I want to use a less bloated WM like iceWM as my WM instead of something like Gnome or KDE (at least try it). Can most other WM's run KDE/gnome apps? Since I want to keep KDE installed as a fallback, will iceWM still run faster than KDE? Also, is there a way to write a small script...something like lilo, only for WM's? I'm envisioning a menu that might look something like this:

Please Choose a Window Manager:
1) KDE
2) IceWM
3) Enlightenment

Just to be sure I'm on the right track...in my /home directory, I edit .xinitrc to look like this:

exec iceWM

and just create .xinitrc if there isn't one? Or do I put this in a different file? Thanks so much...

G

Most GNOME and KDE apps will run under IceWM and WM, and many others. If your system is not very powerful you will notice a speed increase after switching to less bloated WM. As for a choice of start up, I assume you're using startx, you might want to look at kdm, gdm and xdm, also if you still prefer to start X from runlevel 3 (typing statx), then I found sdx perl script to start different WM's available from http://linux.tucows.com/system/preview/60940.html

A lot of the sites I've been looking at on how to edit my ~/.xinitrc file (this IS the one startx references, right?) say to make it look something like this

#!/bin/bash
export LANG=es_ES
exec icewm
# This would then start an x-session, when I type startx, with IceWM rather then KDE or something

This is my .xinitrc file now:

#!/bin/bash
#
# Sample .xinitrc for SuSE Linux
# This script is called from 'startx' when you start an X session
#

#
# In case everything goes wrong, we at least fall back to a plain xterm
#
failsafe="xterm -ls -T Failsave -geometry 80x24-0-0"
trap "exec $failsafe" EXIT SIGHUP SIGINT SIGPIPE SIGTERM SIGIO

#
# Some bash (1 and 2) settings to avoid trouble on a
# failed program call.
#
test -n "$BASH" && set +o posix
no_exit_on_failed_exec=1
type shopt > /dev/null 2>&1 && shopt -s execfail
set +e > /dev/null 2>&1

#
# This should be the default
#
export TERM=xterm

#
# choose a window manager
#
if test -n "$WINDOWMANAGER" ; then
WINDOWMANAGER=`type -p $WINDOWMANAGER`
fi
if test -z "$WINDOWMANAGER" ; then
if test -x /usr/X11R6/bin/kde ; then
WINDOWMANAGER=/usr/X11R6/bin/kde
elif test -x /usr/X11R6/bin/startkde ; then
WINDOWMANAGER=/usr/X11R6/bin/startkde
elif test -x /usr/X11R6/bin/fvwm2 ; then
WINDOWMANAGER=/usr/X11R6/bin/fvwm2
elif test -x /usr/X11R6/bin/wmlist ; then
for i in `/usr/X11R6/bin/wmlist` ; do
WINDOWMANAGER=`type -p $i`
test -n "$WINDOWMANAGER" && break
done
elif test -x /usr/X11R6/bin/twm ; then
WINDOWMANAGER=/usr/X11R6/bin/twm
fi
fi

if test -z "$WINDOWMANAGER" ; then
echo "Error: Unable to find a window manager. Please make sure you installed one!"
echo "Exiting..."
xmessage -timeout 10 -default okay -center -file - <<-EOF
Error: Unable to find a window manager. Please make sure you installed one!
Exiting...
EOF
exit 1
fi

#
# Load system and users resources if not already done
# (XSESSION_IS_UP set by xdm in $XLIBDIR/xdm/Xsession)
#
if test "$XSESSION_IS_UP" != "yes" ; then
XLIBDIR=/usr/X11R6/lib/X11
test -r $XLIBDIR/Xmodmap && xmodmap $XLIBDIR/Xmodmap
test -r $HOME/.Xmodmap && xmodmap $HOME/.Xmodmap
test -r $XLIBDIR/Xresources && xrdb -load -retain $XLIBDIR/Xresources
test -r $HOME/.Xdefaults && xrdb -I$HOME -merge $HOME/.Xdefaults
test -r $HOME/.Xresources && xrdb -I$HOME -merge $HOME/.Xresources
fi

# Start the XIM server
test -r $HOME/.xim && source $HOME/.xim

#
# Add your own lines here...
#


# day planer deamon
# pland &

#
# finally start the window manager
#
exec $WINDOWMANAGER

# call failsafe
exit 0

As you can see, much more complicated...so, my question is, how do I modify this to start IceWM? I'm led to believe to change the exec $WINDOWMANAGER line to exec icewm, but that didn't work. Thanks in advance.

G