On Sat, Sep 24, 2016 at 12:57:04PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: > Josh Triplett <j...@joshtriplett.org> writes: > > > Based on some conversations on #debian-devel on the purpose of > > x-window-manager (as launched by > > /etc/X11/Xsession.d/50x11-common_determine-startup), it seems like a > > window manager that just manages windows, and expects a separately > > launched menu/taskbar program or desktop environment to provide the > > ability for the user to launch programs or otherwise do anything useful, > > shouldn't register an x-window-manager alternative at all. Otherwise, > > the user might end up staring at a desktop they can't interact with at > > all. > > Er, this seems to imply that twm shouldn't register as x-window-manager, > which sounds wrong and isn't how Debian has ever worked. Or am I > misunderstanding what you mean by "just manages windows"?
twm has a menu to launch additional applications; left-click on the desktop. So, it should continue registering an x-window-manager alternative. I'm talking about window managers like metacity or mutter, which without an associated desktop environment provide no way to launch applications or even exit. > I realize that nearly everyone uses a desktop environment these days, but > it used to be very common to just launch a windows manager and then use > ~/.xsession to launch some xterms, and I don't think we want to break that > functionality unless something is actually broken now. I'm sure someone > is still doing this. Last time I checked, startx relies on the > x-window-manager alternative to figure out what to start, so removing that > alternative would break such a setup. That uses the Xsession mechanism (and specifically the /etc/X11/Xsession.d/50x11-common_determine-startup script that I mentioned above). Keeping that from breaking was exactly my concern here: launching an X session should never leave the user with no way to launch applications or exit (other than switching to another VT).
