:\ = me curious about something probably no one notices but I seem too. So it led me to ask on here for an answer if anyone knows the answer? First, I love openSUSE but why is it or for what reason is it that when it comes to login sessions available, they find it most necessary to always include “Icewm” and now additionally I see "TWM window managers included for optional, yet implanted session logins… this when I just want and needed and specified only GNOME, on even only KDE etc?
It’s trivial perhaps but this is not noticeably done in, say for example, Fedora nor Linux Mint, nor Arch Linux. Anyway, after all said and done, I just simply remove both those window managers and everything is then fine. Yast or Zypper complain about breaking Xorg’s dependencies but still I just tell it to do what I say and proceed and all is just peachy and fine. So why do that by default in the first place is all I am asking?
So is there some hidden link between Xorg and Icewm or TWM always being a must inclusion in addition to any DE or Window Manager anyone chooses, regardless?
On 2013-05-04 23:06, youniquegeek wrote:
>
> :\ = me curious about something probably no one notices but I seem too.
> So it led me to ask on here for an answer if anyone knows the answer?
> First, I love openSUSE but why is it or for what reason is it that when
> it comes to login sessions available, they find it most necessary to
> always include “Icewm” and now additionally I see "TWM window
> managers included for optional, yet implanted session logins… this
> when I just want and needed and specified only GNOME, on even only KDE
> etc?
They are included as a safety backup. If your GNOME or KDE breaks, which
is not impossible, you are left out in text mode. I would reinstall them.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.1 x86_64 “Asparagus” at Telcontar)
I’m pretty sure that Fedora installs “twm”. At least it is there on my KDM menu (for an experimental Fedora install), and I never asked that it be installed.
“twm” is used for a failsafe session. The failsafe session starts “twm” without the “twm” window manager, but with a single “xterm” window. I guess that is used because it is minimalist.
When you are installing from the DVD, Yast runs under “icewm” to handle the installation.
On the first reboot after install, Yast starts up under “icewm” to complete the installation.
Both “twm” and “icewm” are relatively small. There are a lot of places to find more bloat if you lack disk space. I would leave there.
Personally, I switch “icewm” from the “icewm-lite” that is in a default install to “icewm-default” which has a better panel and is still small. I don’t normally use it, but on occasion it is useful. For example, if I want to backup “$HOME’/.kde4” or edit files there, then it is best to do while not running KDE, so I usually choose “icewm” for that.
Many don’t notice because ,many “use” auto-login
icewm and twm have been backup desktops from as long as i can remember from about 11.0 or something.
openSUSE makes sure that users don’t suffer when their desktop breaks and hence provides backup desktops.
They occupy a few MB only ? Why delete them.
icewm is a nice minimalistic light weight desktop.
However, since initial post, on two occasions, both from fresh installs, I have taken 12.3 and
zypper dup
to first "factory-tested and secondly, Tumbleweed which both now have GNOME 3.8. And I really like 3.8 but few distros have it standard right now, yet while GNOME works on 3.9 already. Anyhow, both occasions broke “something”, because after a reboot, I never got a graphical login at all. On the command line I worked with SystemD starting and stopping gdm.service and got nothing. Even installed lightdm (had network working luckily) and it did not work. Actually bash and zypper said couldn’t find lightdm installed neither.Then I tried the ncurses
/sbin/yast
and edited sysconfig settings, trying to tell it to default to both twm and icewm for display managers, then yast gave error completing my request several times. So I just gave up on 3.8 for now. This has also happened to me on Frugalware, Arch Linux and Ubuntu GNOME with their ppa.
So I am not sure about a true backup window manager at this point. :\
Icewm is okay, but something similar to Obsessive-Compulsiveness wants that nice gdm black login box, without the drop down arrow to change sessions. Only Fedora has that I find. Even Mageia installs draklive with GNOME in the session manager. But no twm or icewm. So I can’t find common ground it seems. But I will have a look next time I install Fedora KDE and see what is says. Also, good point on editing KDE config files, I have heard that as well. Debian says to log-out go to tty1, then init 3 before modifying KDE or upgrading it. Some say all this is no big deal, but I tell the computer what I want, not the other way around, and that includes packages independent from others.
> Good point,
>
> However, since initial post, on two occasions, both from fresh
> installs, I have taken 12.3 and
> Code:
> --------------------
> zypper dup
> --------------------
> to first "factory-tested and secondly, Tumbleweed
Hold on.
You are not using a released version, you are then using “factory”, and
thus you have to ask in the beta forum, not here, because any problem
you relate can be specific to the factory aka beta version.
Conversely for tumbleweed, there is a specific forum for it.
Thus I stop reading here.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.1 x86_64 “Asparagus” at Telcontar)
On my Tumbleweed box, I used “zypper dup” when Gnome 3.8 showed up.
It didn’t work. If I logged into Gnome, the session crashed.
However, I did get a login screen and I could still login to KDE.
Two or three days later, I again did “zypper dup”. Only a few things were updated. However, Gnome 3 then worked.
I’m guessing that the same happened to you, but you gave up before those few extra days.
I notice that you are using GDM. I was using KDM. Whatever broke Gnome for probably also broke GDM, which would explain why you did not get a login screen.
> On my Tumbleweed box, I used “zypper dup” when Gnome 3.8 showed up.
…
> I’m guessing that the same happened to you, but you gave up before
> those few extra days.
Which is why tumbleweed questions have to be asked in the tumbleweed
forum. Both factory and tumbleweed are special and have special
problems, known only to the people using them
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.1 x86_64 “Asparagus” at Telcontar)
=- me
