Re: gnome compliant window managers

["Jesse D . Sightler" <jsight pair com>]

The answer is remarkably simple.  If E is the only dependency for Gnome
that you are missing, install it with "rpm -ivh --nodeps gnome.rpm".  :)


On Sun, 21 Mar 1999 21:41:40 Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> Michael Fulbright <msf@redhat.com> writes:
> 
> > sds@goems.com said:
> > > RH people do not consider this to be a bug (see http://
> > > developer.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=1503): 
> > 
> > We have chosen to use Enlightenment as our default window manager because
> > in our experience it is the most GNOME compliant wm, and it has a very
> > nice GUI tool to configure its behavior. It is installed by default in
> > the Starbuck release.
> > 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I realize there is no plot to force particular WMs on people or
> anything, but this does seem like a technical problem to me which
> could probably be fixed.
> 
> Basically, people need to install Enlightenment (and all it's myriad
> dependencies, some of which are not, at least currently, Gnome
> dependencies per se) to be able to install Gnome from the RPMs unless
> they build Gnome themselves, and even if they configure Gnome to use a
> different window manager later, they can't uninstall Enlightenment
> because the gnome-core package depends on it.
> 
> Again, although I realize this is all done with the best of
> intentions, and gnome-core is in fact currently set up to build so
> that it needs a specific window manager specified at configure-time, I
> personally think it would be nice to find a technical solution either
> in terms of modifing gnome-core to deal with this kind of thing more
> gracefully, or in terms of the way the packaging is done, assuming
> Gnome wants to maintain a nominal appearance of window manager
> independece. I know it must be possible, because Red Hat has many
> places where one package depends on one of several others being
> present, through the use of the "Provides" RPM directive.
> 
> In fact the way it is set up now is kind of reminiscent of the way
> Windows comes with Internet Explorer, and although you can install
> another browser and use that, you still won't be able to remove IE. I
> know the intention isn't as sinister in the Gnome/Enlightenment case,
> but still I have seen posts from KDE guys claiming that Gnome isn't
> _really_ window manager independent, etc etc so the whole thing is
> kind of bad PR.
> 
> Personally, I don't care too much, I can spare the disk space for
> packages I don't personally use, but the situation as is seems to
> annoy some users on a philosophical level.
> 
> I am also curious what other OS distributors (Debian, FreeBSD, etc)
> have done in terms of dependencies between the various gnome packages
> and WM's. Have you made gnome-core dependent on a specific window
> manager, or have you found some more clever solution?
> 
> Hoping to shed light rather than heat on this issue,
> 
> Maciej Stachowiak
> 
> 
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---------------
Jesse D. Sightler
http://www3.pair.com/jsight/

"An honest answer can get you into a lot of trouble." 
         - Anonymous