Archlinux Questions

Zymus · 02-11-2010, 07:34 PM

Hello, i've been using Kubuntu for about 6 months now and decided to try something new. So i switched to arch linux, and after much deliberation, I got KDE functional on it. There's just one problem. The icons aren't displaying properly. Here's a picture:
http://s44.photobucket.com/albums/f8.../snapshot1.png

How do I change the turquoise-ish plasma-desktop and title bar things. Also whenever i open something, it asks me basically where i want to position it. How do i stop it from asking me that as well?

Also, how do I login as something other than root? I did adduser, but no login screen shows up for me.

MTK358 · 02-11-2010, 07:43 PM

I see that you are running the TWM window manager instead of KWin!

See the Wikipedia article on TWM to find out what it is.

And what "login screen" are you talking about?

Zymus · 02-11-2010, 07:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MTK358

I see that you are running the TWM window manager instead of KWin!

See the Wikipedia article on TWM to find out what it is.

And what "login screen" are you talking about?

Login screen. Like where you select which user you want to login to. right now i have the textual one, and then i have to do xinit and then i have to do startkde.

This is what i get when i try to install kwin:

Quote:

[root@zephyrion ~]# pacman -S kwin
kwin package not found, searching for group...
error: 'kwin': not found in sync db
[root@zephyrion ~]#

MTK358 · 02-11-2010, 07:59 PM

Why not login as a normal user in text mode? That's what I do and I prefer it over graphical login.

I tried running pacman -Ss kwin (Ss searches for packages), but it didn't find anything.

Zymus · 02-11-2010, 08:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MTK358

Why not login as a normal user in text mode? That's what I do and I prefer it over graphical login.

I tried running pacman -Ss kwin (Ss searches for packages), but it didn't find anything.

How do you propose installing KWin then? I also installed Compiz if that means anything.

MTK358 · 02-11-2010, 08:10 PM

I don't know how to install KWin, it doesn't just seem to be in the Arch repo. It might be part of some other package. I am probably not able to help you farther because I don't use KDE. Maybe someone else can figure it out.

And did you manage to log in as a normal user now?

EDIT: not sure if this can help, but can you try entering kwin in a terminal, and if it exists, post it's output here.

Zymus · 02-11-2010, 08:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MTK358

I don't know how to install KWin, it doesn't just seem to be in the Arch repo. It might be part of some other package. I am probably not able to help you farther because I don't use KDE. Maybe someone else can figure it out.

And did you manage to log in as a normal user now?

EDIT: not sure if this can help, but can you try entering kwin in a terminal, and if it exists, post it's output here.

I got it fixed by doing compiz --replace. My next problem is installing wine. Would anyone know how to do that in Arch Linux?

MrCode · 02-11-2010, 10:09 PM

Quote:

My next problem is installing wine. Would anyone know how to do that in Arch Linux?

You should just be able to do "pacman -S wine" as root.

MTK358 · 02-12-2010, 05:10 AM

You can get help on Pacman using the -h flag.

pacman -h will list the operations.
And, for example, "pacman -hS" will list the options for the -S operation.

Here are a few good ones:

Code:

# Install Package

pacman -S <package>

# Keyword search for packages on server

pacman -Ss <keyword>

# List installed packages

pacman -Q

# Keyword search for installed packages

pacman -Qs <keyword>

# List packages explicitly installed

pacman -Qe

# List packages installed as dependencies

pacman -Qd

# List packages not needed by other packages

pacman -Qt

# List unneeded dependency packages installed

pacman -Qdt

# Purge package and all its dependencies that aren't needed by other packages

pacman -Rns <package>

# Purge package

pacman -Rn <package>

# Uninstall package, but leave config files

pacman -R <package>

# Uninstall package even if others depend on it

pacman -Rd <package>

# Purge package even if others depend on it

pacman -Rnd <package>

reed9 · 02-12-2010, 06:10 AM

Kwin and the KDE login manager, kdm, are both included with the package kdebase-workspace.

Assuming you have correctly created a user account, you can start kde by editing the user's ~/.xinitrc and using the following startup line

Code:

exec ck-launch-session startkde

Then when you log in to the console as your user, use startx to launch the session.

Or add kdm to the end of your daemons array in /etc/rc.conf

Or edit /etc/inittab and change the default runlevel and login manager.

Compiz is also a window manager, so it cannot be used concurrently with kwin. I'm not sure how well it integrates with KDE4. Kwin has it's own compositing and some fancy eyecandy, if you like that sort of thing.