A few questions

On Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:53:12 +0200
J G Miller <miller.TakeThisOut@yoyo.ORG> wrote:

>On Mon, 26 Oct 2009 08:41:41 -0700, Kevin Nathan wrote:
>
>> From *our* point of view, that makes it difficult.
>
>You mean inconvenient then rather than "very, very difficult".
>

Yes, inconvenient is better -- although I only used *one* 'very' in my
post...

But it was also difficult because I hadn't editted an X session's
config files in a long time and would have to get back up to speed on
it. Sometimes, the convenience of openSUSE and its predecessors is a
negative!

Plus, we'd have to download and compile XFCE and add it in after the
install (we had not seen an Xubuntu at that time). And that would all
have to be scripted because one of the techs doing the installs was
command line illiterate.

Then, too, without XFCE being supported by the Ubuntu install, the nice
install/update manager they had would know nothing of it and all updates
would need to be done by hand, by us, on each machine instead of
letting the users run the update once a week or so.


--
Kevin Nathan (Arizona, USA)
Linux Potpourri and a.o.l.s. FAQ -- (temporarily offline)

Open standards. Open source. Open minds.
The command line is the front line.
Linux 2.6.25.20-0.5-pae
10:12am up 5 days 0:25, 37 users, load average: 0.30, 0.40, 0.43

On Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:00:21 -0500, Rick wrote:

> I am trying to change the fonts for the windows stuff, File, Edic,
> Copy, the stuff i the toolbars, etc.

So you are asking about the appearance of the actual application rather
than the window manager decoration?

In that case it depends entirely on the application and what widget set,
if any, is used.

For Athena and Motif applications, you need to set up the appropriate
configuration in an apps-defaults file.

For GTK applications, you would need to set the appropriate GTK theme
(via the Gnome control center or a GTK theme changer program).

For QT applications, you would need to make the appropriate settings
in a .qtrc file (which could be done via KDE control center).

Other programs may have their own configuration files for setting the
appearance of the widgets (or have these embedded in the code eg a
TCL script).

On Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:05:13 -0700, Kevin Nathan wrote:

> It is very difficult to run a different dm/wm on
> [U|Ku]buntu, at least from what we saw.

In fact it is not.

Just modify /etc/X11/Xsession and /etc/X11/Xsession.d/ files
appropriately to start your window manager or choice, or even
better a script (eg a Tk/TCL or PERL/TCL) which allows you
to choose your preferred window manager, or point the startup
script in

/etc/X11/Xsession.d/99xorg-common_start

to execute another non-interactive script which starts your preferred
window manager and xclients.

Same can be done on SuSE with modification to /etc/X11/Xsession and
inclusion of Xsession.d/files as an added feature in the manner of
Debian/Ubuntu etc.

On Mon, 26 Oct 2009 08:41:41 -0700, Kevin Nathan wrote:

> From *our* point of view, that makes it difficult.

You mean inconvenient then rather than "very, very difficult".

One possible solution is to use wdm (Wings Display Manager) which allows
you to select a window manager from the user login screen, assuming that
when it passes the window_manager argument to the /etc/X11/Xsession file,
that script honors the choice.

On Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:33:38 -0500
Rick <none RemoveThis @mail.invalid> wrote:

>Can't you just select your window manager from the sessions options in
>gdm or kdm?
>

Ubuntu/Kubuntu weren't set up that way. Ubuntu was GNOME, Kubuntu was
KDE. Now there is also Xubuntu (XFCE) and probably others, but when we
were looking they didn't have the Xubuntu variety, yet.

The client did not want selections available to the users because they
would move from desk to desk and office to office; he wanted a standard
desktop throughout his company so anyone could use any computer...


--
Kevin Nathan (Arizona, USA)
Linux Potpourri and a.o.l.s. FAQ -- (temporarily offline)

Open standards. Open source. Open minds.
The command line is the front line.
Linux 2.6.25.20-0.5-pae
3:17pm up 5 days 5:31, 37 users, load average: 0.62, 0.65, 0.69

On Mon, 26 Oct 2009 08:41:41 -0700, Kevin Nathan wrote:

> On Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:46:19 +0200
> J G Miller <miller.TakeThisOut@yoyo.ORG> wrote:
>
>>On Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:05:13 -0700, Kevin Nathan wrote:
>>
>>> It is very difficult to run a different dm/wm on [U|Ku]buntu, at least
>>> from what we saw.
>>
>>In fact it is not.
>>
>>Just modify /etc/X11/Xsession and /etc/X11/Xsession.d/ files
>
> And therein lies the crux of the problem. We wanted a simple install and
> not something we needed to modify on each installation. From *our* point
> of view, that makes it difficult.

Can't you just select your window manager from the sessions options in
gdm or kdm?



--
Rick

On Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:35:58 +0200, J G Miller wrote:

> On Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:00:21 -0500, Rick wrote:
>
>> I am trying to change the fonts for the windows stuff, File, Edic,
>> Copy, the stuff i the toolbars, etc.
>
> So you are asking about the appearance of the actual application rather
> than the window manager decoration?


Yes.


>
> In that case it depends entirely on the application and what widget set,
> if any, is used.
>
> For Athena and Motif applications, you need to set up the appropriate
> configuration in an apps-defaults file.
>
> For GTK applications, you would need to set the appropriate GTK theme
> (via the Gnome control center or a GTK theme changer program).

I originally edited the gtkrc files, but Firefox and Thunderbird ignored
them. The other gtk apps were OK. So, I Dled Gnome control center and
gnome-settings daemon and now thunderbird and Firefox are OK.

>
> For QT applications, you would need to make the appropriate settings in
> a .qtrc file (which could be done via KDE control center).

I did that from KDE control center.

>
> Other programs may have their own configuration files for setting the
> appearance of the widgets (or have these embedded in the code eg a TCL
> script).

I've got it working now. I wish there was a way to get all that done
without the added KDE/Gnome pieces. Ah, well...

Thanks for your input.
--
Rick