From my build I ran startx to run the X Window System. It looks like three terminal emulators and a clock. As basic a basic GUI you can get with Linux.

I wanted to see if my Linux apps would run in this environment and to my surprise, they did.

I ran firefox, gedit, thunar, gparted, mousepad to name a few. I would have tried more but didn't know the command line text to run others.

All things considered equal, they all looked pretty good running in just the X Window System. Wild.

Sounds like TWM.

If I remember correctly, if you install X but do not install any other window managers or desktop environments, you still get TWM.

Applications, unless they are part of a desktop environment, such as KDE's widgets or Enlightenment's gadgets, don't need a desktop environment. They rely on the underlying libraries, commonly in /usr/lib and /usr/share. Generally, I prefer to use window managers (TWM is a window manager, but I default to Fluxbox) to desktop environments, because I don't need all those bells and whistles. I just want to get stuff done.

Nevertheless, I usually install KDE, because I really like a lot of KDE apps, and installing KDE gives me the libraries in one swell foop.

You have to build xinit, xterm, and xclock still for B/LFS.

However, yes, twm is a basic WM but it can be customized with various add-ons in the .xinitrc script.

Thanks guys!

Normally I use Xfce or LXDE. I was thinking about what it would take to write a desktop manager. Then I thought, I wonder what can be done in just the X Window System and to my surprise, a lot.

Already started here:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ct-4175542914/

As for twm I usually run it up just after installing a new system with X to check that X is running alright its very handy for that and takes very little disk space/system resources, or if you fubar your X server and prefer GUI apps to fix it, twm is very basic though ie no transparency.

Keith, it was your post that got me thinking. I was impressed with what you had working so that's why I tried my test.

No you don't get TWM anymore by default unless you install it as one of the add-ons. This has been this way since they modularized Xorg. What you get is a X session with 3 xterms. You can actually start just an app in X windows in full screen by just putting exec <appname> in xinitrc.