Switching Window Managers

Brother Michael · 04-17-2004, 12:05 AM

My cousin is having some small troubles switching Window Managers on Debian. He currently has the 2.2 Kernal and KDE 2.0 running. He has installed via Apt Blackbox and FluxBox. But at his log in screen it does not give him an option to switch between window managers. How does he go about doing this?

Mike

wolfe2554 · 04-17-2004, 12:42 AM

ok here it is on a redhat 9 sys. I can go to ~/ and edit the .Xclients-default file and it will say exec gnome-session. change that to exec the window manager that you want another option is to download a desktop switching tool. Find out what window manager you are useing and goto there home page and find a switcher.

adz · 04-17-2004, 12:46 AM

Is he using kdm? If so it should appear otherwise you can use xdm and change the /etc/alternatives/x-window-manager symlink accordingly.

souljah · 04-17-2004, 07:27 AM

Yet another possibility... edit ~/.Xsession (for more information man Xsession to include

#!/bin/sh
exec /usr/bin/blackbox (or whatever windowsmanager he desires).

Enjoy

elitecodex · 04-17-2004, 07:29 AM

Or you can do what I do...

Change your settings to take you into a terminal instead of a graphical login manager... then create/edit ~/.xinitrc to read something like this:

Code:

exec fluxbox

Thats what I use... or 'startkde' for KDE 3.2 Just have to find out what the command is. Im not sure what it is for Blackbox.

I dont know if Debian is that much different, but just though I would throw my two cents in

Brother Michael · 04-17-2004, 10:49 AM

Thanks everyone. In the end we just had to "aptitude" and download KDM and install it and use it instead of XDM.

Mike