Hi everyone,
I am pretty new to Linux and primarily work with the CLI. At home I just installed a machine running Debian Sarge with XFCE. I was wondering about launching programs.

When I open some programs (like Firefox) the program opens and that's it. But if I launch other programs (like gaim), from either command line or file manager, it opens and maintains a terminal window. How can I open apps without them relying on a terminal window?

If this is an absurd question, forgive me, I tried searching for it, but didn't find anything (probably due to my choice of keywords or lack thereof)

Cheers

I have never heard of such behavior. When I open gaim from the KDE menu, it does not open a terminal. I bet XFCE is doing something special to make it spawn a terminal. I would try to either figure out the arguments that XFCE is launching the program with, or look for a setting in XFCE that specifies something like "Open a terminal to display standard output." (Or both).

Good luck

I have never heard of running a program executing it from a terminal unless you have set it that way. To check and see rightclick on gaim and go to properties. At the bottom you will see run from terminal check box. If it is ckecked then that is the cause of the problem. Now when you run gaim from a terminal then the terminal will stay open becuase it initiated the program and not the window manager. If you remeber the window manager is spereated from the kernel.