Hi everyone,

Right now I'm trying to write a simple client GUI for a cheap, small footprint, computer. I want to run a simple graphical user interface for data entry (think something like those auto-checkout terminals at the grocery store). I want to leave off the GNOME/KDE for the obvious memory freeup, as well as the decresed likelihood of the computer being successfully hacked/broken by the general public if the program itself crashes to a prompt instead of a GUI.

I've heard that any program can invoke X and run a GUI if it has its own .xinitrc file, but I haven't had much luck finding info on that. Is there any traction with the .xinitrc stuff? Also, how would I be able to program widgets into the interface if there is no KDE library? I've never done graphical programming before, so I please explain stuff so that I can understand, since I'm coming from square one.

Thanks a lot!

Hi.

Yes, you can run X without a window manager: remove ~/.xinitrc and run 'xinit' frm a console and you should get a black screen with a white xterm in the top left corner. From that xterm you can run whatever you want. If you like, you can put whatever you want to run when X starts into the ~/.xinitrc file (for example, I use Fluxbox as my window manager, so I have 'exec fluxbox' in my .xinitrc, but I could just as easily have put 'exec firefox' in there). Run 'startx', and when the .xinitrc 'script' exits, X also exits. It should be fairly trivial for a script to alter the .xinitrc file and call startx to get a single program X session.

As long as the libraries are installed (QT, GTK etc) you can use their widgets - KDE or GNOME don't have to be running. If you don't even want the libraries installed, I believe it's possible to statically link GTK or QT, but that will increase memory requirements if you have more than one program which uses each library running. I can't think of any reason you would actually want to do this, though.

Dave

yes i think x will run as long as any child program is running and it doesn't have to be a window manager
i think with xinit as ilikejam has said he is seeing the default x window manager and not an absence of a window manager altogether.
one of the hurdles to get over without a window manager is getting focus for input
it is possible to do this programmatically with Qt -- not sure about gtk+
i wonder about the usability of just any program run without a window manager and not designed specifically to do so.. i imagine very few programs out of the box will work this way
you might want to read these:
http://www.linux.com/howtos/Kiosk-HOWTO-1.shtml
http://kiosk.mozdev.org/
it may not be necesarry to not use a window manager but rather use a simple one and have it be locked so it will only do what you want

Thanks! I'll give all of this a shot, sounds like some really good stuff