I'm an RISC OS user at heart, and one thing that drives me up the wall on
Windows is its insistence that the window with focus must be on the top. So
I like to turn this off wherever possible.

My work machine's on Fedora. GNOME's window manager metacity seems to have
this as a default, and there have been wars on various distros as to whether
to patch in something to prevent raise-on-click. Fedora seems to have
escaped; if I run gconf-editor there's a flag
/apps/metacity/general/raise_on_click
but this does nothing in focus_mode = click
(ie the alternatives are to focus windows when the mouse moves into them,
which isn't what I want either)

So I think metacity on FC6 doesn't support no-raise-on-click. xfwm4 does,
but I don't want to use xfce4's panels etc. GNOME is supposed to be window
manager agnostic. So anyone know how to change the GNOME window manager?

Googling has suggested a few options:


create a ~/.gnomerc with 'export WINDOW_MANAGER=/usr/bin/xfwm4' in it.
Doesn't make any difference.

The same but as ~/.xsession
Doesn't work.

With gconf-editor change /apps/gnome-session/rh/window_manager to 'xfwm4'.
Doesn't work (and stops my login session from working)

Change /desktop/gnome/applications/window_manager/default
Deprecated since GNOME 2.12 and apparently doesn't do anything any more

Fiddle with gnome-session-properties, try to fiddle my saved session so it
starts xfwm4 not metacity.
Doesn't make any difference.

gnome-control-center then Desktop->Window Manager.
Doesn't exist here.


I'm running out of ideas here. Any other suggestions?

Thanks
Theo

On 09 Oct 2008 19:22:33 +0100 (BST)
Theo Markettos <theom+news> wrote:

[..]
> Doesn't make any difference.
>
> gnome-control-center then Desktop->Window Manager.
> Doesn't exist here.
>> I'm running out of ideas here. Any other suggestions?
>
> Thanks
> Theo

Use a different window manager. Neither Gnome nor KDE really get the
idea. Try openbox (it's what I use) and in the install procedure it
will put itself on the session selector. If you don't mind doing a bit
of hand editing of the configuration file, which is remarkably easy to
understand, you can get extremely close to the RO look and feel. In
fact you can go further.

I have mine configured so that only left click in a window work area
will transfer focus. On the window frame, left click brings it to the
top, right click pushes it to the bottom, middle click leaves it where
it is. All three buttons still able to do moves and resizes.

This comes even closer to RO if you go on to using ROXfiler and
ROXsession.

Folderol <folderol> wrote:
> Use a different window manager. Neither Gnome nor KDE really get the
> idea. Try openbox (it's what I use) and in the install procedure it
> will put itself on the session selector. If you don't mind doing a bit
> of hand editing of the configuration file, which is remarkably easy to
> understand, you can get extremely close to the RO look and feel. In
> fact you can go further.

I've played with random desktop environments before (eg ROX) - the trouble
is that they don't support tools designed for other environments like
nm-applet. So I can have them but only with no ability to configure my
wireless. XFCE4 support gnome plugins via a converter, and that's what I
use on my laptop. But, for example, the menu is missing some apps. As this
is my machine at work I really just want to do my work. I don't want to
fiddle with windowing systems all afternoon.

I'm quite happy with GNOME as a desktop environment, with its panels etc
etc. It's not perfect, but it's not broken enough that I want to fiddle. I
just want the windows to behave in a different way, because that /is/
stopping me working. So I don't want to switch to KDE, xfce4, or anything
else, I just want to change window manager.

If I do:

killall metacity; xfwm4 &

xfwm4 works just fine inside GNOME. But I don't want to have to run that
command every time I login.

I should add that, while I can install RPMs from the standard distro, I
don't have root.

Theo

On Thu, 09 Oct 2008 21:27:08 +0100, Theo Markettos wrote:

> If I do:
>
> killall metacity; xfwm4 &
>
> xfwm4 works just fine inside GNOME. But I don't want to have to run
> that command every time I login.

Not sure if you mean, not wanting to run it manually, or at all. You
could put it in .xinitrc [or whatever Gnome's equivalent is] to have it
done automatically on login.

Theo Markettos wrote:

> Folderol <folderol> wrote:
>
>>Use a different window manager. Neither Gnome nor KDE really get the
>>idea. Try openbox (it's what I use) and in the install procedure it
>>will put itself on the session selector. If you don't mind doing a bit
>>of hand editing of the configuration file, which is remarkably easy to
>>understand, you can get extremely close to the RO look and feel. In
>>fact you can go further.

It's this window raising that really annoys me as well. On my first Linux
Box RH6 it had Gnome with Enlightenment as the window manager which had 4
viewports (configurable) on to a large screen with auto-flip at the edges.

I find the separate workspaces a pita as well. The enlightenment that came
with Mandriva One 2008 doesn't seem to have these features - was this an
earlier incarnation or a RH thing, or am I missing a config somewhere?

In article <4xt*hP5os>,
Theo Markettos <theom+news> wrote:

>I'm quite happy with GNOME as a desktop environment, with its panels etc
>etc. It's not perfect, but it's not broken enough that I want to fiddle. I
>just want the windows to behave in a different way, because that /is/
>stopping me working. So I don't want to switch to KDE, xfce4, or anything
>else, I just want to change window manager.

Kwin seems to offer much of what you want in terms of configuring focus,
raising and clicking behaviour separately. It ought work by itself to
avoid needing to install the whole of KDE. In Debian based distros you
can use update-alternatives to select the window manager independently of
the desktop manager. I don't know if your distro might have something
similar; not having root access might make it harder. May be worth a
try anyway ?

Nick

Theo Markettos <theom+news> wrote:
> [...] one thing that drives me up the wall on Windows is its insistence
> that the window with focus must be on the top. So I like to turn this
> off wherever possible.

Hear hear.


> My work machine's on Fedora. GNOME's window manager metacity seems to
> have this as a default, and there have been wars on various distros
> as to whether to patch in something to prevent raise-on-click.
> Fedora seems to have escaped; if I run gconf-editor there's a
> flag /apps/metacity/general/raise_on_click but this does nothing in
> focus_mode = click (ie the alternatives are to focus windows when the
> mouse moves into them, which isn't what I want either)

Debian's GNOME (2.22.3) with metacity works this way, too. Fortunately
I prefer the focus following the mouse.

I've long had auto_raise off, which in conjunction with focus_mode set
to mouse, means that the focus follows the mouse and windows stay where
they are rather than coming to the fore. (Setting focus_mode to sloppy
means the focus stays with a window until you move the mouse to another
window. Slightly different.) I've just tried turning off
raise_on_click and that has now stopped windows popping to the top of
the stack when I click in them (to raise them explicitly, I can click
the window frame/decoration).

However, you're right in that raise_on_click doesn't appear to have any
effect if focus_mode is set to click.

Chris

alexd <troffasky> wrote:
> Not sure if you mean, not wanting to run it manually, or at all. You
> could put it in .xinitrc [or whatever Gnome's equivalent is] to have it
> done automatically on login.

Well, I've tried 6 attempts at 'whatever Gnome's equivalent is' and none of
them work! Thanks for that suggestion - I tried putting that in either
..xsession or .xinitrc with no difference. That makes 8 attempts :(

I'd rather not have something that interferes with other desktop
environments but I'll put up with it for the moment. My home directory is a
network account, so I don't want to walk up to a machine with only KDE and
discover I can't login because my X login scripts assume GNOME. The
'killall' is therefore risky because what happens if the machine has GNOME
but doesn't have xfwm4: will I be left with no window manager at all?
Ideally I want some way to have GNOME fallback to metacity if the specified
WM isn't there.

The /apps/gnome-session/rh/window_manager key[1] /does/ do something, in
that if I change it I get a blank grey screen and no mouse pointer. But I
can't seem to change it to anything else other than metacity. The help says
it can be either 'metacity' or 'compiz': if I try to use compiz I run into
graphics card problems. I'm not root and I don't want to call sys-admin in
to fix them just to fiddle with my window manager.

My point was really that GNOME claims to be WM agnostic, and then makes it
highly opaque as to how to change it! There really must be an option inside
GNOME's config somewhere, if only I can find it!

Theo

[1] Who on earth thought that the Windows registry was a good feature to be
emulated? I suppose at least the GNOME version has documentation.

Chris Davies <chris-usenet> wrote:
> Debian's GNOME (2.22.3) with metacity works this way, too. Fortunately
> I prefer the focus following the mouse.

I assume Debian's on the side of the war that have patched their versions.
[url down]

> However, you're right in that raise_on_click doesn't appear to have any
> effect if focus_mode is set to click.

I read this yesterday (Tom is a GNOME developer):
[url down]
but failed to read the comments. But it still doesn't work for me.

See also:
[url down]

Theo

On Fri, 10 Oct 2008 14:50:40 +0100, Theo Markettos wrote:

> I'd rather not have something that interferes with other desktop
> environments but I'll put up with it for the moment.

> Ideally I want some way to have GNOME fallback to metacity if the
> specified WM isn't there.

Hows about 'killall metacity && xfwm4 || metacity' ?

> The /apps/gnome-session/rh/window_manager key[1] /does/ do something, in
> that if I change it I get a blank grey screen and no mouse pointer. But
> I can't seem to change it to anything else other than metacity.

Any colour you want, so long as it's black ;-)

> My point was really that GNOME claims to be WM agnostic, and then makes
> it highly opaque as to how to change it! There really must be an option
> inside GNOME's config somewhere, if only I can find it!

Is there such a thing as gnome-session [or was it gnome-run] any more?
You could start your WM of choice first, then start gnome-session, which
will get you the gnome services, but without metacity, because there'll
already be a WM running.

> [1] Who on earth thought that the Windows registry was a good feature to
> be emulated? I suppose at least the GNOME version has documentation.

Presumably the same person who decided implementing .net on Linux was a
good idea [Linux is now ready for the desktop: you can get Trojans on
it]. Perhaps they'll have a go at autoexec.bat next.

alexd <troffasky> wrote:
> On Fri, 10 Oct 2008 14:50:40 +0100, Theo Markettos wrote:
> Hows about 'killall metacity && xfwm4 || metacity' ?

Good idea, that bodge should work. I might try see how GDM goes about
running the chosen desktop and see if I can insert that somewhere (as a
last-resort hack).

<later>... OK, I give up. Where /does/ GDM record the last session manager
you logged in with?

> Is there such a thing as gnome-session [or was it gnome-run] any more?
> You could start your WM of choice first, then start gnome-session, which
> will get you the gnome services, but without metacity, because there'll
> already be a WM running.

On my home machine, in XFCE4, if I run gnome-session I get:

gnome-session: you're already running a session manager

which is fair enough, but isn't terribly helpful of it. I could run all the
panels manually, I suppose, but that's faff.

> Presumably the same person who decided implementing .net on Linux was a
> good idea [Linux is now ready for the desktop: you can get Trojans on
> it]. Perhaps they'll have a go at autoexec.bat next.

Certainly, Sir:
http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/a...cbat-in-linux/

(Linux desktop environments slavishly copying all of Windows' bad points is
a rant reserved for another day...)

Theo

Theo Markettos <theom+news> wrote:
[..]
> stopping me working. So I don't want to switch to KDE, xfce4, or anything
> else, I just want to change window manager.
>
> If I do:
>
> killall metacity; xfwm4 &
>
> xfwm4 works just fine inside GNOME. But I don't want to have to run that
> command every time I login.
>
I use fvwm, to get it to replace Gnome's metacity you just run "fvwm
--replace" at a command prompt. Then, when you next log in you can
select fvwm as the default window manager and you'll get it as default
from then on. I would expect xfce would do exactly the same.

tinnews wrote:
> I use fvwm, to get it to replace Gnome's metacity you just run "fvwm
> --replace" at a command prompt. Then, when you next log in you can
> select fvwm as the default window manager and you'll get it as default
> from then on. I would expect xfce would do exactly the same.

Oooh, interesting. From where do you select fvwm as default window manager?
Does GNOME offer you a choice somewhere? Or do you mean you select fvwm
from the GDM desktop list before logging in, and somehow it remembers to
load up all the other GNOME panels?

Theo

In article <iFz*k3+os>,
Theo Markettos <theom+news> wrote:
>alexd <troffasky> wrote:

>> Presumably the same person who decided implementing .net on Linux was a
>> good idea [Linux is now ready for the desktop: you can get Trojans on
>> it]. Perhaps they'll have a go at autoexec.bat next.
>
>Certainly, Sir:
>[..]
>
>(Linux desktop environments slavishly copying all of Windows' bad points is
>a rant reserved for another day...)

Whilst that's a subject that would justify any rant you cared to make,
I'm not sure the existence of /etc/rc.local really qualifies for it.
Unless we should go back 20+ years and put all our system initialisation
in /etc/inittab :)

Nick

Theo Markettos wrote:

> tinnews wrote:
>> I use fvwm, to get it to replace Gnome's metacity you just run "fvwm
>> --replace" at a command prompt. Then, when you next log in you can
>> select fvwm as the default window manager and you'll get it as default
>> from then on. I would expect xfce would do exactly the same.
>
> Oooh, interesting. From where do you select fvwm as default window
> manager?
> Does GNOME offer you a choice somewhere? Or do you mean you select fvwm
> from the GDM desktop list before logging in, and somehow it remembers to
> load up all the other GNOME panels?
>

I'm still a bit of a Debian noob when it comes to the desktop but the
windows manager seems to be controlled by the alternatives system. I
say "seems" because when I use KDE then kwin is the windows manager and
when I use Gnome metacity is used which is all very sensible but the way I
understand the alternatives system one should take precedence over the
other.

Here's what I've got:

# update-alternatives --display x-window-manager
x-window-manager - status is auto.
link currently points to /usr/bin/metacity
/usr/bin/twm - priority 40
slave x-window-manager.1.gz: /usr/share/man/man1/twm.1.gz
/usr/bin/metacity - priority 60
slave x-window-manager.1.gz: /usr/share/man/man1/metacity.1.gz
/usr/bin/kwin - priority 50
Current `best' version is /usr/bin/metacity.