On Thu, 22 Oct 2009 23:57:08 -0600
Will Honea <whonea at (no spam) yahoo.com> wrote:

That's where I'm headed but the major hangup is any change at all
since they most of the desktops are recent converts from Windows -
mostly XP - and I'm getting this "you want us to change AGAIN?"
response.

Well, I would remind them that every time they upgraded Windows, they
had to re-learn many things -- I'm still hearing that complaint from
the Windows users I know. With many Linux desktop/window managers, the
look and feel doesn't change very fast (except KDE and GNOME which I
believe are trying to hard to mimic their respective target markets of
Windows and Apple). For example, icewm still has the Windows 98-like
look and feel that I first saw back in 2000. I'm not as familiar with
XFCE, so not sure how much it might have changed, but from some
screenshots I have seen, it might be a contender for you. I believe
fvwm2 also has not changed its look very much.

For more desktop/window managers, see:

http://xwinman.org/

there might be some gems in there for you! :-)


My current inclination is to leave 11.1/KDE3 in place for a
year or so before fighting the battle and then switching the desktop
at the same time I upgrade the os. For a novice Linux user coming
from Windows the change in appearance alone is a problem. Is there
anything out there to make KDE4 look and act like KDE3? that might
also be a possibility.


I don't use KDE4, will probably look at it again in another few months,
but I have heard people say (on this newsgroup) that they have it
looking pretty close to KDE 3.5.

XFCE might be your closest match. The latest screenshots (2005) on
xwinman.org seem to look close to WinXP.

Will Honea wrote:
My current inclination is to leave 11.1/KDE3 in place for a year or
so before fighting the battle and then switching the desktop at the
same time I upgrade the os.

this forums.opensuse thread <http://tinyurl.com/yzsx9vy> (which i
stumbled across) seems to indicate that it is *not* so hard to have
KDE3.5.10 on openSUSE 11.2 !!

just add a repo, install with yast/zyper, select (from the user login
screen) and go..

anyone wanna try?

In <4adfea26$0$56769$edfadb0f at (no spam) dtext02.news.tele.dk>, on 10/22/2009
at 07:14 AM, DenverD <spam.trap at (no spam) SOMEwhere.dk> said:

of course you are right...had forgotten...M$ has copyright notices inside
the executables [remember, IBM & M$ teamed together to develop the
superior OS, OS/2]

I believe that the m$ code is in PM rather than in WPS, but that IBM is
not willing to open source even the parts that are not legally encumbered.

Kevin Nathan wrote:
I would start by installing every desktop/window manager that
openSUSE offers and check each one out. Find the ones that seem
'natural' to you and have the required features. Then let some of
your clients check it out, see which one they liked.

It sounds like a good idea, but it is not really fair to test stuff and
really apriciate the extra things it can do for you.

I treid out XFCE once for three months and then only started to
apriciate what I liked and started to understand the limitations it
had. Windowmaker I treid out for some months as well, befor I decided
on it. Before that I used Enlightement!.

We did that with Ubuntu/Kubuntu when we were switching over a client
from Windows to Linux about three years ago. We upgraded two of their
machines, one with Ubuntu (GNOME) and one with Kubuntu (KDE) and let
them use them for several weeks. They settled on Kubuntu.

Why not also other desktops?

And why settle on one? I am asuming the
customer is a company and not an individual. It could very well be that
60% would love to work with KDE and 40% with GNOME (as you have given
them no options)

I am not sure about *buntu, but openSUSE makes KDE and GNOME in the
same look and feel, so running both in a company should not be an
issue. The only question you need to ask is if they rather kill
puppies or kittens.

On Fri, 23 Oct 2009 05:10:59 -0500, Rick asked:

The font I was talking of are for the Windows stuff... toolbars, File,
edit... that stuff.

If you want to change the font for the window title bars, the icon
fonts, the clip font etc, then you need to change the style file which
you are using, either for the user under

$HOME/GNUstep/Library/WindowMaker/Styles

$HOME/GNUstep/Library/WindowMaker/Themes

or globally under

/usr/share/WindowMaker/Styles

/usr/share/WindowMaker/Themes

which contain font settings eg with Xft font designation

ClipTitleFont = "Verdana:bold:pixelsize=12"; DisplayFont
= "Trebuchet MS,Luxi Sans:bold:pixelsize=18"; IconTitleFont
= "Arial,Luxi Sans:bold:pixelsize=10"; LargeDisplayFont =
"Trebuchet MS,Luxi Sans:bold:pixelsize=42"; MenuTextFont =
"Trebuchet MS,Luxi Sans:pixelsize=15"; MenuTitleFont =
"Trebuchet MS,Luxi Sans:bold:pixelsize=16"; WindowTitleFont =
"Trebuchet MS,Luxi Sans:bold:pixelsize=16";

You can also manage your settings with WPrefs (the equivalent of Gnome
or KDE Control Center).

That's the one I was looking for - thanks. I need to tweek my article
timeout in the newsreader - I keep losing things.

You are correct again. The real benefit of WPS is, however, tightly
linked to PM features so the usefulness of one w/o the other is
debatable.

In <yWkEm.6703$hO1.6339 at (no spam) newsfe21.iad>, on 10/23/2009
at 10:34 AM, Will Honea <whonea at (no spam) yahoo.com> said:

You are correct again. The real benefit of WPS is, however, tightly
linked to PM features so the usefulness of one w/o the other is
debatable.

How much work would it be to write an open source PM clone as an X client?
I suspect that it would be far smaller than WPS.

Of course, it wouldn't do any good to open source WPS unless they also
open sourced DSOM.

It is very difficult to run a different dm/wm on
[U|Ku]buntu, at least from what we saw.

On Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:05:13 -0700, Kevin Nathan wrote:

It is very difficult to run a different dm/wm on
[U|Ku]buntu, at least from what we saw.

In fact it is not.

Just modify /etc/X11/Xsession and /etc/X11/Xsession.d/ files

From *our* point of view, that makes it difficult.

On Mon, 26 Oct 2009 08:41:41 -0700, Kevin Nathan wrote:

From *our* point of view, that makes it difficult. :-)

You mean inconvenient then rather than "very, very difficult".

On Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:46:19 +0200
J G Miller <miller at (no spam) yoyo.ORG> wrote:

On Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:05:13 -0700, Kevin Nathan wrote:

It is very difficult to run a different dm/wm on [U|Ku]buntu, at least
from what we saw.

In fact it is not.

Just modify /etc/X11/Xsession and /etc/X11/Xsession.d/ files

And therein lies the crux of the problem. We wanted a simple install and
not something we needed to modify on each installation. From *our* point
of view, that makes it difficult.

On Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:00:21 -0500, Rick wrote:

I am trying to change the fonts for the windows stuff, File, Edic,
Copy, the stuff i the toolbars, etc.

So you are asking about the appearance of the actual application rather
than the window manager decoration?

In that case it depends entirely on the application and what widget set,
if any, is used.

For Athena and Motif applications, you need to set up the appropriate
configuration in an apps-defaults file.

For GTK applications, you would need to set the appropriate GTK theme
(via the Gnome control center or a GTK theme changer program).

For QT applications, you would need to make the appropriate settings in
a .qtrc file (which could be done via KDE control center).

Other programs may have their own configuration files for setting the
appearance of the widgets (or have these embedded in the code eg a TCL
script).

Can't you just select your window manager from the sessions options in
gdm or kdm?