Thanks! I have decided to basically stick with the command line as the GUI under the sad hardware I have on the machine 7.3 runs on is bad. Until I can find a decent video card and maybe find a 15" monitor, I will just stay at the command line and learn from that first. Thanks again for the help though, and I will put this all to good use just as soon as I can get a better video setup.
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From: "Sean A. Walberg" sean@poochie.ertw.com To: roundtable@muug.mb.ca Subject: switchdesk, RedHat, and WMs
There was a discussion last night about how to switch around window managers/desktop environments, and which file did what. I just took a peek at a RH 7.3 box, and came to the following conclusions:
/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc is run when X is started. This file first checks for the existance of ~/.Xclients. If it exists, it is run Failing that, /etc/X11/xinit/Xclients is run. However, if it doesn't exist, fvwm2 is tried, followed by twm (not really an issue in Red Hat)
/etc/X11/xinit/Xclients makes its decision about which desktop to run based on /etc/sysconfig/desktop. The line
PREFERRED=GNOME or PREFERRED=KDE
will make the default windowing environment GNOME or KDE respectively. You could also do "PREFERRED=twm" to have twm the default
Finally, switchdesk copies the appropriate file from /usr/share/apps/switchdesk/ into your ~/.Xclients (and doesn't modify /etc/sysconfig/desktop as I had originally thought, sorry).
So, in a nutshell, the rough order of things is:
~/.Xclients (manual, or by switchdesk) /etc/sysconfig/desktop (if it exists) GNOME KDE afterstep|windowmaker|mmaker fvwm95|fvwm|fvwm2 mwm|lesstif twm
Sean
Sean A. Walberg sean@ertw.com http://www.ertw.com Join the weekly cramsession.com Linux newsletter for news and resources! Archives and more info at http://www.ertw.com/~sean/newsletter