Dropping Base X group? [Was: Re: KDE logout options with F8]

[Matej Cepl]

On 2007-11-05, 09:59 GMT, Patrice Dumas wrote:
>> I would suspect, that here is the answer -- just pick one 
>> (although WindowMaker means much more than just a window 
>> manager, I guess).
>
> What else? 

Well, it's confusing (at least for me) to distinguish between 
WindowMaker and GNUStep -- at least in Debian (which I used 
before coming to RedHat) WM tend to develop a list of wm-* 
packages almost as long as g* and k* packages. I am not sure 
which one of them would qualify as parts of GNUStep and which 
ones are just addons on WM, but there are plenty of them all over 
the place.

> Indeed, looks cool. Seems that WebCore has javascript support.

Sure it has -- and konqueror (using KJS which is what WebCore JS 
support is based upon) works with GMail, AFAIK.

> I don't think that dust will settle. The desktop is a moving 
> target, with kde/gnome/xfce ruling freedesktop and having 
> resources put by vendors in these efforts (redhat is a good 
> example of a company pushing the desktop innovations which also 
> means breaking existing apps).

Well, then probably point is to keep the list packages in DE just 
as long as you and people who will be on it with you will be able 
to maintain.  Moreover, it seems to me that (under the influence 
of server guys, I think) many core changes in Fedora (thinking 
pulseaudio, policykit, packagekit, and hopefully now even 
NetworkManager) will be much more open to non-{Gnome,KDE} 
environments.

> I used xfce in the past (fedora 3, maybe 4?) but then it became 
> to take time to launch, and then I switched to fluxbox.

Jus to make sure, that I understand -- you claim, that XFCE is 
not as lightweight as it used to be, or in other words, that 
their effort to build lightweight equivalent of Gnome failed?

>> > * minimal usable set is very small (a display manager, 
>> > a window manager)
>> 
>> I am not sure about it. You just have to look wider I suppose.
>
> Nothing more is necessary for lightweight DE. Of course there are lots
> of apps that can be optional but are suited for lightweight DE
> (dockapps, gmrun, xdvi, xfig, conky, gv and many others...).

I don't know -- would you allow some email client, for example (I 
heard a lot of good things about Sylpheed in this respect) or do 
you expect most of the apps to be console ones running in 
xterm/rxvt/whatever?

Matěj