Quoting Michael Siegel (micha@???):

> What is being chosen there, is actually a profile for the graphical
> environment. So, neither "window manager" nor "desktop environment"
> really fit. You could say "profile", but "session" seems to be the
> (de-facto) standard term. Also, it makes some sense if you think about
> what session management is.

In this case, SLiM _literally means_ sessions, because (by default
configuration of /etc/slim.conf, it is parsing /usr/share/xsessions/ ,
which by convention is where X11 session managers store their state
data.

It's not that 'session' is a _standard_ term; it's that it's what SLiM
happens to be talking about in, in its default configuration.

Luckily, if you aren't running X11 session managers and/or prefer
more-direct control over what SLiM offers users at login, you can edit
/etc/slim.conf to do that (commenting out the 'sessiondir' line, for
starters).

Steve may or may not have noticed that I also did answer his other
question: For a user to make a system's choice of window manager
'sticky' in SLiM, he/she need only edit ~/.xinitrc . Thus, each user
gets to declare a preference.