Linux – Multiple environments – Awesome and Gnome

arch linuxawesomegnome

I'm trying to install multiple environments on my Arch Linux system, and since I've never done it before, there are some stupid questions that I must now the answer.

  1. If I install Gnome and Awesome WM, should I download the xfce4-power-manager package for power management or will it be wiser if I just use the Gnome applet for that job? Are the packages shared between environments?

    Need to ask this because it seems like a big problem with Gnome applets and their amount of dependencies, but since I will have the whole desktop installed, I guess it should save me some time/space, unless I need to install it again for Awesome.

  2. Can I use Slim to manage them, or is GDM better?

Note: I will not use Awesome as Gnome WM, it will be different sessions.

Best Answer

Yes and yes. The applets in question are just front-ends to basic OS processes. They just provide a graphical interface to the system tools so there should be no real difference between them. Mind you, some applets will be better than others so you might find missing functionality there but that's just because whoever wrote the applet did not include it not because it is not there.

As for the login manager, yes you can use any login manager to load any desktop environment, just pick and chose the ones you prefer.

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