Re: linux question

[Ed L Cashin <ecashin@terry.uga.edu>]

I'm a bit late, but I feel sympathetic to your desire to move away
from GUI-bloat!  ;)

Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl> writes:

...
> [I use suse7.1 but am slowly getting sick of the enourmous bunch of
> window stuff installed/loaded and getting rid of it seems
> impossible, so i wonder if i should continue with suse anyway. Are
> the otherw linux's leaner?]

I'm also a user who prefers lean, responsive software.  A lot of linux
distributions come with KDE or GNOME configured to run, but you don't
have to use them.  

Siep mentioned icewm.  That's the window manager I use, because it's
light and has excellent keyboard support (you don't have to reach for
the mouse all the time).  The default keyboard commands are
reminiscent of Windows keyboard shortcuts.  

After a fresh install I configure the system *not* to boot into X, and
then I create a ".xinitrc" file in my home directory, along with a
".xsession" file in case I ever do start using xdm or some other
X-Windows-based login utility.

In the .xinitrc file, I have these lines:

  xset s off
  exec ssh-agent icewm

The first line turns off the default X screen saver and the second
tells the "ssh-agent" tool to invoke the icewm window manager.  I use
the ssh-agent to handle ssh keys -- it's a convenient way to have to
type my password only once and still access many machines in a secure
way.  

"exec" means that if someone kills X, they won't get my shell prompt.
If you're not interested in ssh-agent, this will work:

  exec ssh-agent icewm

-- 
--Ed Cashin                   PGP public key:
  ecashin@terry.uga.edu       http://www.terry.uga.edu/~ecashin/pgp/