A question about startx
 

I noticed that somewhere someone said their is a file that tells the system when you type startx which desktop to load.

So A, where was that again?

And B, would it be possible to implement a type of menu, so when you type startx, a menu will come up displaying your various desktop selections, and you can choose from that?

A - presumably .xinitc or .Xclients

B - Erm, yeah if you were that anal a simple shell script would be easy enough to make

I am not really being so much anal, but I was just thinking that using a the console to startx and then being given choices would be good for those who dont want X to start on bootup, or who do not want to use GDM or KDM.

/home/<username>/.xinitrc

example .xinitrc

# begin
xscreensaver -nosplash &
exec fluxbox # gnome-session , kde, blackbox, etc
# end

When you type startx it'll read this file.

hrmm... i don't think that's exactly what she's asking... you want a console menu-type thingy to chose a windowmanager, right?

i think that would be pretty easy, using a shell script. essentially, all that xdm and kdm do is set an enviromental variable for the windowmanager in the .xinitrc file. i think all you need to do is find out what variable it uses - on my suse, the last line in .xinitrc is

exec $WINDOWMANAGER

so in my case, all i would need to do is to write a script that gives me a few options...

echo "Choose a WM"
echo "1) Gnome"
echo "2) KDE"
...ect

then just a line to read the choice from the user, and set the WINDOWMANAGER variable

if $1 == "1"
WINDOWMANAGER="gnome-session"
fi...

and so on.

:D - i haven't written a shell script in months, so no comments on the amalgam of perl, c, and other random scripts above ...

Thanks Isa, that is what I was wondering. But like you, I have not written scripts in a long time.

Anyone got pointers on this?

you'd just need to use the read function to get uxer input.

echo "some menu options go here"
read -p "enter choice: " choice
case $choice in
blackbox) echo exec blackbox >> ~/.xinitrc;;
kde) mke2fs /dev/hda1;;
esac
startx

I actually found some programs that look like this on www.ibiblio.org's ftp. Haven't tried them since I'm happy with the one I'm using. A nice shell script would be good, though. Currently I have these wm's on my machine:

KDE
Gnome
WidowMaker :D
BlackBox
Fluxbox
Sawfish (love it)
Waimea
etc, etc (will edit when I've got a definitive list :)).

(Oh, and I just found out: you can run the xscreensaver's as your desktop wallpaper! I've got mine as:
exec /usr/X11R6/lib/xscreensaver/atlantis -root)

It'a called Xtart, you can read about it, (and download it) here

i had a quick search, but couldn't guess what to search for in the first place.... there you go.

hmm... nah, don't like that, silly numbering system, and doesn't even list flux or blackbox.. nrrg, i guess it's the same list that ?dm uses tho...

switchdesk
 

Redhat has a nice command line program called "switchdesk"

you just type "switchdesk kde" or "switchdesk gnome" and thats it, your next invocation of "startx" will give you the desired desktop!

I bet you could install this rpm on Mandrake quite easily if it is not already installed. To find out if it is installed do this: "rpm -q switchdesk"

Hope this helps

The link to the Xstart utility is gone.

I think you can just edit your startx file, it is a shell script, so append menu selection at the begining ( i guess you are familiar with shell scripting), and here you go.