Re: Build breakage on netbsd-5, now Results of new NetBSD-5.1_STABLE

[Steven Bellovin <smb%cs.columbia.edu@localhost>]

On Jan 28, 2011, at 9:26 07AM, Rhialto wrote:

> On Fri 28 Jan 2011 at 10:55:23 +0000, Thomas Mueller wrote:
>> Now I wonder if there is a way to switch from one wm to another, such
>> as from twm to icewm, without going to a text-mode command prompt in
>> between.
> 
> Yes, that is possible, depending on how the window manager was started.
> In some session startup scripts, the window manager is started last, and
> in the foreground, so that if the window manager quits, the X session
> quits. Fortunately this is not so in the default scripts
> (/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc).
> 
> So you can choose the quit option from the window manager's menu, or if
> it isn't there, you can just kill it. You're operating without a wm
> then, which is a bit awkward - avoid having too many windows when you do
> it. If they overlap you can't change them. Then you can just start a new
> wm from an xterm prompt.

A number of window managers have explicit mechanisms for invoking others.
At one point, I had this as a submenu item in my .twmrc file:

Menu "exitwm"
{
        "fvwm"          f.startwm "fvwm"
        "wmaker"        f.startwm "wmaker"
        "pwm"           f.startwm "pwm"
        "twm"           f.startwm "twm"
        "xfce4wm"       f.startwm "xfwm4"
        ""              f.nop
        "Exit"          f.quit
}


                --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb