switching

**quiggley** · 05-07-2005, 06:27 AM

I decided to try gnome because i never used it before, so I uninstalled kde and installed gnome, after a while i wanted KDE back, but when i do exactly what i did before, gome won't go away! here's what i did
1)decide i wanted to test out a new GUI
2)i typed in apt-get --purge remove kde
3)restarted, no GUI came up, then i logged in as root, and typed apt-get install gnome.
4)restarted, messed around a bit, didn't like gnome, so i typed in apt-get --purge remove gnome, then restarted.
5)here's where it makes me angry.. after that it loads up with gnome again! wtf? i thought i got rid of that all together! i even tryed apt-get remove, but that didn't work either.
6)i decide to install KDE over gnome, didn't work.
7)tried to get used to gnome, couldent.
8) came here.

**Frown** · 05-07-2005, 08:17 AM

Originally posted by quiggley
6)i decide to install KDE over gnome, didn't work.

It didn't install at all, or it just doesn't autostart?
Try stopping X, and run kdm from terminal.

**JamminJoeyB** · 05-07-2005, 08:26 AM

You can have multiple DE/WM loaded on your system. The problem you have is your entries in your xinitrc. This file controls what wm/DE is running.

You didn't really need to remove kde to run gnome.

Look in /etc/X11/xinit for xinitrc. Sometimes this is a symbolic link to other files stored in that directory. I'm not sure how debian does it, but on slackware it is a symbolic link.

So all you need to do is check that. If it's a symbolic link to another file ie xinitrc>xinitrc.gnome

Just delete it and recreate the link to point to xinitrc.kde

Of course this is how it is on slackware, but I would hope that it would be similar on debian.

Hope this helps

**DrChuck** · 05-07-2005, 09:49 AM

If you log in graphically (/etc/inittab sets the initial run level to 5), you select the session type you want to run on the graphical login screen - all of the installed desktops appear in a pulldown menu. You can also change the default this way. I know that Redhat, Fedora and Ubuntu work this way, probably others.
In addition, Fedora and Redhat have a command line tool called switchdesk which scripts the alterations JamminJoeyB describes in his post.

drChuck

**cudaman73** · 05-07-2005, 10:06 AM

you can create (or modify) a file in your home directory called .xinitrc.. slackware is a little different on dealing with xinit scripts...

Before we begin, as joey said, you don't have to uninstall one window manager or desktop environment to install another. At this moment I have Gnome, XFCE4, and Enlightenment all installed on my system at the same time. I use gdm personally, so my set up is a little bit different, but i'll go ahead and explain both.

First method: Using startx

This is the method you'd want to use if you have to type startx whenever you turn on your computer and log in to your install (default for most distributions).

1) Fire up your favorite text editor. Suggestions include nano, vi, emacs, and even gui ones such as gedit, abiword, and even OpenOffice (a little farfetched perhaps, but it's possible)

So, you've got your text editor fired up. open up ~/.xinitrc (or, if you don't recognize the shorthand, /home/<youruser>/.xinitrc), which will look something like this (i'll post mine here)

Code:

gaim &
#firefox &
#gnome-settings-daemon &
#gnome-panel &
#exec enlightenment
#exec xcompmgr -Cc &
exec gnome-session

This could be confusing at first, but it's really pretty simple. The lines that begin with # are commented out (ignored by whatever program is accessing it, standard for most linux config files). This tells the startx script to run gaim and then to run gnome-session (which will start gnome). The basic syntax is that you put all the programs you want to run inside X before the actual execution of the X session (gnome, fluxbox, openbox, whatever). I forget why this is so, but it's the only way it works. So you could have something like this:

Code:

#Start these programs with X
gaim &
#xchat &
firefox &
#thunderbird &

#I forget the actual name of the kde command, it's been 
#a while ;p
#but you just uncomment whichever you do want to
#run and comment whichever you don't.
#exec kde
exec gnome-session

This will work with any wm or de.

Second Method: Using GDM

using a login manager is a tad more complicated, but not very much so. I hate to say it, but i have absolutely no experience with kdm, so I can't help you there, but I don't think it's that different. Perhaps someone else who uses kdm will add a third method

GDM reads files from /usr/share/xsessions (at least in ubuntu, I've never used gdm in any other distro, so you may have to do a bit of seaching.

After an ls of the dir, we see this:

Code:

m3r1k@m3r1kb0x:~$ ls /usr/share/xsessions/
e17.deskop  gnome.desktop  xfce4.desktop

which shows you three different possible gdm sessions. What this means is that I can click 'Sessions' at the gdm login screen and choose between three different X sessions (one for each wm or de). gnome.desktop and xfce4.desktop were created for me, and are a little difficult to read, so I'll show you my /usr/share/xsessions/e17.desktop here:

Code:

m3r1k@m3r1kb0x:~$ cat /usr/share/xsessions/e17.deskop 
[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Enlightenment DR17
Comment=
Exec=enlightenment
Icon=
Type=Application

This will work for any WM or DE you have installed, merely change the file name (gnome.desktop or kde.desktop), and change the Name= field to reflect the name of the WM (GNOME or KDE, respectively

), and the Exec= to whatever the command is to run the WM or DE. GNOME runs with gnome-session, so my gnome.desktop should look like this:

Code:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=GNOME 2.10
Comment=
Exec=gnome-session
Icon=
Type=Application

And, in GDM, i would get the option to run 'GNOME 2.10' if I clicked on the 'Sessions' button.

That's really all you have to do with GDM... as for KDM, I already said I don't have any experience with it, so hopefully someone else will fill in the blanks.

That's it.. Someone else should peruse my howto and correct my mistakes, though

In case I made any...

**askrieger** · 05-07-2005, 03:15 PM

I'm a debian user (although not a very experienced one), but I'll try to give you my impressions. Debian is a little different from the other distros mentioned in this thread.

1) You can have both KDE and GNOME on your machine at the same time. You just have to choose which to start at login time, if you are using the KDE display manager. BUT, I think you're still using the GNOME display manager. Look at the file /etc/X11/default-display-manager. Mine has one line: "/usr/bin/kdm" (without the quotes quotes).

2) As you have probably discovered by now, you don't have a .xinitrc file in your home directory. You DO have a /usr/share/xsessions directory. In my case, since I don't run GNOME, it has only one file called "kde.desktop", which is 3.8 kilobytes long. The first few lines are:

Code:

Encoding=UTF-8
Type=XSession
Exec=/usr/bin/startkde
TryExec=/usr/bin/startkde
Name=KDE

The rest of the file just repeats the name line in a lot of different character sets, so (I think) you probably don't need those lines.

3) The default runlevel in debian is 2 not 5. The last thing started in /etc/rc2.d/ is /etc/init.d/xdm. This shell script has a line right at the top that says{code]DEFAULT_DISPLAY_MANAGER_FILE=/etc/X11/default-display-manager[/code]

4) You do have a /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc file, but all it does is to start /etx/X11/Xsession. This is a long shell script, that uses a bunch of other configuration files that don't exist on my system.

In summation, change your default display manager to kdm and then choose KDE.

HTH

**quiggley** · 05-07-2005, 03:26 PM

alright, i fixed the problem! i figured out that KDM wasen't installed in my KDE directory, so i just used "apt-get install kdm" and now i got my KDE back!

but now i got another problem, when i try logging in as root, i get an error saying "root logins are not allowed." any idea how to fix this one?

**askrieger** · 05-07-2005, 03:49 PM

Logging in to a GUI as root is a Very Bad Idea ! But, if you really want to know:

Logout with your user ID. At the KDE login screen use "console login". At the console login, login as root. Then at the console enter "startx". Unlike other distros you don't get a red background warning you that you can really clobber your machine in this mode, but you should.

You've now been warned

**quiggley** · 05-07-2005, 03:53 PM

Originally posted by askrieger
Logging in to a GUI as root is a Very Bad Idea ! But, if you really want to know:

Logout with your user ID. At the KDE login screen use "console login". At the console login, login as root. Then at the console enter "startx". Unlike other distros you don't get a red background warning you that you can really clobber your machine in this mode, but you should.

You've now been warned

yeah i know it's dangerous, but i need to give my non-root user permissions to install programs and other things.

**retsaw** · 05-07-2005, 05:26 PM

You could just use a console as a regular user and "su -" to root, you can even launch GUI programs as root that way without having the whole DE running as root.

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