Hi there,

recently I have decided to customize my desktop (GNOME on Squeeze) aiming to some more light-weightness...
Doing so, I mixed things up a bit...let me explain it per points:

1) I installed Openbox as window manager. When I login in a GNOME/Openbox session, everything is as expected; however, when I want to login into a "normal" only-GNOME session no window manager is loaded and I have to bring up a terminal and start Metacity manually. How can I fix this???

2) I have also installed PCMan as file manager. Now when I open a folder from the drop-down menu "Places" in gnome-panel, it is displayed using PCMan, while when I open a folder or a link on the desktop, it is handled by Nautilus. How can I set which file manager should be used exclusively???

That's all, sorry for the verbose post and thanks for your help.
Cheers

I can't give you definite answers, but I am going to try a shot in the dark on the nautilus/desktop issue.

Among other things, Nautilus manages the desktop for Gnome. I know that, if I open Nautilus in Fluxbox, I have to use the --no-desktop option or it takes over the desktop. Perhaps it's being used to manage the desktop in Open Box.

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Xfce is a nice light weight replacement for Gnome. I would suggest going that direction. Debian has that option from install. If your install is not that old that might be a option. Thunar with some plugins is much better than PCman.

I have to agree with this. I have SalixOS--Fluxbox with PCman on my netbook. PCman is an okay lightweight file manager, but it's almost too lightweight. If I used my netbook more frequently than I now do, I would likely put Konqueror.

that was a good shot! the icons on the desktop were managed by Nautilus, I found out that another way to do not let it take over the desktop is using gconf:

May be true but one good thing about PCman is that can handle drawing icons on the desktop, even if that functionality would need a lot of improvement...


I have already tried Xfce once and it felt a little strange to me, so now I am trying to arrange my own light-weight configuration based on Openbox (for example, I am also playing around a bit with tint2) but I might give Xcfe a second chance..


some of you has any guess about the Metacity thing (even though I am loving Openbox and I will hardly go back)??

Great! Glad you figured it out and glad I could help.

As my old boss used to say, even a blind pig finds an acorn sometime.