On Sun, 03 Feb 2008 16:25:38 +0000, Tom Newton wrote:

> On 2008-02-03, Mark South <mark.south@null.invalid> wrote:
>>>>
>>> Once again, you are talking apples and oranges above. A window manager
>>> and an integrated desktop environment like KDE or Gnome, are very
>>> different beasts.
>>
>> Some say so. I believe it to be a matter of degree. There is a
>> spectrum, and some window managers come close to providing desktop
>> environments (Enlightenment, Windowmaker) and some have configuration
>> to make it possible, like fvwm-crystal.
>
> It's not as simple as 'degree'. A window manager is a utility.
>
> An integrated desktop environment is a user-interface that conceals the
> way you OS really works.

The degree is in how much the wm does for you, and how much the
underlying system is concealed. Fvwm is a very plain, no-frills, wm.
When one uses the fvwm-crystal setup, it's basically like interacting
with a desktop environment.

>>> KDE/Gnome _have_ window managers. They are not window managers.
>>
>> Yup. It's a layered stack.
>>
>>> I am using a great window manager right now, called ratpoison. It's
>>> just about infinitely configurable.
>>>
>>> It's 112K with no special libs. Compare that to the size of KDE or
>>> Gnome and all the special libs they need...
>>>
>>> We are talking orders of magnitude of size difference and functional
>>> difference.
>>
>> Indeed. And I prefer a bicycle as a means of getting about, but
>> sometimes a train is more practical.
>
> That's not an accurate analogy. You can't do anything with KDE that
> others can't do with ODE.

Well, no analogy is accurate, but the train and the bicycle have
different advantages. No one has ever taken a train to the top of
Kilimanjaro, and no bicycle has ever gone over 400 km/h (well, OK, inside
a train or plane it has :-).

> Getting rid of the shell and all those wonderful utilities will be the
> next step after everyone is hooked on KDE. And integrating the whole
> system like Windows is: KDE won't be an option, it will BE Linux, as far
> as the user is concerned.
>
> See? Whenever you are dealing with a group that wants to make it easy:
> "user-friendly", you are dealing with someone who wants you to be an
> ignorant and dependent appliance operator.

When we first interacted in this group, you said you were going to ignore
me because I was trying to make you paranoid....