Re: Trying to get GUI'ed

Re: Trying to get GUI'ed

[Heimo Claasen]

It would be interesting to go into more details with this, especially
in _comparing_ different window managers:

> Incidentally, you don't _need_ a lot of the software you can get this
> way - just directly configuring X will give you access to most of the
> stuff. But you certainly need _some_ kind of window manager for it to be
> useful.

Which is precisely what I'm looking for.

Actual example: that most recent Debian-3 install gave me a choice of
three of them (gdm, kdm, xdm), and sure I was (newbie, thanks) at a loss
for what to do. _No_ usefull description/help what the heck the
difference would be.

But there are differences, and crucial ones: I'm struggling since ages
to make a specific SCSI device run which quite obviously has some
collision course with "some" of the X (windows?) management components.
For instance, it would just not run under any of various Mandrake/KDE
installs; it did run (shortly) with a tweaked Debian-2.2 and and what I
was told was "window maker" (for some unrelated reason, that install had
to be changed, and the SCSI device never ran again there).  Finally, a
new Debian-3.0 install first _did_ have it run (there I was sure it was
xdm which was used, but on the "frame buffer" kernel _without_ the
XF86-..."4" install !) For again some unrelated reason, there had to
be a re-install of this very Debian; I used not the "frame buffer" but
the "compact" kernel install that time (more out of a feeling: there
is no intelligible info joined to these procedures), had later enormous
difficulties to get X working at all, and it never accepted the full
range of the high-resoulution screen, _despite_ it's use of the
XF86-.."4" version.  (Didn't manage to have it using the highest
resolution; which is the one exactly needed for photo jobs _as_well_as
the SCSI-connected film scanner.) But I chose "gdm" that time, and lo
and behold, the dang SCSI device worked.  No real use though, as the
full resolution screen is not available. Thank you.

I haven't _got_ fifteen month of idle time to go through twentyseven
docs and sources in search of that ephemeral X screen handling detail
(and there I'm sure that its something like this, because te device
as such _does_ work) which collides with the device's output.

Thus, instead of sending people from one wall to the other, like in
best kafkaesques traditions, it would be nice to have some clearly
worded information of what the differences _are_ between those window
managers.
At looking at each one of their own specific doc-novels separately I
would never ever get the _functional_ information I need, namely to find
the comparably "simplest" one with the least potential of skrewing up
the relation between the pixel output from that dang device and the wm's
(not-too- broad-integration-of-most-sophisticated) screen handling
elements.
(By now I'm quite sure that it's one of those thousand files-bits of the
Gtk environment which might be the culprit but to find that out would
mean another fifteen months more of work and missed pay for not done
real work.)

// Heimo Claasen // <hammer at revobild dot net> // Brussels 2002-10-21
The WebPlace of ReRead - and much to read  ==>  http://www.revobild.net

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Re: Trying to get GUI'ed

[Paul Furness]

Linux is slowly getting better and easier for people who don't want to
spend hours fiddling with it, but it isn't quite there yet.

Ok, here's what I use:

I currently have Red Hat 7.3 installed on my workstation. I have been
using Red Hat precisely because the installation is pretty friendly - I
can chose to take one of the default installs, or I can customise most
of the package choices.

At initial install, Red Hat doesn't give me 37 choices of which window
manager to use. If I'm installing Red Hat and using their desktop (which
is Gnome by default) then I'll get Sawfish as the window manager. I
_can_ change that during the install if I really want to, but I don't
actually _need_ to think about it to make it work. It works fairly well
for most things, and although I am thinking of trying something else,
it's partly because it's my _job_ to try different versions of things so
that I can advise the people at my company what they should use.

If you want an easy install that includes a (relatively) nice GUI, then
Red Hat may well be what you want.

By the way, I have found the Ximian Destop (which you install after X,
window manger and Gnome/KDE) to be really quite reliable and useful. It
seems to fix a lot of problems which I was having with Red Hat's default
setup.

If you don't want to do that, then you are _choosing_ to do it the
manual way, and that implies that you either have to install each option
and try it, or read a load of documentation.

The reason I ended up with the window manager I have is that previous
ones I've tried (like Afterstep, Enlightenment, gdm) all had something
in them that I didn't like, couldn't do or didn't work with something
else I was using. I can't tell you which ones are right for you
precisely because I am not you. If you want to use Gnome, Sawfish is a
good choice because it's _compatible_ with gnome right out of the box.
Afterstep, for example, has some lovely graphical things it can do, but
didn't work well with the menus I wanted to use - so I stopped using it.
This was some time ago, though, so it may have changed by now. I promise
that the best way to decide what you want is to try some.

If you don't have time to read lots, then chose a distribution that
gives you useful defaults (I liked Red Hat until version 8 which is all
strange and lacks most of what I like). If you don't have time to either
read lots or get a different distribution or try different options, go
and buy a Mac which gives you only a very few options and needs almost
no setting up, but is proprietary and expensive.


Paul.


On Tue, 2002-10-22 at 01:00, Heimo Claasen wrote:
> It would be interesting to go into more details with this, especially
> in _comparing_ different window managers:
> 
> > Incidentally, you don't _need_ a lot of the software you can get this
> > way - just directly configuring X will give you access to most of the
> > stuff. But you certainly need _some_ kind of window manager for it to be
> > useful.
> 
> Which is precisely what I'm looking for.
> 
> Actual example: that most recent Debian-3 install gave me a choice of
> three of them (gdm, kdm, xdm), and sure I was (newbie, thanks) at a loss
> for what to do. _No_ usefull description/help what the heck the
> difference would be.
> 
> But there are differences, and crucial ones: I'm struggling since ages
> to make a specific SCSI device run which quite obviously has some
> collision course with "some" of the X (windows?) management components.
> For instance, it would just not run under any of various Mandrake/KDE
> installs; it did run (shortly) with a tweaked Debian-2.2 and and what I
> was told was "window maker" (for some unrelated reason, that install had
> to be changed, and the SCSI device never ran again there).  Finally, a
> new Debian-3.0 install first _did_ have it run (there I was sure it was
> xdm which was used, but on the "frame buffer" kernel _without_ the
> XF86-..."4" install !) For again some unrelated reason, there had to
> be a re-install of this very Debian; I used not the "frame buffer" but
> the "compact" kernel install that time (more out of a feeling: there
> is no intelligible info joined to these procedures), had later enormous
> difficulties to get X working at all, and it never accepted the full
> range of the high-resoulution screen, _despite_ it's use of the
> XF86-.."4" version.  (Didn't manage to have it using the highest
> resolution; which is the one exactly needed for photo jobs _as_well_as
> the SCSI-connected film scanner.) But I chose "gdm" that time, and lo
> and behold, the dang SCSI device worked.  No real use though, as the
> full resolution screen is not available. Thank you.
> 
> I haven't _got_ fifteen month of idle time to go through twentyseven
> docs and sources in search of that ephemeral X screen handling detail
> (and there I'm sure that its something like this, because te device
> as such _does_ work) which collides with the device's output.
> 
> Thus, instead of sending people from one wall to the other, like in
> best kafkaesques traditions, it would be nice to have some clearly
> worded information of what the differences _are_ between those window
> managers.
> At looking at each one of their own specific doc-novels separately I
> would never ever get the _functional_ information I need, namely to find
> the comparably "simplest" one with the least potential of skrewing up
> the relation between the pixel output from that dang device and the wm's
> (not-too- broad-integration-of-most-sophisticated) screen handling
> elements.
> (By now I'm quite sure that it's one of those thousand files-bits of the
> Gtk environment which might be the culprit but to find that out would
> mean another fifteen months more of work and missed pay for not done
> real work.)
> 
> // Heimo Claasen // <hammer at revobild dot net> // Brussels 2002-10-21
> The WebPlace of ReRead - and much to read  ==>  http://www.revobild.net
> 
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
> 
-- 
Paul Furness

Systems Manager

2+2=5 for extremely large values of 2.

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Re: Trying to get GUI'ed

[Chuck Gelm]

Hi, Paul:

 Lovely.  Your story sounds like what I want to do. :-)

 I have RedHat8.0 ('tho I see that this distro is not liked! :-|).
I'll try a few GUI install choices and what I can learn.

Although I am still confused about who is doing what,
with which, and to whom.

IOW, I do not understand the difference among:
Xwindows, Gnome, & Sawfish.

 To me, windows is windows, windows is what a GUI application needs
for I/O; a text console is what a text console application needs.
Sawfish, twm, Gnome, KDE, fvwm, fvwm95, are meaningless to me.
I don't see the difference. :-|
 Why cannot any GUI application run on any 'window'?
Why is not Xwindows a 'window manager'?
Why is not fvwm a 'Xwindow'?

 Please don't bother trying to answer these now.  I'll probably
get the gist by trying different things.  ;-)

Regards, Chuck

Paul Furness wrote:
> 
> Linux is slowly getting better and easier for people who don't want to
> spend hours fiddling with it, but it isn't quite there yet.
> 
> Ok, here's what I use:
> 
> I currently have Red Hat 7.3 installed on my workstation. I have been
> using Red Hat precisely because the installation is pretty friendly - I
> can chose to take one of the default installs, or I can customise most
> of the package choices.
> 
> At initial install, Red Hat doesn't give me 37 choices of which window
> manager to use. If I'm installing Red Hat and using their desktop (which
> is Gnome by default) then I'll get Sawfish as the window manager. I
> _can_ change that during the install if I really want to, but I don't
> actually _need_ to think about it to make it work. It works fairly well
> for most things, and although I am thinking of trying something else,
> it's partly because it's my _job_ to try different versions of things so
> that I can advise the people at my company what they should use.
> 
> If you want an easy install that includes a (relatively) nice GUI, then
> Red Hat may well be what you want.
> 
> By the way, I have found the Ximian Destop (which you install after X,
> window manger and Gnome/KDE) to be really quite reliable and useful. It
> seems to fix a lot of problems which I was having with Red Hat's default
> setup.
> 
> If you don't want to do that, then you are _choosing_ to do it the
> manual way, and that implies that you either have to install each option
> and try it, or read a load of documentation.
> 
> The reason I ended up with the window manager I have is that previous
> ones I've tried (like Afterstep, Enlightenment, gdm) all had something
> in them that I didn't like, couldn't do or didn't work with something
> else I was using. I can't tell you which ones are right for you
> precisely because I am not you. If you want to use Gnome, Sawfish is a
> good choice because it's _compatible_ with gnome right out of the box.
> Afterstep, for example, has some lovely graphical things it can do, but
> didn't work well with the menus I wanted to use - so I stopped using it.
> This was some time ago, though, so it may have changed by now. I promise
> that the best way to decide what you want is to try some.
> 
> If you don't have time to read lots, then chose a distribution that
> gives you useful defaults (I liked Red Hat until version 8 which is all
> strange and lacks most of what I like). If you don't have time to either
> read lots or get a different distribution or try different options, go
> and buy a Mac which gives you only a very few options and needs almost
> no setting up, but is proprietary and expensive.
> 
> Paul.
> 
> On Tue, 2002-10-22 at 01:00, Heimo Claasen wrote:
> > It would be interesting to go into more details with this, especially
> > in _comparing_ different window managers:
> >
> > > Incidentally, you don't _need_ a lot of the software you can get this
> > > way - just directly configuring X will give you access to most of the
> > > stuff. But you certainly need _some_ kind of window manager for it to be
> > > useful.
> >
> > Which is precisely what I'm looking for.
> >
> > Actual example: that most recent Debian-3 install gave me a choice of
> > three of them (gdm, kdm, xdm), and sure I was (newbie, thanks) at a loss
> > for what to do. _No_ usefull description/help what the heck the
> > difference would be.
> >
> > But there are differences, and crucial ones: I'm struggling since ages
> > to make a specific SCSI device run which quite obviously has some
> > collision course with "some" of the X (windows?) management components.
> > For instance, it would just not run under any of various Mandrake/KDE
> > installs; it did run (shortly) with a tweaked Debian-2.2 and and what I
> > was told was "window maker" (for some unrelated reason, that install had
> > to be changed, and the SCSI device never ran again there).  Finally, a
> > new Debian-3.0 install first _did_ have it run (there I was sure it was
> > xdm which was used, but on the "frame buffer" kernel _without_ the
> > XF86-..."4" install !) For again some unrelated reason, there had to
> > be a re-install of this very Debian; I used not the "frame buffer" but
> > the "compact" kernel install that time (more out of a feeling: there
> > is no intelligible info joined to these procedures), had later enormous
> > difficulties to get X working at all, and it never accepted the full
> > range of the high-resoulution screen, _despite_ it's use of the
> > XF86-.."4" version.  (Didn't manage to have it using the highest
> > resolution; which is the one exactly needed for photo jobs _as_well_as
> > the SCSI-connected film scanner.) But I chose "gdm" that time, and lo
> > and behold, the dang SCSI device worked.  No real use though, as the
> > full resolution screen is not available. Thank you.
> >
> > I haven't _got_ fifteen month of idle time to go through twentyseven
> > docs and sources in search of that ephemeral X screen handling detail
> > (and there I'm sure that its something like this, because te device
> > as such _does_ work) which collides with the device's output.
> >
> > Thus, instead of sending people from one wall to the other, like in
> > best kafkaesques traditions, it would be nice to have some clearly
> > worded information of what the differences _are_ between those window
> > managers.
> > At looking at each one of their own specific doc-novels separately I
> > would never ever get the _functional_ information I need, namely to find
> > the comparably "simplest" one with the least potential of skrewing up
> > the relation between the pixel output from that dang device and the wm's
> > (not-too- broad-integration-of-most-sophisticated) screen handling
> > elements.
> > (By now I'm quite sure that it's one of those thousand files-bits of the
> > Gtk environment which might be the culprit but to find that out would
> > mean another fifteen months more of work and missed pay for not done
> > real work.)
> >
> > // Heimo Claasen // <hammer at revobild dot net> // Brussels 2002-10-21
> > The WebPlace of ReRead - and much to read  ==>  http://www.revobild.net
> >
> > -
> > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in
> > the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> > More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> > Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
> >
> --
> Paul Furness
> 
> Systems Manager
> 
> 2+2=5 for extremely large values of 2.
> 
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
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Re: Trying to get GUI'ed

[James Miller]

On Tue, 22 Oct 2002, Chuck Gelm wrote:
> 
>  I have RedHat8.0 ('tho I see that this distro is not liked! :-|).
> I'll try a few GUI install choices and what I can learn.
> 
> Although I am still confused about who is doing what,
> with which, and to whom.
> 
> IOW, I do not understand the difference among:
> Xwindows, Gnome, & Sawfish.
> 
>  To me, windows is windows, windows is what a GUI application needs
> for I/O; a text console is what a text console application needs.
> Sawfish, twm, Gnome, KDE, fvwm, fvwm95, are meaningless to me.
> I don't see the difference. :-|
>  Why cannot any GUI application run on any 'window'?
> Why is not Xwindows a 'window manager'?
> Why is not fvwm a 'Xwindow'?
> 

I'm kind of confused on these fundamental matters, too, though posts on 
this thread have been helping clarify things, or maybe just helping me to 
ask the right questions. The right questions being, in my mind:

1) what is "X" or "xwindows"? (be sure to address in your answer the 
relation of this entity to 2 other entities with which it can be easily 
confused - namely a "window manager" and a "desktop.")

2) what is a window manager? (be sure to address in your answer the 
relation of this entity to 2 other entities with which it can be easily 
confused - namely "X" or "xwindows" and a "desktop.")

3) what is a "desktop"? (be sure to address in your answer the relation of 
this entity to 2 other entities with which it can be easily confused - 
namely "X" or "xwindows" and a "window mananger.")

Anyone care to take a crack at these?

James

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Re: Trying to get GUI'ed

[Ray Olszewski]

I looked around for a bit to find a good HowTo or FAQ that addressed the 
distinctions among X itself, a Window Manager, A Desktop, and  a Desktop 
Environment. I found nothing really good, though these links are the best 
of the lot I found:

         http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XWindow-Overview-HOWTO/index.html
         http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XWindow-User-HOWTO/index.html
         http://www.plig.org/xwinman/intro.html

Before I take a crack at James' Final Exam questions, let me address a more 
direct question. Chuck wrote:

 > Sawfish, twm, Gnome, KDE, fvwm, fvwm95, are meaningless to me.
 > I don't see the difference. :-|
 >  Why cannot any GUI application run on any 'window'?

The answer is that any GUI (Graphical User Interface) is an illusion, a 
techie version of trompe l'oeil. Applications need to communicate with the 
GUI they run under, and they do it by making calls to shared libraries 
(dlls in the WinXX world). These calls invoke procedures that work with the 
GUI itself to translate real events, like the physical movement of a mouse, 
typing on a keyboard, and various events generated internally by hardware 
and applications, into the visual illusion (moving the mouse pointer, 
selecting windows or text, etc.) you see on the screen.

If a particular GUI application does not run correctly in some particular 
GUI environment, that is because it makes some system calls that this GUI 
environment does not support.

You don't see support failures (much) in Microsoft Windows, because it has 
a single, unified API (Aplications Programming Intefface) that everyone 
doing applications writes to ... or at least one API per major version of 
Windows. Linux (and Unix) is subject to less central control, so there are 
competing APIs around that don't always mesh exactly.

OK. Now to James' questions. There are really 4 distinct concepts, not 3 
... a Desktop is a small part of a Window Manager, while a Desktop 
Environment is quite different and more elaborate (and is probably what 
James meant when he wrote "desktop" in the exam questions). The following 
are first drafts of answers; I hope others will suggest refinements that 
clarify without turning what should be succinct responses into tomes.

1. X or X Window (not X Windows or xwindows) is a server that controls the 
basics of a video display -- it provides a standard API that allows control 
of the hardware of the video card and the display, as well as other 
hardware like the keyboard and a pointing device. It gets customized on the 
hardware side, and on the application side it provides only a single, 
low-level API for dealing with the hardware. The only X server for Linux 
(the only free and Open Source one, that is) is xFree86. To run X, you must 
run this.

2. A Window Manager provides a "wrapper" that delivers additional 
functionality to X. It handles mid-level stuff, mainly offering a better 
API for drawing windows, detecting events like mouse clicks, adding pre- or 
user-defined "widgets" (close to what Microsoft calls tools in VB and Apple 
used to call resources) that developers can uswe when drawing windows on 
the screen. Typically, a Window Managers also includes menus (to launch 
applications and to modify the display) and the possibility of multiple 
desktops (analogous to the virtual terminals available with the text 
display). Examples of Window Managers are Sawfish, Blackbox, fvwm, fvwm, 
twm, Ice, Enlightenment, and WindowMaker. To run X successfully, you 
*almost* must run a Window Manager.

3. A Desktop Environment provides a suite of high-level services to an X 
user and an X developer. A Desktop Environment has two, separable parts:

         A. A set of applications that provide user services. Examples are 
visual file manager and icon-based or tray-based application launchers.

         B. A high-level API that provides advanced features to developers.

The two principal Desktop Environments are Gnome (with the associated API 
gtk) and KDE (with the associated API qt).

You can run X quite successfully without running the user-services part of 
any Desktop Environment; whether you need to run one or more APIs depends 
on the specific applications you want to run ... though there are 
occasional failures, for the most part, the APIs will work with any Window 
Manager.

At 05:14 AM 10/22/02 -0500, James Miller wrote:
>On Tue, 22 Oct 2002, Chuck Gelm wrote:
> >
> >  I have RedHat8.0 ('tho I see that this distro is not liked! :-|).
> > I'll try a few GUI install choices and what I can learn.
> >
> > Although I am still confused about who is doing what,
> > with which, and to whom.
> >
> > IOW, I do not understand the difference among:
> > Xwindows, Gnome, & Sawfish.
> >
> >  To me, windows is windows, windows is what a GUI application needs
> > for I/O; a text console is what a text console application needs.
> > Sawfish, twm, Gnome, KDE, fvwm, fvwm95, are meaningless to me.
> > I don't see the difference. :-|
> >  Why cannot any GUI application run on any 'window'?
> > Why is not Xwindows a 'window manager'?
> > Why is not fvwm a 'Xwindow'?
> >
>
>I'm kind of confused on these fundamental matters, too, though posts on
>this thread have been helping clarify things, or maybe just helping me to
>ask the right questions. The right questions being, in my mind:
>
>1) what is "X" or "xwindows"? (be sure to address in your answer the
>relation of this entity to 2 other entities with which it can be easily
>confused - namely a "window manager" and a "desktop.")
>
>2) what is a window manager? (be sure to address in your answer the
>relation of this entity to 2 other entities with which it can be easily
>confused - namely "X" or "xwindows" and a "desktop.")
>
>3) what is a "desktop"? (be sure to address in your answer the relation of
>this entity to 2 other entities with which it can be easily confused -
>namely "X" or "xwindows" and a "window mananger.")
>
>Anyone care to take a crack at these?
>
>James
>
>-
>To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in
>the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
>More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
>Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs

--
-------------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"--------
Ray Olszewski					-- Han Solo
Palo Alto, California, USA			  ray@comarre.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: Trying to get GUI'ed

[Paul Furness]

Wow, what a superb answer. I think you passed the exam... :)

May I add this summary for people who really know nothing about
programming (yet...). This is how it was first explained to me and it
helped me soooo much later on:

Approximately: 
X (the 'GUI') draws boxes on the screen.
The window manager draws pretty edges around the boxes and lets you move
them around.
The desktop environment gives you things to put inside the boxes and a
whole load of other ways to ask for new boxes, and also ways to make
things like the background look pretty.



Paul.

On Wed, 2002-10-23 at 00:16, Ray Olszewski wrote:
> I looked around for a bit to find a good HowTo or FAQ that addressed the 
> distinctions among X itself, a Window Manager, A Desktop, and  a Desktop 
> Environment. I found nothing really good, though these links are the best 
> of the lot I found:
> 
>          http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XWindow-Overview-HOWTO/index.html
>          http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XWindow-User-HOWTO/index.html
>          http://www.plig.org/xwinman/intro.html
> 
> Before I take a crack at James' Final Exam questions, let me address a more 
> direct question. Chuck wrote:
> 
>  > Sawfish, twm, Gnome, KDE, fvwm, fvwm95, are meaningless to me.
>  > I don't see the difference. :-|
>  >  Why cannot any GUI application run on any 'window'?
> 
> The answer is that any GUI (Graphical User Interface) is an illusion, a 
> techie version of trompe l'oeil. Applications need to communicate with the 
> GUI they run under, and they do it by making calls to shared libraries 
> (dlls in the WinXX world). These calls invoke procedures that work with the 
> GUI itself to translate real events, like the physical movement of a mouse, 
> typing on a keyboard, and various events generated internally by hardware 
> and applications, into the visual illusion (moving the mouse pointer, 
> selecting windows or text, etc.) you see on the screen.
> 
> If a particular GUI application does not run correctly in some particular 
> GUI environment, that is because it makes some system calls that this GUI 
> environment does not support.
> 
> You don't see support failures (much) in Microsoft Windows, because it has 
> a single, unified API (Aplications Programming Intefface) that everyone 
> doing applications writes to ... or at least one API per major version of 
> Windows. Linux (and Unix) is subject to less central control, so there are 
> competing APIs around that don't always mesh exactly.
> 
> OK. Now to James' questions. There are really 4 distinct concepts, not 3 
> ... a Desktop is a small part of a Window Manager, while a Desktop 
> Environment is quite different and more elaborate (and is probably what 
> James meant when he wrote "desktop" in the exam questions). The following 
> are first drafts of answers; I hope others will suggest refinements that 
> clarify without turning what should be succinct responses into tomes.
> 
> 1. X or X Window (not X Windows or xwindows) is a server that controls the 
> basics of a video display -- it provides a standard API that allows control 
> of the hardware of the video card and the display, as well as other 
> hardware like the keyboard and a pointing device. It gets customized on the 
> hardware side, and on the application side it provides only a single, 
> low-level API for dealing with the hardware. The only X server for Linux 
> (the only free and Open Source one, that is) is xFree86. To run X, you must 
> run this.
> 
> 2. A Window Manager provides a "wrapper" that delivers additional 
> functionality to X. It handles mid-level stuff, mainly offering a better 
> API for drawing windows, detecting events like mouse clicks, adding pre- or 
> user-defined "widgets" (close to what Microsoft calls tools in VB and Apple 
> used to call resources) that developers can uswe when drawing windows on 
> the screen. Typically, a Window Managers also includes menus (to launch 
> applications and to modify the display) and the possibility of multiple 
> desktops (analogous to the virtual terminals available with the text 
> display). Examples of Window Managers are Sawfish, Blackbox, fvwm, fvwm, 
> twm, Ice, Enlightenment, and WindowMaker. To run X successfully, you 
> *almost* must run a Window Manager.
> 
> 3. A Desktop Environment provides a suite of high-level services to an X 
> user and an X developer. A Desktop Environment has two, separable parts:
> 
>          A. A set of applications that provide user services. Examples are 
> visual file manager and icon-based or tray-based application launchers.
> 
>          B. A high-level API that provides advanced features to developers.
> 
> The two principal Desktop Environments are Gnome (with the associated API 
> gtk) and KDE (with the associated API qt).
> 
> You can run X quite successfully without running the user-services part of 
> any Desktop Environment; whether you need to run one or more APIs depends 
> on the specific applications you want to run ... though there are 
> occasional failures, for the most part, the APIs will work with any Window 
> Manager.
> 
> At 05:14 AM 10/22/02 -0500, James Miller wrote:
> >On Tue, 22 Oct 2002, Chuck Gelm wrote:
> > >
> > >  I have RedHat8.0 ('tho I see that this distro is not liked! :-|).
> > > I'll try a few GUI install choices and what I can learn.
> > >
> > > Although I am still confused about who is doing what,
> > > with which, and to whom.
> > >
> > > IOW, I do not understand the difference among:
> > > Xwindows, Gnome, & Sawfish.
> > >
> > >  To me, windows is windows, windows is what a GUI application needs
> > > for I/O; a text console is what a text console application needs.
> > > Sawfish, twm, Gnome, KDE, fvwm, fvwm95, are meaningless to me.
> > > I don't see the difference. :-|
> > >  Why cannot any GUI application run on any 'window'?
> > > Why is not Xwindows a 'window manager'?
> > > Why is not fvwm a 'Xwindow'?
> > >
> >
> >I'm kind of confused on these fundamental matters, too, though posts on
> >this thread have been helping clarify things, or maybe just helping me to
> >ask the right questions. The right questions being, in my mind:
> >
> >1) what is "X" or "xwindows"? (be sure to address in your answer the
> >relation of this entity to 2 other entities with which it can be easily
> >confused - namely a "window manager" and a "desktop.")
> >
> >2) what is a window manager? (be sure to address in your answer the
> >relation of this entity to 2 other entities with which it can be easily
> >confused - namely "X" or "xwindows" and a "desktop.")
> >
> >3) what is a "desktop"? (be sure to address in your answer the relation of
> >this entity to 2 other entities with which it can be easily confused -
> >namely "X" or "xwindows" and a "window mananger.")
> >
> >Anyone care to take a crack at these?
> >
> >James
> >
> >-
> >To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in
> >the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> >More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> >Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
> 
> --
> -------------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"--------
> Ray Olszewski					-- Han Solo
> Palo Alto, California, USA			  ray@comarre.com
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
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> 
-- 
Paul Furness

Systems Manager

2+2=5 for extremely large values of 2.

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Re: Trying to get GUI'ed

[ichi]

Heimo Claasen wrote:
> 
> I'm struggling since ages to make a specific SCSI device run 
>
> a new Debian-3.0 install first _did_ have it run 

Hurray!

> For again some unrelated reason, there had to be a re-install 
> of this very Debian; I used not the "frame buffer" but the 
> "compact" kernel install that time, 

What?  After all the trouble you had getting your installation
to work, you decide to change the kernel?

> had later enormous difficulties to get X working at all, and 
> it never accepted  the full range of the high-resoulution screen, 

Looks like your experiment with the "compact" kernel was a mistake.

> I haven't _got_ fifteen month of idle time to go through 
> twentyseven docs and sources 

Funny that.  Weren't you complaining last year about a lack of 
documention in Linux (or was that some other newbie-from-hell).
Now you say there is too much documentation. 

> it would be nice to have some clearly worded information of 
> what the differences _are_ between those window managers.

I have read many articles comparing window managers.  They appear 
pretty often.  There's also a web site devoted to different wms:  
----------------------------
http://www.plig.org/xwinman/
---------------------------- 

> I would never ever get the _functional_ information I need, 
> namely to find the comparably "simplest" one 

I found the above site in less than 60 seconds using google.
It also gave me this:
----------------------------------------------------
http://www.windowmaker.org/features-performance.html
----------------------------------------------------

Google is your friend.  Before you complain about something 
not being available, you should do a google search.
--------------------------
http://www.google.com/palm
--------------------------

Cheers,
Steven

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Re: Trying to get GUI'ed

[John E. Jay Maass]

> > How much do you have now ? (memory)
> 80m.  Why do you ask?  I had 8m in an old 486 to start with.

At Computer Learning Center we were required to memorize a rough
block diagram showing a cpu, its ram, a hard drive controler,
hard drive, and network card.

Using arrows we had to trace a bit of data coming from the
network and going to the hard drive. And vice-versa.

The point was that, at every step, random access memory (RAM)
was involved. Every time a bit of data flows within a system,
it is going to pass through RAM.

The instructor did well to have us memorize that diagram.

jay
philadelphia




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Re: Trying to get GUI'ed

[Bryan Simmons]

Think that was informative?  Learn assembly on x86 Linux.  You have NO
idea what a computer goes through just to add two numbers, let alone
manage network traffic...  The most shocking part is the idea of virtual
memory.


On Fri, 2002-10-25 at 22:29, John E. Jay Maass wrote:
> > > How much do you have now ? (memory)
> > 80m.  Why do you ask?  I had 8m in an old 486 to start with.
> 
> At Computer Learning Center we were required to memorize a rough
> block diagram showing a cpu, its ram, a hard drive controler,
> hard drive, and network card.
> 
> Using arrows we had to trace a bit of data coming from the
> network and going to the hard drive. And vice-versa.
> 
> The point was that, at every step, random access memory (RAM)
> was involved. Every time a bit of data flows within a system,
> it is going to pass through RAM.
> 
> The instructor did well to have us memorize that diagram.
> 
> jay
> philadelphia
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in
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> Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
-- 
Bryan Simmons <bsimmo1@gl.umbc.edu>

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Re: Trying to get GUI'ed

[Heimo Claasen]

On Ray Olszewski's friendly remarks of: Thu, 24 Oct 2002 23:22:50 -0700

[REM: Sorry to have used the personal e-dress: this is because the list's
header does carry the list address only somewhare long awy on the From:
or To: lines - I have to paste it in each time manually. If tired one
forgets.
Another drag is that there's no identifying prefix in the Subject: line
which would, as with other lists, easily distinguish these listmails
from others.  Which in turn is a drag for sorting out spam; if the rest
of the Subject: line is too general/nothingsaying and there's no clue
from either the From:, To:, or Return-To: lines I have to look at the
full mail before deciding if it's a spam...]

That Vuescan is not only a scanner driver but has its own GUI and pixel
presentation of output. Thus it needs X.

I prefer textmode generally, and do almost all work that way so I
wouldn't need X except for very specific tasks (picture retrieval and
treatment, and sound editing; _very_ rarely using a pseudo-"graphical"
browser for those nasty net places where there's no way to get using the
Lynx.

I'll try how far I get with the bare Xterm - thanks Lawson - before
making more comments.

Perhaps that much off the cuff: I must have done a three-digit number of
Linux installs in the last two years and the X configuration is always a
trickish step in it. The newest "official" Debian releass ("3.0") is a
step back in that respect. It starts with the presumption that a (new)
user would know perfectly the implications for the X part when choosing
between a "bf24" a "compact" or a "vanilla" version in the very
beginning - without any indication that this selection defines the
possible ways and selection alternatives for the X part much later.

There then, for instance, he gets a choice for the video card's RAM
which he just _cannot_ answer correctly if that card in his machine has
more than 4 MB video RAM. The answer to give is "1024 KB" - manifestly
wrong for many cards having 8 to 64 or even more MB but the only way to
get it going at all (with ensuing endess trial and error with the
config files to get a high resolution screen/card accepted).

And I don't even want to know which idiot has introduced the complete
incongruity of the term "Dismiss" as denomination for the "Accept"
selection with many of those steps in the install/config routines...

// Heimo Claasen // <hammer at revobild dot net> // Brussels 2002-10-25
The WebPlace of ReRead - and much to read  ==>  http://www.revobild.net

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Re: Trying to get GUI'ed

[Ray Olszewski]

You forgot to cc the list with your message; I added it back in this reply, 
which includes your complete message at the end.

First, to avoid conflicts, you do not need to remove the various packages 
from your filesystem. All you need to do is not run them (or in the case of 
libraries, not run programs that link to them).

In principle, you could run X with no Window Manager, just starting a 
single xterm when the X server starts. I've never done this myself (I have 
read about the procedure, in a *very* old book), but perhaps when he sees 
this message, Lawson will sketch out the details of how he did it.

What I would suggest as a practical solution is for you to run X with one 
of the lightweight Window Managers ... say blackbox or icewm, or maybe XFce 
(I've not tried this last one myself) ... and once it starts, use its menu 
system just to start a single xterm. From there, start the static version 
of VueScan.

I would recommend that you do this (start the X server) from a console. 
That is, you log in to a console and run the "startx" script to run the X 
server, rather than using xdm or one of its cousins. By editing the config 
files startx (and xinit, which the script runs) loads, you can select your 
WM and the other items that are available in your pop-up menu.

Although X itself is pretty standard, the setup details are somewhat 
distribution specific, and you've reported trying so many distros hat I 
don't know what you are running at the moment. With Debian, for example, 
one way is to do a standard, minimal install, then disable the init-script 
link that runs xdm. Then you can configure X in any of the usual ways (the 
"dpkg --configure" choice works pretty well with X for me) and "startx" 
will work fine.

One last question ... I took a quick look at the (fairly brief) Linux notes 
on the VueScan site. From what they write there, VueScan looks like a 
command-line app, not a GUI app. If I am correct ... is there a reason why 
you do not want to run this from a console? Why do you need X at all (for 
this app)?

At , Heimo Claasen wrote:
>I try to put it simplistic: If you run X you get just the ("graphcical")
>screen.
>What is the absolute bare minimum to get this X screen _with_ some
>possibility to input a command (e.g., for to run some application
>program) - in fact, just an Xterm for instance ?
>
>An HOW would I set it up / launch it ?
>
>(The application program, Vuescan, is statically linked and wouldn't
>need to access any additional shared libraries thus.)
>
>Next step: Which of the major (X window-) window management and GUI-
>programm packages could be safely revomed from the "system", without
>putting that "bare bones" X at risk ?
>
>(Can the whole load of Gtk/Qt go, for instance ?)




--
-------------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"--------
Ray Olszewski					-- Han Solo
Palo Alto, California, USA			  ray@comarre.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: Trying to get GUI'ed

[lawson_whitney]

On Thu, 24 Oct 2002, Ray Olszewski wrote:

> In principle, you could run X with no Window Manager, just starting a
> single xterm when the X server starts. I've never done this myself (I have
> read about the procedure, in a *very* old book), but perhaps when he sees
> this message, Lawson will sketch out the details of how he did it.

[whit@giftie whit]$ cat .xinitrc
xsetroot -solid SteelBlue
icewm &
xterm
[whit@giftie whit]$ cat .xsession
#!/bin/sh
icewm &
xterm

You only use .xsession for GUI login.  Get rid of icewm if you want your
xterm bare and immovable, or remove the entire file and xinit will start
a single xterm.

Lawson
---oops---



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Re: Trying to get GUI'ed

[Haines Brown]

Please allow a naive question.

When I boot, I arrive at a log in prompt. When I log in, I arrive at
command prompt for the user.

You explained how one might start X without a window manager, and I
that might have some utility. 

But my question is, is there any difference in functionality between
running xterm under X and the initial command prompt before starting
X? Is there any difference in functionality between xterm and the
command prompt before running X?

I ask because I'm trying to understand why one would go to the trouble
to edit ~/.xinitrc to boot to an xterm. Why not stay in the nice
DOS-like world that exists before X if all one wants to do is to issue
commands. 

Haines

 
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Re: Trying to get GUI'ed

[Ray Olszewski]

At 03:14 PM 10/25/02 -0400, Haines Brown wrote:
>Please allow a naive question.
>
>When I boot, I arrive at a log in prompt. When I log in, I arrive at
>command prompt for the user.
>
>You explained how one might start X without a window manager, and I
>that might have some utility.
>
>But my question is, is there any difference in functionality between
>running xterm under X and the initial command prompt before starting
>X? Is there any difference in functionality between xterm and the
>command prompt before running X?
>
>I ask because I'm trying to understand why one would go to the trouble
>to edit ~/.xinitrc to boot to an xterm. Why not stay in the nice
>DOS-like world that exists before X if all one wants to do is to issue
>commands.


If you are running X and have an open xterm, you can run a GUI-based 
application from the xterm's command line (actually, you can run many, if 
you use the & tag to detach the processes from the terminal). This method 
(rather than using the menu-based start that a typical WM will provide) of 
starting an X-based app can be quite useful, for several reasons -- you get 
to use command-line switches and arguments (this capability is, at least 
for a few apps, very handy), you get to see STDERR and STDOUT output as the 
app runs (if you didn't detach, that is), and perhaps others I'm not 
thinking of right now.


--
-------------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"--------
Ray Olszewski					-- Han Solo
Palo Alto, California, USA			  ray@comarre.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: Trying to get GUI'ed

[Paul Furness]

The command prompt you see is actually a software _emulation_ of old
style 'dumb' terminals, what people used as computers before PCs came
about in the 80s.

Although it responds differently to some of the details, there is little
functional difference between an x-term and the virtual terminal you get
before you start X - or any other terminal windowed or otherwise.

Why run X? Well, if all you ever want to do is one task at a time on a
single linear text interface, there is no reason to.

I run X, but most of the work I do is command line. However, I have
several terminal windows open at once and do have multiple different
things going on.

Like most of Linux, it's a matter of preference.

Paul.

On Fri, 2002-10-25 at 20:14, Haines Brown wrote:
> Please allow a naive question.
> 
> When I boot, I arrive at a log in prompt. When I log in, I arrive at
> command prompt for the user.
> 
> You explained how one might start X without a window manager, and I
> that might have some utility. 
> 
> But my question is, is there any difference in functionality between
> running xterm under X and the initial command prompt before starting
> X? Is there any difference in functionality between xterm and the
> command prompt before running X?
> 
> I ask because I'm trying to understand why one would go to the trouble
> to edit ~/.xinitrc to boot to an xterm. Why not stay in the nice
> DOS-like world that exists before X if all one wants to do is to issue
> commands. 
> 
> Haines
> 
>  
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in
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> 
-- 
Paul Furness

Systems Manager

Steepness is an illusion caused by flat things leaning over.

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Re: Trying to get GUI'ed

[Haines Brown]

Paul,

Thanks for the explanation.

The reason I asked is that I need to do some work on my X system while
the X system is not running, and wanted to know the capabilities of the
command prompt outside of X.

For example, if I run emacs, I might get a text-based emacs from which
I do the work easily. Otherwise I'd have to run vi, which is far less
familiar. 

Haines
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Re: Trying to get GUI'ed

[Paul Furness]

Emacs was originally designed for text terminals; although I run emacs
in it's own window, I use all the keyboard controls to do things rather
than point and click. You should have no probs using it in a plain text
term if you know the important shortcuts.

P.

On Mon, 2002-10-28 at 16:35, Haines Brown wrote:
> Paul,
> 
> Thanks for the explanation.
> 
> The reason I asked is that I need to do some work on my X system while
> the X system is not running, and wanted to know the capabilities of the
> command prompt outside of X.
> 
> For example, if I run emacs, I might get a text-based emacs from which
> I do the work easily. Otherwise I'd have to run vi, which is far less
> familiar. 
> 
> Haines
> 
-- 
Paul Furness

Systems Manager

Steepness is an illusion caused by flat things leaning over.

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Re: Trying to get GUI'ed

[Haines Brown]

Paul,

Here I sit, almost dead in the water. Confident that I could run emacs
at the command prompt outside X (I'm writing now with emacs-rmail, but
have lost X altogether), I went ahead and installed the two rpm files
and edited my XF86Config-4 file. The result was loss of access to my X
server. I  tried but failed to back out of the driver installation
by reverting to the old config file with its nv driver.

RPM Installation suggested a possibly conflicting MESA or stale nVidia
distribution, but I have neither. libglx.a, etc., files renamed to
xxx...rpmSAVE. I  don't know whether a recovery of my old set up would
require renaming those file to their original names as well as
reverting to the old configuration file.

When I went to start X, I got errors that nvidia had failed to
initialize the NVdriver kernel module. Indeed, running lsmod does not
report it, although I checked with rpm to verify the driver installed
(rpm verifies the NVIDIA_kernel version number). If I tried insmod
nvidia (or nVidia, NVidia, NVdriver, etc.) it says driver not
found. There's nothing that looks like an nvidia driver in
/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions. The /dev files are present, though.

I tried running Xconfigurator. It sees my GeForce3 card, but can't
probe it (it did so originally), probably because of no loaded driver. So
manual configuration of the card fails.

I don't know the exact driver name I should be using, nor am I certain
of where it should be located, and why insmod does not see it. I've no
clue where to begin. I sent the log file off to
xfree86@xfree86.org. Until they reply (if they reply), I'm unable to
do much work.

If you have the patience, I'd like to know the name and location of
the nvidia driver file so that I might verify its presence and perhaps
give insmod a hand. 

Haines Brown
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Re: Trying to get GUI'ed

[lawson_whitney]

On Tue, 29 Oct 2002, Haines Brown wrote:

> Paul,
>
> Here I sit, almost dead in the water. Confident that I could run emacs
> at the command prompt outside X (I'm writing now with emacs-rmail, but
> have lost X altogether), I went ahead and installed the two rpm files
> and edited my XF86Config-4 file. The result was loss of access to my X
> server. I  tried but failed to back out of the driver installation
> by reverting to the old config file with its nv driver.
>
> RPM Installation suggested a possibly conflicting MESA or stale nVidia
> distribution, but I have neither. libglx.a, etc., files renamed to
> xxx...rpmSAVE. I  don't know whether a recovery of my old set up would
> require renaming those file to their original names as well as
> reverting to the old configuration file.

Possibly.  Libraries are usually backward-compatible, though.
>
> When I went to start X, I got errors that nvidia had failed to
> initialize the NVdriver kernel module. Indeed, running lsmod does not
> report it, although I checked with rpm to verify the driver installed
> (rpm verifies the NVIDIA_kernel version number). If I tried insmod
> nvidia (or nVidia, NVidia, NVdriver, etc.) it says driver not
> found. There's nothing that looks like an nvidia driver in
> /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions. The /dev files are present, though.

rpm will tell you if you ask, what files are contained in a package:
rpm -ql <package name>
Sorry, I am not familiar with video drivers as kernel modules.  That
might be a feature of X release 4 that I haven't got around to yet.
kernel modules live usually in /lib/modules/`uname -r`
Hmmm, try /usr/X11R6/lib/modules
What is in /usr/X11R6/bin/X ?  That used to be a symbolic link to the X
server.
>
> I tried running Xconfigurator. It sees my GeForce3 card, but can't
> probe it (it did so originally), probably because of no loaded driver. So
> manual configuration of the card fails.
>
> I don't know the exact driver name I should be using, nor am I certain
> of where it should be located, and why insmod does not see it. I've no
> clue where to begin. I sent the log file off to
> xfree86@xfree86.org. Until they reply (if they reply), I'm unable to
> do much work.
>
> If you have the patience, I'd like to know the name and location of
> the nvidia driver file so that I might verify its presence and perhaps
> give insmod a hand.
>
> Haines Brown
> -



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Re: Trying to get GUI'ed

[Haines Brown]

Lawson,

At this point I'm only trying to back out of my abortive nVidia driver
install and get back to the nv driver that came with my RedHat 7.3
distribution. 

To do that, I recovered my old XF86Config-4 file. The rpm install for
the driver commented out lib.GLcore.a and libglx.a, which I restored. 

Third, I wanted to uninstall the driver RPM. First, I used rpm -ql on
NVIDIA_kernel to get the driver's name. The one return was
/lib/modules/2.4.18-10/kernel/drivers/video/NVdriver. Then I ran: rpm -Uvh
NVdriver. Unfortunately, "no such file." Apparently I can't run the x
server without this uninstall, and apparently I'm not going about it in
the right way. 

Unfortunately, nVidia's support list works through a web page, and
since I've lost my X server, it does me no good (I used to rely on
lynx, and now I see that I've got it on Linux! I'll try to use it to
reach nVidia). My gnus gets into a loop (no fun when it happens from a
terminal), and so I can't pursue these issues on an appropriate
newsgroup unless I can somehow telnet into the newsgroup (something 
I've never tried). Wow; all this takes me back to my DOS days!

Haines Brown
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Re: Trying to get GUI'ed

[lawson_whitney]

On Wed, 30 Oct 2002, Haines Brown wrote:

> Lawson,
>
> At this point I'm only trying to back out of my abortive nVidia driver
> install and get back to the nv driver that came with my RedHat 7.3
> distribution.
>
> To do that, I recovered my old XF86Config-4 file. The rpm install for
> the driver commented out lib.GLcore.a and libglx.a, which I restored.
>
> Third, I wanted to uninstall the driver RPM. First, I used rpm -ql on
> NVIDIA_kernel to get the driver's name. The one return was
> /lib/modules/2.4.18-10/kernel/drivers/video/NVdriver. Then I ran: rpm -Uvh
> NVdriver. Unfortunately, "no such file." Apparently I can't run the x
> server without this uninstall, and apparently I'm not going about it in
> the right way.

Are you trying to uninstall that?  Not with -U you can't.  Mind I've
never tried to uninstall an rpm, but uninstall is spelled -e or
--uninstall
  -U is upgrade, essentially the same as install.

> Unfortunately, nVidia's support list works through a web page, and
> since I've lost my X server, it does me no good (I used to rely on
> lynx, and now I see that I've got it on Linux! I'll try to use it to
> reach nVidia). My gnus gets into a loop (no fun when it happens from a
> terminal), and so I can't pursue these issues on an appropriate
> newsgroup unless I can somehow telnet into the newsgroup (something
> I've never tried). Wow; all this takes me back to my DOS days!
>
> Haines Brown
>
Lawson
--
---oops---



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Re: Trying to get GUI'ed

[Haines Brown]

> > Third, I wanted to uninstall the driver RPM. First, I used rpm -ql on
> > NVIDIA_kernel to get the driver's name. The one return was
> > /lib/modules/2.4.18-10/kernel/drivers/video/NVdriver. Then I ran: rpm -Uvh
> > NVdriver. Unfortunately, "no such file." Apparently I can't run the x
> > server without this uninstall, and apparently I'm not going about it in
> > the right way.
> 
> Are you trying to uninstall that?  Not with -U you can't. 

Sorry about the typo. I meant rpm -e. The problem was that I was
trying to uninstall the driver rpm, not the driver package rpm, and
had to uninstall the GLX package first. I had sucess when I figured
out the right target. By the way, it was nice how rpm -e automatically
recovered the old files it had put aside in the form xxx....RPMSAVE.

Thanks.

Haines
 
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Re: Trying to get GUI'ed

[ichi]

Ray Olszewski wrote:
> 
> In principle, you could run X with no Window Manager, 
> just starting a single xterm when the X server starts. 
> I've never done this myself (I have read about the 
> procedure, in a *very* old book), 

I ran X on an old 486 like this for several months.
To see how it works, edit ~/.xinitrc
------------------------------------------------------
xsetroot -solid grey
xcalc -geometry 200x300-0-0 -bg lightblue -font 9x15 &
xclock -geometry 240x240+0-0 -bg yellow &
xterm -font 9x15
------------------------------------------------------
Then execute 'startx'

> What I would suggest as a practical solution is for you 
> to run X with one of the lightweight Window Managers 
> ... say blackbox or icewm, 

I agree.  On my 486, I went from no-wm to icewm and there 
was no noticeable effect on the speed.  icewm adds a lot
of functionality without using a lot of resources.   

Cheers,
Steven

______________________________
http://www.volny.cz/basiclinux


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Re: Trying to get GUI'ed

[Heimo Claasen]

Ray's "first draft to a window manager how-to" did (finally!) give me
some insight.
(I would like to go longer in reading and putting other bits and pieces
in there too - just haven*'t got the time right now, woner when ever...)

Practical question: is it possible, and how then, to run X and some
application in it at a very "low level", for instance _without_ as
much as could be cut off from the libraries (both Gtk and Qt) needed
for the "higher level" managers/desktops ?
And how to de-install these latter cleanly without creating new problems ?

(The problem I have with that SCSI device and the application for it is
not the deveice's functioning, which works Ok., but this application's
screen GUI - it's definitely some conflict there with both Gtk and Qt
"families", i.e. using either KDE or Gnome. The one occasion it did
run well was with a "just window maker" install of X. Thus banning the
additional presence of those Gnome/KDE could perhaps avoid that
collision, whatever it is.)

// Heimo Claasen // <hammer at revobild dot net> // Brussels 2002-10-23
The WebPlace of ReRead - and much to read  ==>  http://www.revobild.net

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Re: Trying to get GUI'ed

[Ray Olszewski]

At , Heimo Claasen wrote:
>Ray's "first draft to a window manager how-to" did (finally!) give me
>some insight.
>(I would like to go longer in reading and putting other bits and pieces
>in there too - just haven*'t got the time right now, woner when ever...)
>
>Practical question: is it possible, and how then, to run X and some
>application in it at a very "low level", for instance _without_ as
>much as could be cut off from the libraries (both Gtk and Qt) needed
>for the "higher level" managers/desktops ?

I find it hard to follow the syntax of this sentence. I don't mean to pick 
on you, Heimo, but you are getting into very technical areas now, where 
clarity and precision are at a premium, and I simply can't be sure what you 
mean by (for example) "as much as could be cut off from".

With that disclaimer, the answer to whatever your question is, most likely, 
is: it depends on the application. Please try asking the specific question 
you want answered, about the actual application.

For example, on my Linux workstations, I routinely run Blackbox as a Window 
Manager, and I run no Desktop Environment. I probably do run some 
components of the Gnome and/or KDE APIs; Debian dependency management is 
really very good at handling those sorts of dependency issues without 
operator involvement. Most applications ... all the ones I care about, in 
particular ... examples are xterm, eterm, xmms, xine, XMovie, Mplayer, 
ogle, xawtv, GTKsee, and xvncviewwe ... run fine on this stripped-down 
system. Possibly some of the Gnome-specific apps would not display or run 
properly, and I don't attempt to run any whose names begin with K (KDE apps 
seem a bit pickier about choice of WM than Gnome ones, though I'm not 
certain of that).

I've never tried it myself, but I seem to recall that Lawson Whitney (are 
you there, Lawson? acn you comment helpfully?) has in the past run his 
xserver "bare metal", without even a basic Window Manager. I don't know how 
versatile he found that setup.

>And how to de-install these latter cleanly without creating new problems ?
>
>(The problem I have with that SCSI device and the application for it is
>not the deveice's functioning, which works Ok., but this application's
>screen GUI - it's definitely some conflict there with both Gtk and Qt
>"families", i.e. using either KDE or Gnome. The one occasion it did
>run well was with a "just window maker" install of X. Thus banning the
>additional presence of those Gnome/KDE could perhaps avoid that
>collision, whatever it is.)

Troubleshooting requires information, and your posting messages about an 
application you will not identify by name is unlikely to get you any 
meaningful help. Name the application (include a URL if the app is 
obscure), describe the GUI problem, and report the basics of the system 
that you are having it on (what X server, what Window Manager, and which of 
KDE or Gnome you are running).


--
-------------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"--------
Ray Olszewski					-- Han Solo
Palo Alto, California, USA			  ray@comarre.com
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Re: Trying to get GUI'ed

[lawson_whitney]

On Wed, 23 Oct 2002, Ray Olszewski wrote:

> I've never tried it myself, but I seem to recall that Lawson Whitney (are
> you there, Lawson? acn you comment helpfully?) has in the past run his
> xserver "bare metal", without even a basic Window Manager. I don't know how
> versatile he found that setup.
>
At the time the only X application I cared about was Wine, which uses
its own builtin window manager if you don't tell it (with the --managed
option) not to.  A naked xterm looks a little strange, and you can't
move it except by killing it and starting another with different
geometry from the command line (yes, you can start X applications
from a console, as long as the DISPLAY environment variable is set
(xinit or g/k/xdm do this for their children, but you can set it in a
shell startup file if you like).

I have more memory now, and icewm doesn't take too much.

Lawson
---oops---



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Re: Trying to get GUI'ed

[LL Phillips]

How much do you have now ? (memory)
Lorraine



lawson_whitney@juno.com wrote:

> I have more memory now, and icewm doesn't take too much.
> 
> Lawson
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Re: Trying to get GUI'ed

[lawson_whitney]

On Thu, 24 Oct 2002, LL Phillips wrote:

> How much do you have now ? (memory)
> Lorraine

80m.  Why do you ask?  I had 8m in an old 486 to start with.

Lawson
---oops---



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Re: Trying to get GUI'ed

[LL Phillips]

I thought maybe you were working with 4, 8 or 12 or even 20 for some
reason.  Eighty megs is ever so much more do-able.
Lorraine

lawson_whitney@juno.com wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 24 Oct 2002, LL Phillips wrote:
> 
> > How much do you have now ? (memory)
> > Lorraine
> 
> 80m.  Why do you ask?  I had 8m in an old 486 to start with.
> 
> Lawson
> ---oops---
> 
> ________________________________________________________________
> 
> Sign Up for Juno Platinum Internet Access Today
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Line Length

[Peter]

Hi,

If I safe with Lynx a text in html format to a file.txt the lines are at the 
most 60 col long.

How can I change that to let say 90 col in order to get more text on one page 
for print-out?

Would sed do the trick, but how?

Thanks and regards


-- 
Peter

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Trying to get GUI'ed

[Chuck Gelm]

Howdy, Y'all:

 I am trying to 'upgrade' from 'console' to GUI.
I think I have successfully installed XFree86/4.2.1.
I can 'startx' and I get a monochrome desktop with
a tiny clock and three windows; 'login', 'xterm', and 'xterm'.
I can toggle among three resolutions.

I want to run a browser, preferably Netscape
 (preferably v4.61 if available for linux).

What am I missing?
Where do I go for help to get from where I am to where I want to be?

Regards, Chuck
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Re: Trying to get GUI'ed

[Ray Olszewski]

At 10:15 AM 10/20/02 -0400, Chuck Gelm wrote:
>Howdy, Y'all:
>
>  I am trying to 'upgrade' from 'console' to GUI.
>I think I have successfully installed XFree86/4.2.1.
>I can 'startx' and I get a monochrome desktop with
>a tiny clock and three windows; 'login', 'xterm', and 'xterm'.
>I can toggle among three resolutions.
>
>I want to run a browser, preferably Netscape
>  (preferably v4.61 if available for linux).
>
>What am I missing?
>Where do I go for help to get from where I am to where I want to be?


Well ... where do you want to be? (Where do you want to go today? Nah.)

To add Netscape to your system, you have two options.

1. Connect to the Netscape site and download the Linux version closest to 
what you want. You can download the current Netscape (7.0) from this URL --

         http://channels.netscape.com/ns/browsers/download_other.jsp

The Netscape site for downloading old versions (4.61 specifically) is

         http://wp.netscape.com/download/archive/client_archive46x.html

2. See if your distro has some suitable version of Netscape prepackaged for 
it.  Since you don't tell us what distro you use (note to everyone who 
posts: it is ALWAYS easier to answer questions if you mention which distro 
you use EVERY time you ask one), I can't be more specific than that.

If there are other elements of your X setup that you want to change ... 
you'll have to ask about them explicitly, or turn to the usual sources for 
prepackaged advice in the form of HowTos and guides.



--
-------------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"--------
Ray Olszewski					-- Han Solo
Palo Alto, California, USA			  ray@comarre.com
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Re: Trying to get GUI'ed

[Paul Furness]

To get much nice stuff out of the GUI, you really need to have a decent
window manager running, as that will give you the ability to move
windows around, have virtual desktops and set up menus on mouse-clicks.
This is another component that you run on top of X. There are so many
around that it's hard to pick one - sawfish, fvwm2, enlightenment,
fluxbox, olwm, afterstep... the list is a long one.

On top of the window manager, you might want to look at desktops - KDE
or Gnome - which give you a set of tools which work more or less
together.

Netscape (or better, Mozilla) are separate packages which you can get
from a number of places (you could start with www.mozilla.org or
www.netscape.com). If you have a package manager (RPM is the most
ubiquitous) then you can get the software pre-packaged in a simple to
install format. Even if you don't, the install for Mozilla is pretty
easy from tarball.

Paul.


On Sun, 2002-10-20 at 15:15, Chuck Gelm wrote:
> Howdy, Y'all:
> 
>  I am trying to 'upgrade' from 'console' to GUI.
> I think I have successfully installed XFree86/4.2.1.
> I can 'startx' and I get a monochrome desktop with
> a tiny clock and three windows; 'login', 'xterm', and 'xterm'.
> I can toggle among three resolutions.
> 
> I want to run a browser, preferably Netscape
>  (preferably v4.61 if available for linux).
> 
> What am I missing?
> Where do I go for help to get from where I am to where I want to be?
> 
> Regards, Chuck
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
> 
-- 
Paul Furness

Systems Manager

2+2=5 for extremely large values of 2.

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Re: Trying to get GUI'ed

[chuck gelm]

Hi, Paul:

 Thanks.  I have seen fwvm mentioned somewhere in my distribution.
I am using Slackware8.0.  I'll browse the directories that start
with 'x' for files that match your suggestions.

 I've been using Netscape Communicator on Windows o/s for several
years, so I plan to try it first just because it might be familiar.
I believe Mozilla has been around for a decade or so, so it would
be another browser I'd try. ;-)

 IIRC, Gnome has been mentioned more often than KDE, when I heard
about applications I was interested in and they required a GUI,
so I'd try Gnome before KDE.

 So, Gnome & KDE are not only window managers, but also tool 
packages too. :-|

 I am familiar with tarballs (.tgz .tar.gz) and have installed
and compiled several applications.  I am comfortable with that 
method of packaging.  ;-)

Regards, Chuck


Paul Furness wrote:
> 
> To get much nice stuff out of the GUI, you really need to have a decent
> window manager running, as that will give you the ability to move
> windows around, have virtual desktops and set up menus on mouse-clicks.
> This is another component that you run on top of X. There are so many
> around that it's hard to pick one - sawfish, fvwm2, enlightenment,
> fluxbox, olwm, afterstep... the list is a long one.
> 
> On top of the window manager, you might want to look at desktops - KDE
> or Gnome - which give you a set of tools which work more or less
> together.
> 
> Netscape (or better, Mozilla) are separate packages which you can get
> from a number of places (you could start with www.mozilla.org or
> www.netscape.com). If you have a package manager (RPM is the most
> ubiquitous) then you can get the software pre-packaged in a simple to
> install format. Even if you don't, the install for Mozilla is pretty
> easy from tarball.
> 
> Paul.
> 
> On Sun, 2002-10-20 at 15:15, Chuck Gelm wrote:
> > Howdy, Y'all:
> >
> >  I am trying to 'upgrade' from 'console' to GUI.
> > I think I have successfully installed XFree86/4.2.1.
> > I can 'startx' and I get a monochrome desktop with
> > a tiny clock and three windows; 'login', 'xterm', and 'xterm'.
> > I can toggle among three resolutions.
> >
> > I want to run a browser, preferably Netscape
> >  (preferably v4.61 if available for linux).
> >
> > What am I missing?
> > Where do I go for help to get from where I am to where I want to be?
> >
> > Regards, Chuck
> > -
> > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in
> > the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> > More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> > Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
> >
> --
> Paul Furness
> 
> Systems Manager
> 
> 2+2=5 for extremely large values of 2.
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Re: Trying to get GUI'ed

[Paul Furness]

Chuck,
Most of the window managers have web sites where you can get sources and
info. You might find that useful when trying to decide which one you
like best.

Mozilla is actually Netscape 6 (for practical purposes, anyhow). AFAIK,
Netscape is (or at least was) based on the same code right back in the
beginning.

Gnome and KDE _aren't_ window managers. They are, well, basically a nice
pretty front end that interacts with the window manager. They each work
slightly better with some window managers than others. For instance,
Gnome works (or at least Gnome 1.4 works) really well with Sawfish, and
if you install a default Red Hat 7.x distribution, you get XFree86,
Sawfish and Gnome. If you install a different distribution, you'll
probably get a different combination (KDE on top of Enlightenment on top
of XFree86, for example).

This modular approach is a little confusing some times, but it has the
nice advantage that you can choose the feature you want from the
behaviour of your windows (such as the type of buttons you get and how
iconification works) and then separately decide on the type of bar
(taskbar, stat menu in windows) you want and the menus it creates for
you.

Check out www.gnome.org for gnome and www.kde.org for the desktop stuff
you can get. You can also get some window managers from them.


Incidentally, you don't _need_ a lot of the software you can get this
way - just directly configuring X will give you access to most of the
stuff. But you certainly need _some_ kind of window manager for it to be
useful.

Paul.



On Mon, 2002-10-21 at 12:47, chuck gelm wrote:
> Hi, Paul:
> 
>  Thanks.  I have seen fwvm mentioned somewhere in my distribution.
> I am using Slackware8.0.  I'll browse the directories that start
> with 'x' for files that match your suggestions.
> 
>  I've been using Netscape Communicator on Windows o/s for several
> years, so I plan to try it first just because it might be familiar.
> I believe Mozilla has been around for a decade or so, so it would
> be another browser I'd try. ;-)
> 
>  IIRC, Gnome has been mentioned more often than KDE, when I heard
> about applications I was interested in and they required a GUI,
> so I'd try Gnome before KDE.
> 
>  So, Gnome & KDE are not only window managers, but also tool 
> packages too. :-|
> 
>  I am familiar with tarballs (.tgz .tar.gz) and have installed
> and compiled several applications.  I am comfortable with that 
> method of packaging.  ;-)
> 
> Regards, Chuck
> 
> 
> Paul Furness wrote:
> > 
> > To get much nice stuff out of the GUI, you really need to have a decent
> > window manager running, as that will give you the ability to move
> > windows around, have virtual desktops and set up menus on mouse-clicks.
> > This is another component that you run on top of X. There are so many
> > around that it's hard to pick one - sawfish, fvwm2, enlightenment,
> > fluxbox, olwm, afterstep... the list is a long one.
> > 
> > On top of the window manager, you might want to look at desktops - KDE
> > or Gnome - which give you a set of tools which work more or less
> > together.
> > 
> > Netscape (or better, Mozilla) are separate packages which you can get
> > from a number of places (you could start with www.mozilla.org or
> > www.netscape.com). If you have a package manager (RPM is the most
> > ubiquitous) then you can get the software pre-packaged in a simple to
> > install format. Even if you don't, the install for Mozilla is pretty
> > easy from tarball.
> > 
> > Paul.
> > 
> > On Sun, 2002-10-20 at 15:15, Chuck Gelm wrote:
> > > Howdy, Y'all:
> > >
> > >  I am trying to 'upgrade' from 'console' to GUI.
> > > I think I have successfully installed XFree86/4.2.1.
> > > I can 'startx' and I get a monochrome desktop with
> > > a tiny clock and three windows; 'login', 'xterm', and 'xterm'.
> > > I can toggle among three resolutions.
> > >
> > > I want to run a browser, preferably Netscape
> > >  (preferably v4.61 if available for linux).
> > >
> > > What am I missing?
> > > Where do I go for help to get from where I am to where I want to be?
> > >
> > > Regards, Chuck
> > > -
> > > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in
> > > the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> > > More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> > > Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
> > >
> > --
> > Paul Furness
> > 
> > Systems Manager
> > 
> > 2+2=5 for extremely large values of 2.
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in
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> Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
> 
-- 
Paul Furness

Systems Manager

2+2=5 for extremely large values of 2.

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