Desktop GUI

Iman986 · 10-22-2003, 08:40 PM

I was using Gnome and decided that I wanted to try IceWM so I switched to that was working fine and then I proved ot be a real idiot and changed it to TWM or w/e and ummm now I have no idea how to get it back.. I want to eight go back to Icewm or KDE... any help would be appreicated..

thanks

Oh yea.. lol im using Mandrake 9.1 bamboo... thought that might help.. just a little

spurious · 10-22-2003, 10:12 PM

Not familiar with Mandrake, but most distros use the file ~/.xinitrc to set the window manager.

speter · 10-22-2003, 10:47 PM

Most distros allow you to select a window manager/desktop environment at login.

Steve

Psycho · 10-23-2003, 12:08 AM

Redhat used to have a command line utility to switch the defailt desktop for you, maybe Mandrake has it too. From command line 'switchdesk icewm' or kde or whatever. You can use [ctrl]+[alt]+[backspace] to bail out of Xwindows to get to a command line environment if you boot to X, because it will probably overwrite your changes when you exit the Xwindow environment 'normally'.

krussell · 10-23-2003, 02:50 AM

you should be able to select the preferred windows manager at log-in window. try to find something called Session Manager

Iman986 · 10-23-2003, 12:59 PM

I can't find a session manager and when I try to logout it logs out and the screen just flashes.. just keeps trying to load but dosent and then brings me into linux w/out the gui in whichi h ave to log on and start X server....

The computer is pretty old also only 64mb ram not even sure of the processor its crappy school computer that i fixed up a tad and installed linux on.

vasudevadas · 10-23-2003, 03:49 PM

Using Mandrake 9.1 on my machine, if I boot into the graphical server (init runlevel = 5) then the login screen gives the choice of which gui to use. If yours boots into text mode by default, edit (as root) your /etc/inittab file to make sure id:3:initdefault: is set to 5 instead (i.e. id:5:initdefault). Reboot your machine and you should log in with a graphical screen which gives you a choice of desktops.

On Mandrake it looks like there is no ~/.xinitrc file.