[techtalk] along the lines of "can I change my mind?"

[Malcolm Tredinnick]

Morning, all!

On Thu, Jun 22, 2000 at 07:22:00PM -0400, Stephanie Alarcon wrote:
[Telsa wrote...]
> > It's to use the command 'switchdesk' either at the command line 
> > (apparently, although I didn't know that) or from within X. It gives
> > you a choice from the available options of X "environments" (GNOME, 
> > KDE, and on RH there's AnotherStep or some such name), and when you 
> > pick one, it sorts all the changes to make out for you and does it.
> 
> yeah, this is the easiest way. what telsa is talking about is a pulldown
> menu that will show up on your login box after X comes up. 

No it's not ... but it has the same effect. There is an X application called
'switchdesk' that you can run after loggin into X. There is *also* a pulldown
menu on the gdm (Gnome display manager -- a sort of xdm on steroids) login box
which has the same options. (I'm not trying to split hairs here -- the
difference is significant if you are not using gdm, for example.)

> It will let you choose from whatever window managers you installed, and it
> will remember which one you like, and default to that the next time you log
> in.  If kde is the default, and you chose gnome last time you logged in,
> when you get that log in box it will say kde in there until you type your
> username and go tot he password field. then it will switch to gnome. =)

Telsa and Stephanies' solutions are probably The Right Way(tm) on systems set
up in RedHat's model (by which I mean, that SuSe and Slackware distributions,
for example, are different). However, if you are wanting to have anything
other than KDE, Gnome, (fvwm, too?)  or AfterStep, you need to go one step
further: make a .xsession file in your home directory containing the commands
you want executed at the start of your X session and that will be executed if
you choose "Default" from the gdm menu (or just run xdm).

By way of example, on my systems, I like to run the enlightenment window
manager, but I don't want Gnome or KDE to run. So my .xsession file contains
the lines:

	/usr/X11R6/bin/xscreensaver -no-splash &
	/usr/bin/ssh-add
	exec /usr/bin/enlightenment

and everything is as I want it. Make sure, if you do this that, .xsession is
executable or it won't be run and you'll be back to getting Gnome or whatever.

> also a question about that xdm thing...the person who mentioned the xdm
> line in inittab, i thought you were full of soup when I read that, because
> I could have sworn on all red hat/mandrake installs i've done (over the
> past year or so) the way you started X automatically was to put "startX"
> in a good place somewhere in /etc/rc.d/whatever. i thought that's what the
> install program did, too.  but lo and behold, it ain't so and the xdm
> thing is in fact in /etc/inittab.  was i dreaming, or is this different?

I suspect it would have looked similar, but it is quite different. Running
startx from /etc/rc.d/rc3.d/... would probably result in an X session starting
for the root user. Running gdm or xdm results in an X session being run for
the user that logs in. The X server itself is still run by root, but the
logged in user has their privileges restricted.

> 
> I really have to read more...

I keep thinking this too, but at this point in my life that would involve
giving up sleep. :-(

I hope I haven't confused anybody here. Just my two cents...
Malcolm

-- 
Malcolm Tredinnick            email: malcolm at commsecure.com.au
CommSecure Pty Ltd