Hey all. I've been using slack for a couple years now and if I run a desktop, its almost always fluxbox because its nice and lightweight.

Anyway, my question is how can I configure a desktop login manager. I know there's a GDM and KDM and probably many others but what I want to know is how to configure just one and why anyone would use it if they could just startx with the xinitrc pointing to your fave desktop?

I use xwmconfig or my fave text editor if I already know what I want, to modify the xinitrc file and startx from my default runlevel (3) whenever I want to load my desktop.

How can I make it so that when I startx, I get a login screen for my chosen desktop?

Any help is appreciated.

The main reason as I see it to have it boot directly into an X11 login screen is so you can bootup while you go downstairs to get a drink and when you arrive your system is as far along as possible before logging in

To get this, I believe you need to modify /etc/inittab to change the default run level to an X11 environment.

There are lots of comments in the file and it will be easy enough to understand.

I'm not sure how to get a login manager when you use startx, because by using startx you are obviously already logged in. Why would you want to be faced with yet another login screen?

Right, that makes sense. I'm used to agetty for a runlevel of 3. So changing my default runlevel to 4 (X11) will cause one of the "Session Managers" to request a login instead. Once logged in, I can decide to use whichever desktop I want.

So, how do I configure a particular session manager and how do they differ? Does it even matter?

I'm not sure how they differ. I've found them to both work quite well, but I use gdm simply because I liked the default controls it gives you better than kdm's, and it had a prettier picture .
I've never configured one, but I imagine the configuration process would be different depending on which manager you use (kdm/gdm/xdm).

I know they can be configured because my default gentoo gdm has nicer options than my default slackware gdm, but I've never played with the settings myself.

Probably a "man gdm" or "man kdm" will explain it for you.

Cheers.