[Techtalk] Window managers and desktops (LONG)

[Carla Schroder]

On Friday 21 June 2002 04:24 pm, caitlynmaire at earthlink.net wrote:
> Hi, Matt,
<mass snippage>
> 
> The choice of defaut window manager (or desktop system) is made in
> /etc/X11/xinit/Xclients on a Red Hat system and in many other distros as
> well.  You can edit this file to allow for other choices than Gnome,
> KDE, The Next Level, FVWM, or failsafe (twm), which are the only ones
> provided for.  The stock RedHat file reads /etc/sysconfig/desktop to
> determine your preference.  This is a one line file which just contains
> the name of the window manager/desktop system: (i.e.: KDE, GNOME).  I've
> changed my /etc/X11/xinit/Xclients by copying some of the existing lines
> to allow  one more choice, IceWM:
>
> #!/bin/bash
> # Copyright 1999 - 2001 Red Hat, Inc.
> # License:  GNU General Public License v2
>
> # check to see if the user has a preferred desktop
> PREFERRED=
> if [ -f /etc/sysconfig/desktop ]; then
>     if [ -n "`grep -i GNOME /etc/sysconfig/desktop`" ]; then
>         PREFERRED=gnome-session
>     elif [ -n "`grep -i KDE /etc/sysconfig/desktop`" ]; then
>         PREFERRED=startkde
>     elif [ -n "`grep -i ICEWM /etc/sysconfig/desktop`" ]; then
>         PREFERRED=icewm
>     fi
> fi
>
> if [ -n "$PREFERRED" ] && which $PREFERRED >/dev/null 2>&1; then
>     PREFERRED=`which $PREFERRED`
>     exec $PREFERRED
> fi
>
>
> I then changed my /etc/sysconfig/desktop file accordingly.
>
> Note that this changes the default for all users of the system.  If you
> want to just change your chosen environment you need to create a
> .Xclients file in your home directory.
>

Okay, good so far. My question is, can't the desktop of choice be started 
from the prompt? I always start in the console, so startx fires up X. 
shouldn't I be able to start any installed window manager/desktop? I tried 
startkde, exec startkde, exec gnome-session, exec startxfce etc., and it 
generates an error message. Only startx works.

thanks,
Carla