[SOLVED] No title bars in graphical applications on minimal debian install.

The idea was to get under the hood and learn how Linux works but i jumped the gun (i have the attention span of a hummingbird), installed xorg, iceweasel, leafpad and blender. All the applications open from the xterm but without title bars so i cannot minimize them, close them or move them out of the way. I have installed firmware-linux, intel-microcode, default-jre(this because the Menu button in iceweasel doesn't work), just in case they were needed but no joy. Also,i cannot copy-paste anything in the terminal with the mouse which has an ugly x instead of a cursor.
In addition to these woes blender gives me this error when i run it;

AL lib: (EE) UpdateDeviceParams: Failed to set 44100hz, got 48000hz instead

Googled this, found a lot of hits but nothing relevant.
and Iceweasel with that old

Glib-CRITICAL **: g-slice_set_config: assertion 'sys_page_page == 0'failed

. (I understand this is some mysterious bug which plagues many and don't care much to resolve it as long as iceweasel runs)

sounds like your window manager is not running. or maybe not even installed?
how are you starting X?

btw, the errors you quoted seem unrelated. let's focus on the window manager for now.

No window manager and i don't intend to install one if i can resolve this with xorg. Btw i get to my xsession with startx. Had a look at /etc/X11, didn't find any /etc/X11/xorg.conf as we used to back in the day (:lol) but there was this file Xsession.options which had these options, "allow-user-resources" and "allow-user-xsession" and a comment suggesting i "man Xsession.options(5)". I did just that and this is what these options said,
"If users have a file called .Xresources in their home directories, these resources will be merged with the default Xresources when they log in."
and,
"If users have an executable file called .xsession in their home directories, it can be used as the startup program for the Xsession (see Xsession(5)). If the file is present but not executable, it may still be used, but is assumed to be a Bourne shell script, and executed with sh(1)."

You wouldn't happen to have one each of these that will somehow make all my problems go away, wouldja?

Found a couple of links that i'm trying to wrap my head around but it will take a seasoned Linux guru to help me out with them;
http://www.fifi.org/doc/debian-guide...es/node76.html
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/XWindow-User-HOWTO/intro.html

Wish my mentor Head_On_A_Stick of Debian/Crunchbang forums was here.

You have only installed X, which, I think, comes with xterm. You 'can' use it to start other programs, but as you have no window manager installed, there obviously will be no window borders or controls, that is what a window manager does.

Can't i list the few applications i mentioned as XClients in a .xsession file or something? (i am still vague about these things and apologize). What about the whole XFree86 thingee and all that comes with it? Won't that do?

If you have XFree86, you likely have twm, an old style Window Manager, so just set it up & run it.
(Basically, copy xinitrc into your home directory as .xinitrc, then change what you want.)

Thanks, i searched high and low after your reply and the verdict is unanimous, i cannot run gui applications properly without a window manager. Twm does not come with xorg by default btw. Also, if i were to install a window manager, i might as well go the whole hog and install one with all the trimmings. :-) I will mark this as solved. Thank you all.

Edit: That bit about going the whole hog was a stupid thing to say, defeats the whole purpose of a minimal install. Between the extremes of tinywm and E17, i decided to go with OpenBox. Fixed everything for me, to me this bare black screen without any tint2 or such eye candy, but just the normal cursor and the right-click menu, appears exquisite.

The /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc file points to the default /etc/X11/Xsession so i left it alone and created a ~/.xinitrc containing this line, "exec openbox-session".

Sounds like you were maybe confusing a window manager with a desktop environment. I've used Fluxbox in a minimal install under 300MB.

Originally Posted by mzsade Edit: That bit about going the whole hog was a stupid thing to say, defeats the whole purpose of a minimal install. Between the extremes of tinywm and E17, i decided to go with OpenBox. Fixed everything for me...

so, another satisfied openbox user?
nice.

Originally Posted by ondoho so, another satisfied openbox user? nice.

Oh yeah! Although the OpenBox Menu Editor serves no purpose at all, but it's no biggie adding items to menu.xml with my leafpad.

Added this to ~/.profile so i don't have to startx before i can get to openbox,

[[ -z $DISPLAY && $XDG_VTNR -eq 1 ]] && exec startx

To auto-login try out this awesome hack,
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=123694

Originally Posted by replica9000 Sounds like you were maybe confusing a window manager with a desktop environment. I've used Fluxbox in a minimal install under 300MB.

300 MB? That's extravagant! OpenBox manages mine for under 150 MB.

^ gkrellm! wow, that's so retro!

Originally Posted by mzsade Although the OpenBox Menu Editor serves no purpose at all, but it's no biggie adding items to menu.xml with my leafpad.

i agree.
you might want to use an editor that has syntax highlighting (really helps with pesky xml), i recommend geany.

also, i use obmenu-generator to dynamically create a menu of all applications. i totally recommend it. can be combined with static menu items. it should have enough documentation, but ask if you need help.

Originally Posted by mzsade 300 MB? That's extravagant! OpenBox manages mine for under 150 MB.

What arch/branch of Debian are you using? I just did a minbase install with DHCP support. Base x86_64 "Sid" system is 384MB. Fluxbox adds 16.9MB to base. OpenBox adds 58.6MB to base.

Originally Posted by ondoho ^ gkrellm! wow, that's so retro! i agree. you might want to use an editor that has syntax highlighting (really helps with pesky xml), i recommend geany. also, i use obmenu-generator to dynamically create a menu of all applications. i totally recommend it. can be combined with static menu items. it should have enough documentation, but ask if you need help.

Thanks you Ondoho, really appreciate the offer. About gkrellm, it does what conky does, i am over the Conky addiction, would rather spend my time on Bash tutorials. :-)

Originally Posted by replica9000 What arch/branch of Debian are you using? I just did a minbase install with DHCP support. Base x86_64 "Sid" system is 384MB. Fluxbox adds 16.9MB to base. OpenBox adds 58.6MB to base.

My bad, i was citing what this gkrellm displays, http://i.imgur.com/oELgyZN.png

This is the actual picture, but please bear in mind that i have iceweasel running with 3 tabs open now.

:~$ free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          3852        505       3347         53         16        225
-/+ buffers/cache:        263       3589
Swap:         5999          0       5999

Mine is plain old stable with backports enabled. Perhaps the fact that i don't have any display manager installed, not even xdm, may have something to do with it. You might want to revise your claims about Fluxbox tho'..
https://l3net.files.wordpress.com/20...ng?w=625&h=617
https://l3net.wordpress.com/2013/04/...sktops-part-2/