I run hardy heron on my laptop. I wished to remove the graphical login so I removed gdm. Now I can boot without graphics, and run startx when I wish to start x. I like this behavior. However it takes a very long time, I believe longer than using graphical login, to start gnome. It takes 45 seconds between running startx and getting a fully logged-in desktop.

1. how can I figure out what is taking so long and fix it

2. what if I want to boot KDE instead, which I have installed but almost never use(I don't know how to make startx boot kde instead)

You can get a rough idea by logging in and running the top command in a terminal. Then switch to an alternate console, log in, and startx. Switch back to the first console immediately and watch top to see where startx is spening most of its time.





Try startkde

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Steve Stites

It's odd, but I when I tried to do that I never succesfully logged in. Like for some reason, switching back to the terminal running top, or pressing ctrl+alt+F1 messed it up. Because when I went to switch back after watching top, it wasn't actually logged in, it was in some text screen, which I didn't understand.

double post

Possibly you have your alternate consoles mixed up. The original screen that you booted into is <Ctrl> <Alt> <F7>. The alternate consoles are <Ctrl> <Alt> <F1> through <Ctrl> <Alt> <F6>. If you go to an alternate console which you have not previously logged into then you get a screen like you describe.

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Steve Stites

Indeed, I thought the graphics were launched on whatever terminal you launch startx from.

I didn't find anything interesting with top, just scim, gconf, gnome-panel, nautilus, stuff like that takes turns at the top with high cpu usage. It doesn't seem weird other than taking forever. I removed nautilus and didn't measure a difference in startup time.