Changing window manager: from metacity to windowmaker

[steve]

Hello Paul,

Thanks for your suggestions. My reply is inline below ...
  >
  > There are many ways to do this in Fedora 8, maybe you can tell me if
  > they still work on F10.
  >
  > The easiest route might be to fix your session.
  >
  > In Gnome->Preferences->Personal->Sessions, you can take these steps.
  > 1. stop metacity.   change its status from restart to normal, then
  > remove it from the session. (if you don't change its status, it just
  > restarts).

:-) That's actually the first thing I went looking for, because, I had used that
   when I did the same thing on F8. Unfortunately tho, it seem like they have
removed the window manager option from the Sessions configuration dialog
...also, the restart/normal ..etc options are no longer available. Now, there is
just a ^user-friendly^ "Startup Programs" list.

  >
  > 2. insert wmaker as a program in the startup list and then save the
  > settings.  People have claimed that if you have wmaker running and you
  > just hit the "save session" thing, then it will make it right.  I've
  > not experienced that myself.

I tried this. Or rather added wmaker to the startup programs list i mentioned
above (after changed the gconf key
/desktop/gnome/session/required_components/windowmanager ) and it does the right
thing.

So, thanks for that suggestion ! It works (kinda ...there are a few ugly
side-effects that i am trying to figure out now ...for example, how do I get rid
of the panel[1] and what is the proper way to logout[2])/

  > As an alternative, you can go "old school."  Look in your HOME
  > directory for a file .Xclients.  I think it should be there, it will
  > have only something like gnome-session.  Before that gnome line, you
  > cna insert this
  >
  > export WINDOW_MANAGER=wmaker

Haven't tried this out yet. Will do it soon. Will report back if after I do.

  > Several years ago, I wrote a script to do the changeover for users. It
  > replaces the function of wmaker.inst.   It is called gnome.wmaker.inst
  > and it uses gconftool to make the session changes for you.

Thanks for the script ! I'm still reading through it ...it seems to be doing a
lot of things, so I'll probably end up stripping bit of it.

Anyways, thanks for your help.

regards
- steve

[1] Like I mentioned in my original post, I am using docker for my applets
(nm-applet, gonme-power-manager ...etc). However, since wmaker now starts as an
application after the session has loaded, the applets first get created on the
panel and then 'jump' to the docker application. I need to figure out how to
avoid this and eventually remove the panel.

[2] exit WindowMaker and logout are 2 different things. If I need to preserve my
wmaker session and logout cleanly, I need to exit wmaker and then logout from gnome.

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