xfce won't start
 

I've searched here but didn't find any threads about this. I have Slackware 10.2 installed and I just tried to start xfce, to find out what it's like, and it freezes while loading. I tried using startx (with .xinitrc pointed to startxfce4) and also selecting it from the menu in KDM. Both times I see a blank white screen with a watch as the mouse cursor, and that's where it stops. KDE, FVWM and Fluxbox work perfectly. What's different about xfce that it won't start? Do I need to edit or install something?

Well since no one else has replied I guess I will take a stab-
The first thing I would try is creating a new user with a fresh $HOME dir and attempting to start xfce from there. This will tell you if you have some sort of user specific configuration problem, or if the issue is more global. Also have you looked at your log files to see if anything is getting spit back at you?

Thanks for the reply. That didn't help. Since this is on my laptop - HP ze4315 with ATI IGP320 - I decided to try it on my desktop that has an identical Slackware installation and a GeFrorce2 MX400. It works there. On a hunch that it's because of the video driver I changed my xorg.conf to use the generic vesa driver and it works.

Now my question is - why doesn't XFCE work with the radeon driver on an IGP320 chip?

Here's the section from my xorg.conf

# **********************************************************************
# Graphics device section
# **********************************************************************

# Any number of graphics device sections may be present

Section "Device"
Identifier "ATI Radeon Mobility"
Driver "radeon"
VendorName "ATI"
BoardName "Radeon Mobility U1"
VideoRam 32768
#Option "UseFBDev"
BusID "PCI:1:5:0"
Option "AGPMode" "4"
#Option "DPMS"
Option "AGPFastWrite" "On"
Option "EnablePageFlip" "On"
# Insert Clocks lines here if appropriate
EndSection

Are you sure it's the video card/driver? If so, is the Composite extension enabled in your xorg.conf? Certain XFCE components in 4.2 support transparency etc but perhaps it's causing some problems.

Also, do you have network on that computer? Some panel plugins cause a short freeze at start if there's no network available.

And of course, something might have gone wrong during XFCE installation. You can try re-installing the packages.

I believe it's the driver because the only thing I changed to make it work is the driver, from radeon to vesa. I don't have any lines that load a composite extension, but transparency and other graphics effects work in KDE and Fluxbox.

I do have networks that I access, but nothing during bootup. I use scripts to set the interface statically only when I need access. And it's not a short freeze - it's a complete freeze. The background doesn't appear and the only way out is a hard reset.

I considered the possibility of a bad installation. Is it possible that the package that comes with the Slackware 10.2 installation cd would install correctly on one machine and not on another? My laptop and desktop both run the same version, configured as close to identically as possible, and it works on the desktop, which uses nvidia.

Thanks for the ideas so far. I'll try reinstalling the package and/or bringing up eth0.

Well if the driver setting was the only change then yes, it could be a driver problem. But I can't think of an XFCE component using some fancy graphics effects that require hardware acceleration. I was having problems with composite, some applications were eating %100 CPU but I didn't have any lockups.The transparency in KDE is not that of X, so doesn't require composite. I don't know about fluxbox. And when network is down, panel takes some time to load because of network dependent plugins. I can't think of anything else. Did you try starting XFCE from runlevel 3 with startxfce4 and check the X logs?

Well, my logs look ok. According to them X itself is not running into any problems. I tried removing then reinstalling the package from my cd. And I tried bringing up the eth0 interface before issuing startx. Still no luck. The last thing I can think of is to remove the slackware package and try using the installer from xfce's website.

Good luck with this. It sounds like a video driver issue to me imho. I've got Slackware 10.2 running with XFce and everything is fine. Perhaps XFce doesn't like the driver used by the Radeon card.

Still it's very interesting that other desktops work OK. KDE uses much more eye candy, anything that is required by XFCE should also be required by KDE.

How about Gnome? Do you have Gnome? Does it work? I'm wondering if this is a Gtk related issue. Do the Gtk applications work fine under other WMs? You can also try running XFCE components under, say, fluxbox, by typing them in the console (xfce4panel etc...). Perhaps you'll catch one that causes the problem.

This probably doesn't matter at this point but I've also got an ATI Radeon 9200 (I think at least) and I had the same problem. It does seem to be the problem as switching to the vesa driver fixed it for me as well.

Thanks, kkatebian. It's a bit helpful to know that I'm not the only one with this problem. So xfce just doesn't like the radeon driver, even though other wm's do.

I don't have Gnome, but I do have the gtk base installed. I tried installing xfce with the .bin installer from their website. The installation went fine but it still didn't fix the problem. After that I uninstalled it so now it's completely off my system. I might try using a version from one of my older slack cd's.

I agree that since KDE is the bulkiest and most resource-consuming wm, especially for eye-candy, if a feature common to many wm's works in KDE than it should work in the others as well.

You can then report this to the XFCE developers. Very interesting bug, really.

I just might do that. I went back to my 10.1 install cd and installed the 4.2.0 version that came with it. Still the same result.