Re: "consistent look and feel" && "WM independent"??

[Tom Tromey <tromey creche cygnus com>]

Russell> I don't understand the value of session management.  I
Russell> suppose that, if you don't own your own machine, or if you
Russell> have to enter and exit X all the time, session management is
Russell> a good thing.  I've never been led to use it myself.

It all depends on your usage pattern.

If you're a student in a shared lab, session management would be
great.  No more restarting everything every time you log out.  No more
hacking .xinits.  You could even use xlock, knowing that if somebody
logs you out (a feature xlock will be able to easily provide, due to
session management), you won't lose your state.

If you're on a single user home machine that you leave up all the
time, then, yeah, session management doesn't buy you much.  Of course,
if you have a Mac/PC-like usage pattern on the same machine (shut down
when you're done), then it would be nice.


More advanced usage is saving a particular setup as a session, and
then making a new session.  Then you can use the session manager to
easily switch setups.  (There are some flaws in this plan that we'll
have to address eventually.)


You could have your UPS contact the session manager to request that
the state be saved.


FWIW I shut down my NT machine all the time.  I'm always annoyed that
only the file manager windows come back.

Tom