Note on changing window managers

Changing window managers will make major changes to the look-and-feel of all your windows and it is not advisable to do unless you are sure you understand the consequences. Doing it on a machine supporting a vendor-enhanced one may lose all of the vendor-specific features like floating toolbars and icons. In some cases applications will crash if you use a window manager different from the one intended by the software vendor. Most window managers allow you to customize settings with a configuration dot file that should be put in your home directory. If the window manager is called foo, this configuration file is typically called .foorc and templates called system.foorc which you can copy, rename and customize are usually located somewhere in the window manger distribution tree (see documentation for details). You might also want to look in the dotfiles locker for ideas on how to customize settings.

In a number of cases, the window managers support correct basic functionality but utilities and program launchers may not be configured or present on Athena; consequently attempts to launch these using window managers controls may fail. Some window managers (afterstep) may start processes that can add significantly to your cpu load. These may need to be killed manually if you decide to switch to another window manager.

Window managers are normally started automatically on login provided certain entries are in required configuration files (see below). You should not normally need to start one manually.

In order to log in with an alternative window manager, you generally edit the ~/.environment file in your home directory (or create one if it is not there). You do not need to do anything if you want to use the default Athena window manager (metacity for Athena 9.4). If you switched window managers and want to revert to the default, just remove any lines you may have added to the ~/.environment file to do this (or delete the file .athena_dash_interface if you created this to revert to mwm). The new window manager will be invoked the next time you log in. If you want to use a window manager that is unique to a given architecture, you may run into problems if you use a machine of different architecture; you may need to write conditional code that branches on machine type- details are beyond the scope of this document.

The following lines should be put in the ~/.environment file (replace name of the window manager with the actual name)

setenv WINDOW_MANAGER <name of the window manager>

If the window manager is in the windowmanagers locker add the line:

add windowmanagers

If the gnome panel interferes with the window manager you want to use, you can delete it by adding the lines:

set skip_panel

set skip_capplets

As a special case, you can revert to the pre-Athena 9.x window manager default (mwm) by doing the following:

cd
touch .athena_dash_interface

Deleting file .athena_dash_interface in your home directory will revert to the default Window manager.