On Sun, 24 Apr 2016 14:12:18 +0300 Mitt Green <mitt_gr...@riseup.net> wrote:
> I suppose, he meant that there's a fine line between > a window manager and a DE sometimes. Thanks Mitt, What I really meant is there's a very fuzzy line. As I stated before, a spectrum. > EDE (Equinox Desktop Environment) includes only a > window manager and a panel, as far as I know. > Some window managers provide panel (bar) too, think Fluxbox, > Blackbox, dwm and its remakes, i3, wmii. FVWM lets you make your own > panels and what people now call widgets. > LXDE, on the other hand, has its own panel, file manager, > task manager, appearance settings programme, > desktop and session. So, 'tis an environment definitely. So, if I took dwm, packaged it with the fbpanel panel, an fbpanel config tool, the Rox Filer file manager, the scrot screenshot utility, the dmenu app-selector, Edward's Network Tool (forgot its current name), and a custom GUI app, made by me, that acquires settings from the user and recompiled dwm accordingly (dwm must be recompiled to be configured), and a special menu leading to all these addons, and name the whole thing GammaRay, then GammaRay is a DE using dwm as its WM? If that's your definition, then there is indeed a clear line of demarcation. And that well may be the definition. But in everyday life, that's not how most people define them. How often do you hear Xfce being called a "window manager"? Happens all the time. LXDE and IceWM have pretty much identical user interfaces and functionalities, except LXDE has a few more peripheral utilities. If IceWM chose to give a separate name to its window manager component (the component that manages and decorates windows), then IceWM would be considered a DE, whereas because of its lightweightness and the fact that it doesn't give a separate name to its window manager component (and perhaps its window manager component isn't a distinct module), I've seen it uniformly called a "window manager." If one defines a window manager as the thing that decorates and controls windows, and a desktop environment as a group of software containing and interacting with a distinct, thin-interfaced window manager module, then most X interfaces are DEs. Heck, even Openbox ships with a system menu and an (incomplete) configuration GUI. With the definitions declared at the top of this paragraph, some window managers are surrounded by more software than others, and they're almost uniformly DEs, because a pure WM would be useless to most folks. But the REAL problem is that it seems like each person has his own definition of WM and DE. Which means when they ask questions, you must preface the discussion by their querying their definition. In this thread, does Xfce qualify? Does LXDE? Openbox? Dwm? We have to go back to the OP to find out. I find a vocabulary leading to that level of ambiguity unsettling. I wish we lived in a world with a single name for both concepts. I use wm/de or wmde a lot. Perhaps TLGUI (Top Level Graphical User Interface). Because in 95% of interactions, it would save time and garner clarity if a person said "I want a TLGUI that's lightweight, but it's got to have a panel and a GUI config program." This has very little to do with Devuan or systemd, so it's not something to get worked up about. It's just something to think about. SteveT Steve Litt April 2016 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21 _______________________________________________ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
