On Sun, 24 Apr 2016 14:12:18 +0300
Mitt Green <mitt_green@???> wrote:


> I suppose, he meant that there's a  fine line between
> a window manager and a DE sometimes.

Thanks Mitt,

What I really meant is there's a very fuzzy line. As I stated before, a
spectrum.

> EDE (Equinox Desktop Environment) includes only a
> window manager and a panel, as far as I know.
> Some window managers provide panel (bar) too, think Fluxbox,
> Blackbox, dwm and its remakes, i3, wmii. FVWM lets you make your own
> panels and what people now call widgets.

> LXDE, on the other hand, has its own panel, file manager,
> task manager, appearance settings programme,
> desktop and session. So, 'tis an environment definitely.

So, if I took dwm, packaged it with the fbpanel panel, an fbpanel
config tool, the Rox Filer file manager, the scrot screenshot utility,
the dmenu app-selector, Edward's Network Tool (forgot its current name),
and a custom GUI app, made by me, that acquires settings from the user
and recompiled dwm accordingly (dwm must be recompiled to be
configured), and a special menu leading to all these addons, and name
the whole thing GammaRay, then GammaRay is a DE using dwm as its WM?

If that's your definition, then there is indeed a clear line of
demarcation. And that well may be the definition.

But in everyday life, that's not how most people define them. How often
do you hear Xfce being called a "window manager"? Happens all the time.
LXDE and IceWM have pretty much identical user interfaces and
functionalities, except LXDE has a few more peripheral utilities. If
IceWM chose to give a separate name to its window manager component (the
component that manages and decorates windows), then IceWM would be
considered a DE, whereas because of its lightweightness and the fact
that it doesn't give a separate name to its window manager component
(and perhaps its window manager component isn't a distinct module),
I've seen it uniformly called a "window manager."

If one defines a window manager as the thing that decorates and
controls windows, and a desktop environment as a group of software
containing and interacting with a distinct, thin-interfaced window
manager module, then most X interfaces are DEs. Heck, even Openbox
ships with a system menu and an (incomplete) configuration GUI. With
the definitions declared at the top of this paragraph, some window
managers are surrounded by more software than others, and they're almost
uniformly DEs, because a pure WM would be useless to most folks.

But the REAL problem is that it seems like each person has his own
definition of WM and DE. Which means when they ask questions, you must
preface the discussion by their querying their definition. In this
thread, does Xfce qualify? Does LXDE? Openbox? Dwm? We have to go back
to the OP to find out. I find a vocabulary leading to that level of
ambiguity unsettling.

I wish we lived in a world with a single name for both concepts. I use
wm/de or wmde a lot. Perhaps TLGUI (Top Level Graphical User
Interface). Because in 95% of interactions, it would save time and
garner clarity if a person said "I want a TLGUI that's lightweight, but
it's got to have a panel and a GUI config program."

This has very little to do with Devuan or systemd, so it's not
something to get worked up about. It's just something to think about.

SteveT

Steve Litt
April 2016 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21