My Desktop

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My Desktop

I've been working with Unix X11 based desktop systems for over 20 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)
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-	Fedora Linux i686	Xorg	Gnome	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.

Summary of my Ctwm setup

The new OpenBox setup

Another convert from CTWM to OpenBox: Aaron Sloman