[arch-general] moving away from gnome

[Matthew Monaco]

On 02/25/2012 12:07 PM, Andrea Crotti wrote:
> I would like to move away from Gnome, which I don't need at all since I
> only need to launch:
> - emacs
> - conkeror
> - thunderbird
> - gnome-terminal
> 
> and I don't even use the menu but Alt-f2 for that.
> The main problem though is that on this laptop (a dell latitude E6420)
> if I'm not using gnome I can't make it suspend properly.
> 
> The strange thing is that if I am in a gnome-session closing the lid or
> calling suspend from the gnome menu everything works.
> 
> But if I fire up awesome only then closing the lid doesn't work anymore.
> 
> So the question is, what is gnome magically firing up that other window
> managers don't?
> 
> I would also like to try xmonad finally, but I've never been able to
> configure it yet.  I have an ~/.xmonad/xmonad.hs file (the default one
> copied) that compiles perfectly, but if I try a startx the screen just
> stays blank, without logging any error in the Xorg.0.log.
> 
> Any idea of what it could be?

I've been moving away from gnome too. But piece-by-piece while I learn how to
replace the components I need.

The first step I did was take the
/usr/share/gnome-session/sessions/gnome-fallback.session file and put it in
~/.config/gnome-session/sessions/, then edit it to replace the window manager
with openbox. You could do the same with awesome.

FYI:
I've found that some of the autostart applications that I want in
/etc/xdg/autostart require the session name to be gnome gnome* or gnome-fallback
to work properly.

-Matt