My Desktop
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My Desktop
I've been working with Unix X11 based desktop systems for over 30 years. Over that period of time I have developed a highly peronalized desktop setup.
Two programs play an important role in X11 desktop setups: the session manager and the window manager. The session manager controls the desktop services like panels, icons and such, while the window manager controls the look and feel of all windows.
| Period | Platform | Window system | Session | Window Manager |
| 1989-1993 | Ultrix VAX, MIPS | DECwindows X11 | Mwm (Motif Window Manager) Gwm (Bull Generic Window Manager) Twm (Tom's Window Manager) Vtwm (Virtual TWM) Tvtwm (Tom's Virtual TWM) Ctwm (Claude's version of TWM) |
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| 1993-1995 | Solaris 4 Sparc | X11 OpenWindows | Ctwm | |
| 1995-2004 | RedHat Linux i686 | X11 XFree86 Xorg | Ctwm | |
| 2004-2008 | Fedora Linux i686 | Xorg | Gnome | Ctwm |
| 2008-2011 | Fedora Linux i686 | Xorg | Gnome | OpenBox |
| 2011-2015 | Fedora Linux x86_64 | Xorg | Gnome | OpenBox |
| 2015- | Fedora Linux x86_64 | Xorg | Mate | OpenBox |
This table is constructed from memory and may not be exact. It definitely is not complete.
At first, I did not use the session manager since it did not provide anything interesting. Hoewever, with modern, Gnome based desktop systems the session manager performs tasks that you would not like to miss. Unfortunately, Ctwm had become only loosely supported and could not really keep up with the requirements of the modern desktop.
Recently, after at least 15 years of happy cooperation, I traded in the Ctwm window manager for a new program: OpenBox.
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articles/MyDesktop/index.html last modified 13:35:48 14-Apr-2021