Slack & fluxbox -> gnome/kde needed?
 

Been using Redhat9 as my first distro for a few months now, and can't wait to give Slackware a try. At the moment I am preparing myself (mentally, and with FAQs and READMEs) to build some confidence for the big step since I've learned quite a bit about Linux but still RH is comfortable with it's GUIs (I try to escape those as much as possible; love the console!)

I use Fluxbox with Gnome in the background as desktop manager. Tried KDE once but the taste didn't agree with me. Although the distinction is still not quite clear to me, I can see that only a window manager won't do the job. Or am I wrong?

So my question is: which suitable desktop managers are available to be used in Slack9 with Fluxbox as wm?

Thnx, Leon.

http://www.slackware.com/pb/?vers=slackware-9.1&set=xap have a look at the slackware homepage :)

You don't need any desktop manager if you don't want one. You can just run fluxbox to control the windows, set a purty background and have a menu and taskbar, and then just run gnome apps (I assume that you use gnome because you like the apps) from the fluxbox menu or a terminal. There's no need to have gnome sitting in the background with al the crap that entails. You won't have icons on the desktop (which isn't an issue once you get used to it), if you do want them then there I believe there is a program on the fluxbox homepage that will do them.

Check out this site for more cool fluxbox stuff: http://www.fluxmod.dk/

Thanks Kovacs!
That's exactly what I wanted to hear. I now have fluxbox without desktop icons and other crap. The right-button menu rules!

Am I correct in thinking that if I don't install gnome/kde, I will have to login through xdm? I mean, start up from a console? Now I can just start my laptop and it starts completely without startx, passwords, etc.

Leon.

I think you could do that...but why not start at console. All you have to do is type startx and then you will be right into fluxbox.

You'll find after a while it is ncie to start in console, because sometimes you are gonna want to do stuff without having the pesky WM in the way at the start.

or you could just put startx in your login script, if you use bash --> ~/.bash_profile

xdm is NOT logging in through a console, XDM is the default X login manager, as opposed to KDM or GDM. you can keep using whatever manager you want, and you don't NEED to login to the console if you don't want to.

Thanks all!
YESSS! Installed Slack9.1 last night, and it went flawless! (phew!) Lilo even dual boots winXP. Now the thing to do is get rid of a lot of installed crap, since I went for the full install. But that's _too_ full!

However: I must have done something wrong when I had to add myself as user. I have my /home on a separate partition so I wouldn't loose settings and other stuff. But now I don't seem to be the rightful owner anymore :-(

Here's what I did: added myself as user with same name (of course), but having no clue about user id I went for default, just as I did for group. (the last is now 'users' and if I remember right this wat 'root' before?) When I was aked if I wanted to 'chown' I said yes.

How can I properly restore the ownership now?

Another annoying thing is that as user I don't have the permission to reboot or halt. How can I change this?

Greetings from new happy Slacker, Leon.

If you do ls -l in the directory you had as homedir then you'll probably see the userid, but not the corresponding user, I did it by using the kuser tool in kde (your halt and reboot question in the control center), but you like the command line right?
'man adduser' --> there is an -u option to set the user id.
Had the same problem when I came from mdk. Slack starts user-(and group-)id's at 1001, mdk at 501. You have 2 choice's:
* Do a 'chown -R <username> /home/<username>'
* Recreate your user with a different uid: 'adduser -u <currentRHuid>'

The groupid is the same problem and has the same solution ;)

you have to setuid /usr/sbin/halt
as root do:

chmod a+s /usr/sbin/halt
chmod a+s /usr/sbin/reboot

but it's safer if you take a specific group like users:

chgrp users /usr/sbin/halt
chgrp users /usr/sbin/reboot

and then do

chmod ug+s /usr/sbin/halt
chmod ug+s /usr/sbin/reboot

Life is sweet :-) Thanks a lot!. My files are mine again!
Adding a new user with an already existing name wasn't allowed, but chown/chgrp -R did it.

Still remaining problem: in /home/leon I have a soft link to MyDocuments on another (fat32) partition which is mounted on /mnt/data. This used to work well. However, now I can't access it anymore. When I want to chown the link or /mnt/data as root it is not permitted.

Any work around for that one?

Thanx!

[edit] I made a new (soft) link, but that didn't change anything so I think the problem resides in /mnt/data.

Check your /etc/fstab file if you mounted the partition writable. You should have something like:

/dev/hda1 /mnt/data auto rw,suid,auto,user,noauto 0 0

I think this should work, but I am not shure since I don't have no windoze on this PC. It will be the options wich determine if the mounted device is writable. In your file, you'll probable have the 'ro' option on instead of 'rw'.

(check out 'man fstab' and 'man mount' as well)

good luck!

fstab was:
/dev/hda1 /mnt/winxp ntfs defaults 0 0
/dev/hda7 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hda9 / ext3 defaults 1 1
/dev/hda8 /home ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/hda6 /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/hda5 /mnt/data vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,owner,ro 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0


I tried several other ways to describe the mounting of /dev/hda5 in fstab, without any difference.

I checked the permissions, and there must be something wrong:

When checked in rox (started as user), there are no permissons set at all (---/---/---) and the 3 directories in /mnt/data/ have all user and group set at -1

Similarly, in console as user I cannot access the dir, but as root I can:
bash-2.05b$ ls -l /mnt/data
ls: /mnt/data/Documents and Settings: Permission denied
ls: /mnt/data/System Volume Information: Permission denied
ls: /mnt/data/Recycled: Permission denied
total 0
bash-2.05b$ su
Password:
bash-2.05b# ls -l /mnt/data
total 12
drwxr--r-- 3 root root 4096 Nov 5 23:58 Documents and Settings
drwxr--r-- 5 root root 4096 Nov 6 00:15 Recycled
drwxr--r-- 5 root root 4096 Nov 5 23:58 System Volume Information
bash-2.05b#

This whole permissions thing thing is going above my head now... I don't want to change too much because I'm afraid I might make matters worse. Any suggestion welcome!

Leon.

I'll check my settings tonight when I have acces to a computer where everything is set up right, so I can check how it looks like...