SW 13.1 strange XWindow configuration(XFCE and KDE simultaneously)
 

Hello

I have installed SL13.1 on my home PC week ago. Usually I do not use X often during my work and have not favour Desktop Environment so during post-install configuration step I selected XFCE as default one. After reboot I have tuned some network configurations, reinstalled LILO with shorter timeout, then started X using 'startx' to check if it works(starts at least). All works!

Yesterday I have booted SL and decided to tune-up XFCE. So I started it using 'telinit 4' command(do not touched any configurations yet). How I was surprised when I saw KDE desktop instead of XFCE!!! :confused: I returned back via 'telinit 3' to try again using `startx`. And XFCE started! :confused: But 'telinit 4' still starts KDE!

Question: did I missed something? Since when 'startx' and 'telinit 4' run different DEs? I newbie in configuration of X so I did not touched anything yet(and I do not know how to switch DE at all). Is that intended behaviour of Slackware 13.x?(Last time I used Slackware 12 based distribution with KDE so do not noticed such behaviour). I do not favour any of them, but I want always run one of them! What and where I should change to force start XFCE during 'telinit 4'?

Thanks for helping

Do you have KDM installed? If you do, maybe it have an init script in the runlevel 4 (telinit switches from the current runlevel to the one you indicate by appending a number to the telinit command). Basically KDM is the KDE login window, which by default loads KDE, and in your case it could be set to autologin. The reason why XFce gets started by startx is because startx doesn't invoque any login manager application, instead it runs whatever wm/DE is set in the ~/.xinitrc file (in your case that file was set to launch Xfce).

That's perfectly normal.

KDE is the default WM for KDM and XDM irrespective of xwmconfig.

fbsduser
Yes, kdm is installed(Because I did FULL installation.) Yes, rc.4 contains kdm probing (just after gdm probing). But when I selected XFCE during installation I thought installer should(or must) tune-up gdm/kdm/xdm configuration in order to respect my choice.

So, as I understood I should isolate KDM via something like 'chmod -x kdm' in order to allow XDM start? Or XDM will start KDE too?

The SlackBook has all the details on how to choose XDM instead of KDM. My preferred way is to comment out the relevant line in rc.4.

Note that this will not change your default WM in runlevel4. You will still boot in KDE from XDM unless you hack with ~/.Xsession.

Note that Slack follows the UNIX way of doing things. If you install XFCE, you simply install XFCE not tune up KDM and XDM.

Yes, kdm starts only kde. But xdm starts DE I pointed during post-install configuration.(Now I understand why most of users of my local Linux community hate KDE).
I understood that. But I do not said anything about installation process. I said about configuration process: it does not configures kdm to start XFCE.(UNIX way of doing things). But now I understood this is not entirely configurators issue, but kdm's one(but I think it could do more in this case, for instance, comment out kdm probe in /etc/rc.d/rc.4 if KDE is not selected as default DE)

Anyway, thanks for answers.

Oh Pat wrote a script for this a long time ago called pkgtools based on ncursur run it select setup select default window manager. choose xfce4 like you did in the install.
and startx will then point to xfce4.
I have no Idea how it was changed.

Actually. KDM can start any DE/WM as long as it have's a *.desktop file in /usr/share/xsessions (This is how the gnome *.desktop file looks like in my system)
The detail is that to log into whatever DE you want you need to select it (and make it the default session) in the login screen itself (you'll need to disable autologin to do this).