Quoting Stephen Dennison (stephenrd@???):

> No, I mean, I literally don't understand the use of the words chosen
> and how they're supposed to modify each other. Based on your
> interpretation, my guesswork of his intended usage of the acronym was
> more or less accurate, but I don't understand the choice of words
> themselves.

Steve wants a word denoting 'either a window manager or a desktop
environment, and I really don't care which of them it is, or want to
hear about the distinction'. Like many a computerist before him, he
decided to fill this _alleged_ need by coining a new expression that's
painfully ungainly and, if anything, anti-mnemonic.

Remember the misbegotten push for everyone to please adopt the
goofy initialism 'FLOSS'[1] (or 'FOSS') based on the supposed need to
bury the (alleged) distinction between 'free software' and 'open source'
by switching to a third term? This is the same sort of tactical +
strategic error, saying to people 'Here, let me simplify reality by
burying the difference between _two_ things by inventing a _third_
thing.'

Uh-huh. Seen that.
https://xkcd.com/927/


> Actually I was basing my description on the session dir, the files,
> and content. The files contain a command that will get executed.

Indeed. But the directory location is by convention intended to be
written to and read from X session managers. Sure, you could also
decide to put things there, but the point is that SLiM is looking there
to find X session manager state.

A more obvious place for -you- to put directives about which X clients
to run at startup time is ~/.xinitrc . In fact, that's what it's for.

Moreover, when you put them there, that file will get unconditionally
parsed and run at X startup time by the X server, irrespective of any
other considerations such as choice of display manager -- which is
generally what you will want.


> [SLiM] gives you hooks to call setup and teardown to support
> whatever hokey session you might want, but does it really care about
> session in the way you describe?

{shrug}

I'm just inferring based on what wording SLiM uses and what directories it
chooses to parse at startup. If you are serious about wanting to know
for certain what the coders were thinking, you'll have to ask them.
(FWIW, SLiM is no longer maintained upstream.)

> I played with it long enough to learn how to customize it but
> eventually went back to console login. I only recently started using
> slim on systems that need to look modern for other people.

FWIW, xdm can look really nice with a custom background image and some
other dressing up. If you want _just_ a display manager that will
just accept login credentials, start X11, and obey standard X Window
System controls (meaning its user-specific and system-wide rc files),
look no further.

xdm looking extremely plain is merely a _default_.

Defaults are for experimenting with. It's *ix.


[1] http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=882