What WM's work with which DE's?

[MASONTX]

As hatchling from the current crop in linux land, I haven't done much yet but try different live distros. Now I'm wanting to venture out a little and try different WM's (Icewm, Fluxbox, JWM, FVWM, and Afterstep) with different DE's (LXDE, XFCE, EDE, XPDE, and ROX). Is it pretty much mix and match, or does a given DE only play nice with specific WM's?

[MASONTX]

I found a thread from 2/23/03 discussing window managers and desktop environments, and at that time the thought was that DE's were for your grandmother and you only used a windows manager if you had boatloads of ram (512). Kind of "real men don't use windows managers and they darn sure don't use desktop environements".

[oz]

Most DEs have a default window manager that the DE devs apparently like best for inclusion with their particular DE. When it comes to WMs, I personally prefer to use any of the independent WMs without any DE to go with it, so that the system stays snappy in performance, and very lightweight.

[MASONTX]

So I would use ICEWM or ROX, not both if I am understaning you right.Rox would have it's own WM built in, and ICEWM would operate on its own.

[oz]

You can install as many as you wish at any given time, and you can use a different command to start each one. While there is nothing wrong with installing several, my personal preference is to try just one at a time so that there is no chance for conflicts and fewer configuration files land in the /home folder. It's just easier (and cleaner) for me to learn about one WM at a time.

[MASONTX]

Thanks Ozar, I had that wrong. I thought the window manger interfaced with x, and the DE interfaced with the WM. Kind of the engine is connected to the transmission which drives the wheels concept.

[oz]

I realize that you don't currently run Arch, but you can take a look at these wiki pages for more info on some of the various window managers, and quite a bit of what you'll read in them applies to other distros, as well:

Window Manager - ArchWiki

List of window managers - ArchWiki

[hazel]

Thanks Ozar, I had that wrong. I thought the window manger interfaced with x, and the DE interfaced with the WM. Kind of the engine is connected to the transmission which drives the wheels concept.

"Interfaces with" isn't quite correct. The WM does interface with X, but the DE is a multi-program package which includes a WM plus a lot of other bits and pieces. For example KDE uses kwm as its default WM and gnome uses metacity (or did when I last used it).

You can often switch to a different WM within the same desktop environment though not all will be compatible. You can also use a WM by itself without a DE, which is a lot more economical, and a lot of forum people (including me) do that.