Question about running two WM's on one install.

[megosdog]

Okay, this is just a curiosity question on my part. At least at this point. It came up while thinking about some stuff this morning dealing with my soon arriving new pc. Anyhow, at work we almost exclusively, across all systems, run Fedora with Mate WM. At home I run Kubuntu (obviously) because, at work I do mostly server administration and that seems to be the best OS for that (we have CentOS servers, so that's another reason), but at home I do writing and programming, so I find that Kubuntu superior for that task. Anyhow, where the question comes in is that, sometimes (like with the recent lockdowns due to Covid), I have to work from home. I can make things work with KDE, but having Mate would flow better for me. So my question is, can I have two WM's installed (Mate and KDE) side by side, and assign KDE to the home user profile, and Mate to the work user profile? That way when I login with my home user I have KDE, but when I need to work from home I just switch to the other user and Mate loads? I'd be fine having Ubuntu/Kubuntu in the background for both of them, as that doesn't bother me.

I'm just asking out of curiosity as a "can it be done" rather than "I want to do this." At least at this point anyways. If it can't/shouldn't be done, then I'm cool with that. I can opt for a VM if all else fails should I decide to do this.

[Snowhog]

You might want to take a look at choosewm (http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/...hoosewm.1.html). Just might be what you are looking for.

[megosdog]

Oh, that is very interesting. Thank you! I wasn't sure it could be done, so that's cool.

[GreyGeek]

There are a load of "mate-" apps in the repository. One approach is to create a second user, say mework, and install mate as the default desktop while logged in as mework. At the login screen following bootup, you will be presented with options to select the user and the desktop, but just selecting the user will load the desktop that user uses. You can create a directory, say /share, and give access permission to both users so that files can be shared between them. You have fine grained control as to what each user can have access to, like printers, ports, emails, calendars, etc. No mixing of funds, so to speak.