnome-compliant" window manager. 
> Could it be that modern gnome is simply not "enlightenment-compliant"? 
> What am I missing?
> 
> More importantly, why isn't this a Gnome FAQ?  I've gone through literally 
> dozens of google hits, all seemingly with different answers and none of 
> them on gnome.org..
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> Brandon

About the same time you wrote this original thread, I had tried
Enlightenment as well.  I'm using Fedora Core 2 with GNOME 2.6.  I
installed via RPM from 3rd-party packages I found on rpmfind.net.  

I didn't have any problems with showing Enlightenment in the GDM menu of
session choices, but I did have this problem with IceWM.  My E installed
a .desktop file into /etc/X11/dm/Sessions:

[cbenedic at nano cbenedic]$ ls -la /etc/X11/dm/Sessions/
total 24
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 4096 Feb  9 16:26 .
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root 4096 May 21  2004 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  148 Aug 20 17:41 enlightenment.desktop
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root root  237 Sep  1 12:22 fluxbox.desktop
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root root 1887 Mar 31  2004 gnome.desktop
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  138 Feb  9 16:27 icewm.desktop

[cbenedic at nano cbenedic]$ more
/etc/X11/dm/Sessions/enlightenment.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Enlightenment
Comment=This session starts the Enlightenment window manager
Exec=starte16
Icon=
Type=Application

[cbenedic at nano cbenedic]$ which starte16
/usr/bin/starte16

[cbenedic at nano cbenedic]$ file /usr/bin/starte16
/usr/bin/starte16: Bourne shell script text executable

So that .desktop file points to a shell script that will start E. 
Here's what it looks like:

[cbenedic at nano cbenedic]$ more /usr/bin/starte16

#!/bin/sh
case "$1" in
GNOME)
        export WINDOW_MANAGER=enlightenment
        exec gnome-session
        ;;
KDE)
        export KDEWM=enlightenment
        exec startkde
        ;;
*)
        exec enlightenment
        ;;
esac

I was able to setup IceWM by creating a file named 'icewm.desktop' under
/etc/X11/dm/Sessions/. I changed the "Name" and "Exec" values, of
course.  I believe this all pertains to GDM though.  If you are not
using GDM, this probably won't get you the whole way there, but should
be a start.  Let me know if this works for you.

HTH




-- 
Carl Benedict
Pittsburgh Techs
Main:  724-741-0233
http://www.pittsburghtechs.com
cbenedic at pittsburghtechs.com