I'm running RHEL 8 under WSL in Windows 10, and want to use X11 GUI. I can't upgrade to Windows 11, so I can't take advantage of the Win 11 solution to GUI for WSL.
I have set up an X server (vcxsrv, running in "one large window" mode) on Windows and can run apps like xterm and they display as expected.
I can run a window manager like metacity or kwin, and it will decorate the xterm with a title bar etc., but there is no background menu on the X desktop. I've searched a lot but can't seem to find how to set up a window manager from nothing. I have used X a lot in the past, and it's always a bit different for every new context, and I don't remember the details.
I installed metacity and kwin using sudo yum install metacity kwin
. Hopefully there's a simple way to set up a new basic user enviroment but I can't find the proper incantations. Everything I find is for setting up Linux with a monitor or some other context that doesn't apply (and usually has things implicitly installed that is not the case for me.)
I tried metacity and kwin because they're supported according to RHEL docs: https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/5/html/deployment_guide/s2-x-clients-winmanagers .
The man page for metacity says "Metacity configuration can be found under Preferences->Windows (etc) on the menu-panel." Yes, if there was a menu-panel, but there isn't.
I'd just like a basic setup with a few default apps (like xterm) and that I can tailor to my purposes. I'd also like multiple virtual screens, one visible at a time.