KDM or GDM without KDE or Gnome?

trashbird1240 · 12-04-2006, 01:35 PM

Hello Forum,

The Question is I've read that you can install and use KDM or GDM, which I would prefer to XDM, without installing KDE or Gnome (I'm currently using Enlightenment). However, I'm having trouble finding any packages for KDM or GDM that allow me to just install the display manager. I found one for GDM, however the INSTALL file starts out with "Once you've installed Gnome..."

Does anyone know how to do that?

Thanks,
Joel

Tinkster · 12-04-2006, 05:08 PM

For KDM it should be easy enough to just extract every bit that has
"kdm" in the name from the kdebase-*tgz .... it doesn't appear to be
linked against any KDE libraries.

[edit]
Untested ...

Code:

awk '/opt\/kde/ {if($1 ~ /kdm/){print "/"$1}}' /var/log/packages/kdebase-3.4.2-i486-2 > ~/extract && tar xf kdebase-*tgz -T ~/extract

[/edit]

Cheers,
Tink

johnson_steve · 12-04-2006, 05:55 PM

have you tried qingy?

trashbird1240 · 12-04-2006, 06:48 PM

Nope, I'm willing to try anything -- this is my "experimental" install.

I'll check it out. Is there a slackware package for it?

Thanks,
Joel

johnson_steve · 12-04-2006, 07:44 PM

I'm not sure if there is a slackware package for it; I'm on gentoo. qingy uses the frame buffer to create a graphical login screen without X it lets you login and select your session (console or anything in /etc/X11/Sessions/), remembers your last session and since it is a getty replacement you can run one on each virtual console with a separate X session in each one. It is fully themable and it wasn't to hard to make a theme to match my frame buffer splash.

drkstr · 12-04-2006, 09:31 PM

I think Tink had the right idea there. For me, it was easier (yet probably more time consuming) to build the entire kdebase source directory, then running the 'make install DESTDIR=/some/directory' from within the KDM sub directory. Don't forget to repeate the install command in the kdmlib directory as well.

regards,
...drkstr

trashbird1240 · 12-05-2006, 09:13 AM

All Great suggestions my friends.

A few replies:
*Qingy did not look exactly graphical: as a matter of fact it looked exactly like text on a console. I added the entries to the "respawn" section of inittab, and I changed the default runlevel to 4. I have the DirectFB (FB? DB?) libraries (that took a while to install!

) It was just a text menu. Is there something else I need? I have the "themepack"
*Tinkster, your awk script went a little haywire. I'm unfamiliar with awk; since I knew the /var/... did not exist on my installation, I changed that entry to reflect the directory on /mnt/cdrom -- however not understanding exactly what it was pointing to, I probably changed it to the wrong thing. If you could explain it piece-by-piece, I can probably modify it properly for my purposes; it's a great introduction to this very useful tool (awk, that is).
*drkstr, are you suggesting I install the entire KDE library? That would definitely help things out in the application department, however I would like to keep things economical: as few files as I need to make evertyhing work.

Thanks -- this is an excellent forum,
Joel

slackhack · 12-05-2006, 09:28 AM

you should try slim:

http://slim.berlios.de/

very light, and works great.

gegechris99 · 12-05-2006, 09:40 AM

And here's the Slackbuild for slim.

http://www.slackbuilds.org/repository/desktop/slim/

If you're looking for a simple but good-looking login manager, please give it a try (you'll find themes on the site if you don't like the default).

One limitation: you can not do any remote login, just log in your PC. But I guess that's what you want.

trashbird1240 · 12-05-2006, 11:34 AM

Thanks everybody, I'm going to keep going with qingy until it works the way I want it to.

Thanks,
Joel

gnashley · 12-05-2006, 11:54 AM

My favorite is wdm. slim is a clone of wdm which uses the fox libs. wdm uses WINGs libs, so if you have WindowMaker installed you can use it.
I've done considerable work on getting WDM to be more flexible and configurable for easy use and good security.
You can get the latest package here:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/...jects/AFX-wdm/

johnson_steve · 12-05-2006, 12:07 PM

if qingy can't start in frame buffer mode it falls back to a text console log in so you can still log in and fix it. it worked for me right away but that was after I set up a framebuffer splash maybe check your settings in /etc/directfbrc and /etc/fb.modes

trashbird1240 · 12-05-2006, 04:05 PM

Do you mean if I start [the computer] in framebuffer mode or is this a qingy-specific thing? My regular boot-sequence is in VESA framebuffer mode (with the little penguin in the corner).

Thanks for the pointers,
Joel

johnson_steve · 12-05-2006, 06:42 PM

what's the output of fbset?

trashbird1240 · 12-05-2006, 07:09 PM

>fbset

mode "800x600-75"
# D: 48.001 MHz, H: 46.876 kHz, V: 75.121 Hz
geometry 800 600 800 600 16
timings 20833 96 32 16 4 96 4
rgba 5/11,6/5,5/0,0/0
endmode

/etc/directfbrc did not exist.

Joel