Arch Linux

unregistered

Member

Registered: 2008-04-09

Posts: 134

desktop environments, window managers and xinit

in the beginner's tutorial, it says that xinit would default to the global xinitrc file in /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc if the one in the user's home directory is not found and the global xinitrc would invoke twm. So my question would be is the twm window manager installed together with xorg when i do pacman -S xorg?

Another question i have would be whether compiz would work better with compiz fusion than with the default window manager gnome(metacity) or kde(kwin) (less crashes, instability, etc) since its the same entity which developed both softwares (correct me if I am wrong) ?

Between gnome and kde, which is more unstable and prone to more crashes?
I've only really used kde before and ive experienced many crashes so far(It may be distro specific - the only distro i tried and never had any crashes with kde whatsoever was slackware so I'm not sure if kde in arch behaves the same way too, can someone enlighten me how its like in arch?)
and was wondering if gnome would be a better bet.
I do like the panel layout and eyecandy in kde and I'm not sure if the panel in gnome can be adjusted to the bottom or not?
like i said ive never used gnome much before

Last edited by unregistered (2008-05-15 08:57:34)

pressh

Developer/TU

From: Netherlands

Registered: 2005-08-14

Posts: 1,719

Re: desktop environments, window managers and xinit

So my question would be is the twm window manager installed together with xorg when i do pacman -S xorg?

yes, xorg-twm is in the xorg group. You can see that in the PKGBUILD which you can access via the web interface or via ABS.

I do like the panel layout and eyecandy in kde and I'm not sure if the panel in gnome can be adjusted to the bottom or not?
like i said ive never used gnome much before

yes you can.

About the stability questions, a lot depends on your hardware and your configuration.

alex_anthony

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2007-09-25

Posts: 344

Re: desktop environments, window managers and xinit

for some reason I couldn't get compiz running standalone, but with Gnome it was fine.
To decide between gnome and kde, perhaps try having a fiddle with gnome in some live cd and see if you like what you can do...
Also what programs do you use/like? You can use each in the other, but if you're struggling to decide...