Can someone explain to me exactly what gnome-session and gnome-settings-daemon do and how they might be useful to me, as someone who doesn't use GNOME or any of its relatives as a DM (i use i3)?
I've only known that one of the two can be used to automatically set media keybindings but am increasingly bothered that I know neither which one sets the keybindings nor what either of them is really for.
gnome-session starts gnome-settings-daemon. The latter manages the data used in a session. The former tells it what to do.
Based on the description, you'll be more interested in the settings daemon than the session manager.
Further reading:
by default gnome.session starts gnome-shell and gnome-settings-daemon,
The GNOME Settings Daemon is responsible for setting various parameters of a GNOME Session and the applications that run under it.
The daemon sharing settings from GNOME to GTK+/KDE applications
This package contains the daemon which is responsible for setting the various parameters of a gnome session and the applications that run under it. it handles the following kinds of settings:
- keyboard: layout, accessibility options, shortcuts, media keys
- clipboard management
- theming: background, icons, gtk+ applications
- cleanup of unused files
- mouse: cursors, speed, accessibility options
- startup of other daemons: screensaver, sound daemon it also sets various application settings through x resources and freedesktop.org xsettings.
