Re: Switching between KDE and GNOME

[Amin <raihan@citech-bd.com>]

Hello,

On Wed, 2 Jul 2003 19:40:53 +1200, cr <cr@orcon.net.nz> wrote:

> There *used* to be, in RedHat 7.2 or thereabouts, a 'Desktop switcher' 
> app.   It required a restart of X for it to take effect.   But I can't 
> seem to find it in Debian 3.0.
>
> cr

I don't know how much this'll help, but I have three fully functional 
window managers/environments (a.k.a. IceWM, GNOME, KDE) that I run 
depending on my needs, and here's the file I use to switch between them:

$ more .Xclients-default
exec icewm || exec xterm -fn 7x14
#exec startkde || exec xterm -fn 7x14
#exec gnome-session || exec xterm -fn 7x14
$

As you can probably tell, IceWM is my favorite.

BTW, `.Xclients-default' is actually called from another file, at least on 
my system:

$ more .Xclients
#!/bin/bash

# Created by Red Hat Desktop Switcher

if [ -e "$HOME/.Xclients-$HOSTNAME$DISPLAY" ]; then
    exec $HOME/.Xclients-$HOSTNAME$DISPLAY
else
    exec $HOME/.Xclients-default
fi
$

I guess this is more flexible, but if you want, you could bypass the 
convolution and put your GNOME/KDE starting commands in `.Xclients'.  These 
files are shell scripts, of course, and they are a feature of the X Window 
System.

The reason I'm bringing this up is that, seeing as controlling desktop 
environments/WMs is more of an X issue, people ought to know that there's a 
standard way they can do it in all distros, regardless of whether the 
command-line/graphical tools are available (or not).  The standard 
(command-line and graphical) tool, is, of course, `switchdesk'.  No 
surprise:  `switchdesk' is itself (mostly) a shell script!

One last thing: I read in this thread that someone's been trying to use 
KDE's window manager with GNOME.  Please save yourself the headache!

HTH,
Yawar Amin
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