I have been using xterm for all my work. I realized that the features that desktop environments like GNOME has to provide are not of much use to me. Now, is it possible that I remove GNOME and KDE altogether and use some window manager only in run level 5 (X11) to play videos, use browser, and occasionally file manager like Nautilus. How can I do it? Is it a good idea? Which window manager would you suggest?
What I have done so far: I installed Window Maker. When I rebooted, I was offered one more choice at the time of login - GNOME, KDE, Window Maker. I chose Window Maker. It gives me multiple workspaces, customizable keyboard shortcuts, without usual desktop features like panel, notification area, desktop icons.
But I have observed that whenever I launch Nautilus, the desktop background changes to the one I set on GNOME and all desktop icons are restored as they were in GNOME, though the keyboard shortcuts of Window Maker still works. But to remove GNOME background and desktop icons I have to logout and login again.
How can I fix it so that launching of Nautilus does not bring GNOME background? Should I use some other file manager?
Update
I have complied and installed dwm. It was not difficult at all. Though I needed to do the following steps to make dwm show in the menu of my login screen.
$ cd /usr/share/xsessions/
$ vim dwm.desktop
In the dwm.desktop
I wrote:
[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=dwm
Comment=To start dwm session
Exec=/usr/local/bin/dwm
Type=Application
This time when I got to login, I got dwm in the menu.
Update
I solved the nautilus problem using following steps.
$ gconftool-2 --recursive-list "/apps" |less
Here I searched for nautilus. It gave me
/apps/nautilus:
/apps/nautilus/preferences:
show_icon_text = local_only
start_with_sidebar = true
click_policy = double
background_color = #ffffff
start_with_toolbar = true
start_with_location_bar = true
mouse_back_button = 8
thumbnail_limit = 10485760
directory_limit = -1
...
After that it was a simple matter of setting keys
$ gconftool-2 --get "/apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop"
$ true
$ gconftool-2 --set "/apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop" --type bool false
$ gconftool-2 --get "/apps/nautilus/preferences/exit_with_last_window
$ false
$ gconftool-2 --set "/apps/nautilus/preferences/exit_with_last_window" --type bool true
$ gconftool-2 --get "/apps/nautilus/preferences/media_automount_open
$ true
$ gconftool-2 --set "/apps/nautilus/preferences/media_automount_open" --type bool false
Useful links: