Ice WM & RH 7.3

How do I get to ICE WM from Kde? My comp boots straight to my user name, and I havent figured out how to boot into it, I have gnome set up to run Iec WM, but it looks the same.

A quick and dirty attempted workaround would be:

Edit the file /etc/inittab (or whatever) and change the default runlevel from 5 to 3 (should be near the top).

Drop down the RL3 (open a terminal session, su root and then type init 3).

Create a file in your home (~) directory called .xinitrc and the first and only line should be something like exec starticewm. Obviously, you should check to see if this command exists first (might just be icewm).

I'm not sure about how to get the RH Login thingy to use IceWM by default, so this, as I said, is a very dirty attempted workaround.

I could never get RH7.2 to compile ICEWM or even to run a compiled version of ICEWM so I installed XFCE and it is great!

Good luck.

the command to start it is icewm but when I run it, it says another windowmanager is running(kde)

Find something like this in /etc/X11/xdm/Xsession:
case $# in
1)
case $1 in
failsafe)
exec xterm -geometry 80x24-0-0
;;
kde)
exec /usr/bin/startkde
;;
esac
esac

Change it to look like:
case $# in
1)
case $1 in
failsafe)
exec xterm -geometry 80x24-0-0
;;
kde)
exec /usr/bin/startkde
;;
icewm)
exec /usr/bin/icewm
;;
esac
esac

Now open control center, go to System/Login Manager/Sessions, and add a new session called icewm. Now, when you log out, icewm will be in the login menu.

the command to start it is icewm but when I run it, it says another windowmanager is running(kde)

That's absolutely correct. You get one window manager at a time. You run KDE's window manager, or you can run the IceWM. You can exercise your choice by changing the "exec ..." statement in your /home/<user name>/.xinitrc file, as was suggested above. You can change the file while in KDE, then exit your X window session (or reboot), and come up in IceWM.

What I have done with my system is I boot to a run level 3 (console). In my .xinitrc file, I have put "exec ..." statements for each WM that I want to use. Then I comment out, with a # in the first position of that row, the ones that I DON'T want to start at the next X window session. That way, I can run my choice of KDE, Xfce, or IceWM (you may have other choices). Ah, the power of choice, it's a beautiful thing !

That's absolutely correct. You get one window manager at a time.

Then how does Gnome let you run enlightenment, twm, etc on top of it, or is that a different story all together?


Eraser

Gnome is a desktop environment. It runs on top of a window manager. So it looks like this from the top down.


Gnome (what you see)

Window Manager (manages what you see)

XFree86 (provides a visual environment)

Linux (the world's greatest OS !)

machine (provides a home for all the above)

you forgot mankind whom they develope and invent machines and OSes for all the above mentioned.

Well smack me silly for forgetting that little detail !!