Re: Basics not in the FAQ

["James M. Cape" <jcape jcinteractive com>]

Jason Whittle wrote:
> 
> I've looked for the answer to this, and only found hints, so please don't
> flame me. I'm not clear on the specific relationships between X, GNOME,
> and WMs. The default for RH5.1 seems to be fvwm running directly over
> XFree86. Am I missing something (i.e. Is there a GNOME equivalent that is
> acting transparently on my distribution?) or does GNOME provide
> functionality beyond what a WM can offer? Is GNOME also a WM, or does it
> require a separate WM on top? Where does X stop and GNOME begin? The goals
> of GNOME and Enlightenment seem to overlap to a good extent; is this
> intentional or even desirable?
> 
> I am a competent programmer who is familiar with UNIX and has made a
> commitment to GNU/Linux, and I am now attempting to integrate myself with
> the community. Any light you can shine on this subject would be greatly
> appreciated.
> 
> Thanks,
>  J <jaw269@psu.edu>

GNOME is a set of utilities and APIs that applications can use. It is
not a window manager, so you will have to run that separately.
Currently, GNOME loads Enlightenment as it's "default" WM, because E has
the most support for GNOME's Window Manager interaction spec.
Enlightenment's goal currently is to take over some functions of GNOME,
like the pager, icon representation, and applets (basically, E's goal is
to provide Window Maker's functionality with E's themability). GNOME's
goal right now is to provide APIs equivalent to Window's ActiveX,
without Windows or ActiveX, as well as make the utilities it already has
behave as a cohesive user interface (AKA desktop). GNOME is pretty far
along in both respects. GNOME's APIs are a more app-centric abstraction
of the GTK+ widget set, which is a widget-centric abstraction of the X
drawing facilities. Finally, the overlap between GNOME and E is because
Raster and Mandrake did not want a E to be just the GNOME window
manager, but more like Window Maker in functionality (and there is
intentional overlap between Window Maker and GNOME as well).

Hopefull this will answer your questions.

    Jim Cape
    http://www.jcinteractive.com

    "Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them
     pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."
        -- Winston Churchill