I know that some pouplar window managers are:icewm, blackbox, fvwm and popular desktop managers are:KDE and GNOME. From technical point of view, what is the difference between window managers and desktop managers?

I don't really know the technical details, but generally a window manager is only responsible for the way that windows are drawn on the screen, and handles things like drawing the titlebars of windows, resizing and moving windows. A desktop environment includes a window manager, and may add extra features such as having desktop icons, a panel, drag-and-drop functionality, etc.

it's easier to understand the difference from a less technical perspective because the difference is... less technical. a window manager is something like fluxbox. if you've used it you'll notice that it's very light and all that it does is present a space for windows to appear on. a desktop manager provides something more of a "user experience" i guess you might say. kde is a great example of a desktop manager in that it actualy tries to extend linux functionality to a less knowledgable demographic with lots of nice graphical utilities and suites and such. a window manager presents a screen to you and a desktop manager does that and tries to make running your computer easier at the same time. i hope that helps you

i use fluxbox or windowmaker (depending on my hardware capabilities), by the way.

i'm using RH8 right now, and i'm trying to run fluxbox. someone has helped me a great deal in getting aterm and fluxbox, and being able to configure aterm. but now i'm stuck. my default session is gnome. i would like to better what fluxbox is and does, and how i can finaly get it to work. what i'm basicly trying to do is get aterm borderless. thnx

jay

edited: ok, nm, someone helped me.

I am using Enlightenment but I used KDE before.