Quoting Steve Litt (slitt@???):

> > Uh-huh. Seen that.
> > https://xkcd.com/927/
>
> That's not relevant to this particular discussion, as it discusses a
> standard, not a term to unify two terms that, at least from a certain
> viewpoint, are the same thing.

I believe the application of cartoonist Randall Munroe's concept should
be fully clear. (If it nonetheless isn't to you, I can easily live with
that.)

Anyway, you have invented in your mind a problem that (in my considered
view) doesn't exist, tried to present a really terrible solution to the
alleged problem, and (not _just_ in my considered view, but observably)
gotten zero pickup. Which brings us to date.

Some day, you really ought to study the particulars of the X Window
System sufficiently to get to knowthe basic categories (such as the three
I detailed upthread) and where the forest of rc files are and what they
do. The latter is the difficult part, because, frankly, X11 itself is
an infamously baroque design.

For some cheap computerist entertainment on _that_ subject, read veteran
UI coder Don Hopkins's chapter 'The X-Windows Disaster'[1] in _The
UNIX-HATER's Handbook_ (1994). Co-editor Simson Garfinkel has kindly
put it online in PDF form: http://simson.net/ref/ugh.pdf

Said volume, a flawed minor classic of the rant genre, has always had
fans in Unixdom, including yr. present correspondent. It's a
compilation of postings to the old (long-gone, I think) mailing list
UNIX-HATERS, mostly sent by disgruntled devotees of Symbolics, Inc.
LISP Machines and a few Mac-heads uncharacteristically able to use their
keyboards. ;-> (In other words, the critiques are all rather ancient
in 2017.)

So, anyway, X11 somewhat sucks. (Will Wayland suck less? Don't hold
your breath waiting.)



> Back to the current discussion. The slim login screen could easily give
> one a choice between KDE (which everyone would term a Desktop
> Environment) and DWM (which everyone would term a Window Manager).

I'm sure the Devuan Project would gratefully accept your patch.


> And forget "session", because if one needs to, as you put it in a
> different email, slim parses /usr/share/xsessions/. That's an
> implementation detail, not a commonly used terminology.

If you think X Session Managers are not a standard commonly used
terminology, and/or that said directory doesn't exist specifically for
them, then you are mistaken.


[1] As the book explains, Don Hopkins made a point of saying 'X-Windows'
_because_ that term is deprecated by the X authorities (on trademark
grounds, IIRC) and he thereby hoped to annoy X Window System people.
Which is very much in the spirit of pique that informs the book as a
whole.

Hopkins has ample credibility for writing said critique, being a
qualified authority on X _and_ also on Sun NeWS. It's a tragedy that
NeWS lost the adoption batter to the X Window System, because it was
head and shoulders better -- but the fact is that Sun refused to licence
that code and related patents on liberal grounds, whereas X lacked those
obstacles, so it won despite its drawbacks. Unix-family OSes have won
(become ubiquitous) for extremely similar reasons.