[tlug] Replacing the WM in Gnome 2.24

[Curt Sampson <cjs@example.com>]

So you all probably remember my long and ultimately more-or-less
successful attempt with Ubuntu 8.04 to run gnome-session, kill metacity
and nautilus, and run fvwm.

Unfortunately, in the new version of gnome, 2.24, that comes with Ubuntu
8.10 and Fedora 10, they seem to have screwed up standard session manager
functionality royally, basically by removing it.

The session preferences app (or applet, or whatever you want to call it)
no longer has a "Current Session" tab, so it seems impossible to turn
off the auto-restart of nautilus. Well, it is, but now one has to go and
tweak the gnome registry to do it, which makes me worry. As this appears
to affect all users, what if some poor nautilus/metacity user's nautilus
dies? It won't restart. Ubuntu, at least, seems to have added a special
environment variable hack that will start a different window manager
if the appropriate environment variable is set, but that's not really
the way things are supposed to work. And Ubuntu 8.10, when you chose the
"remember currently running applications" button, says the feature's not
implemented; neither Ubuntu 8.10 nor Fedora 10 save a .gnome2/sessions
file when you press this.

What's up with all of this?

While we're at it, Fedora 10 seems to have this odd idea that all users
of the machine should use the root password for admin tasks, rather than
their own password (a la sudo). Can this be fixed?

cjs
-- 
Curt Sampson       <cjs@example.com>        +81 90 7737 2974
           Functional programming in all senses of the word:
                   http://www.starling-software.com