xfce-session does not start after boot
 

This morning I did a minimal install of Debian to test out xfce and lxde, purely out of curiosity.

I tried LXDE first. For various reasons I wasn't entirely pleased, so I removed it and installed xfce4 in a vanilla openbox session. Upon reboot, I was greeted with the CLI. I generated a new xorg.conf file to see if the transition to xfce had altered it, but was greeted with the CLI again after another reboot. I manually started X with 'startx' and noted that the xfce session manager was installed. The xdm session manager, however, was not.

Installing xdm fixed the problem, kind of. I am now greeted with an xdm login screen rather than an xfce session login screen. What can I do to have xfce-session be my default login screen?

I don't understand what a xfce session login shall be.

You can start it with startx from the login-terminal. That is not what you want.
You can start it from a login-manager: gdm, xdm, slim, kdm...
You can autostart it (with and without a login manager).
There are more ways, but that should be the usual ones.

I don't think that XFCE includes a native login manager. You will need GDM, KDM, or some other for that.

I just looked at the Arch wiki and it does not mention an XFCE display manager. (No, I don't use Arch, but I have been playing with it in Virtual Box; it's a great way to learn more about how Linux works).

My favorite way of managing logins is the Slackware way: Log into Linux, then issue "startx" when you need a graphical environment.

I will stick with the Slackware way for now, thanks for the info.