fvwm unable to initialize in Kubuntu 8.10...

[Constantinos Maltezos]

On Wednesday 28 January 2009 8:05:26 am Joe(theWordy)Philbrook wrote:
> In Kubuntu 8.10 I did an:
>
> apt-get install fvwm
>
> But I'm at a loss as to how to start an fvwm session.
>
> I don't know if it's significant but I boot to runlevel 3 without kdm...

"startx fvwm" is the way.  But... more below.

>   And return to using startx... (but that's a separate issue that I'll
>   never care about unless I somehow NEED kdm running to boot fvwm...)

No, you don't.

> But as it is I poked around the output of man fvwm and it seemed to
> suggest the default place for a system configuration file would be:
> /usr/local/share/fvwm
> Which directory didn't exist. Though there was a directory with a
> sample config file in:
> /usr/share/fvwm

That's okay.  That just means that the default way the fvwm developers build 
fvwm uses /usr/local while Kubuntu uses /usr.  Don't worry about it.

> # The suggested way to install this configuration file is to (re)move
> # any .fvwm2rc file you have in ~/.fvwm or ~ and run fvwm without any
> # startup file.
> #
> # Then, run the "Setup 95 Script" from the root menu.
>
> What I got from that was that it should be possible to boot a basic
> default fvwm session without having configured a startup file.

That is correct.

> However, when I try to run fvwm from a console command-line, it's unable
> to "open display" And when I learned from "fvwm -h" that there was an
> option  [-r] to "replace running window manager" I tried running
> startx then attempted that from inside a kde konsole: And got 86 lines
> of error messages and warnings and a messed up kde session...
> {
>   It was still running kde, but <ctrl>+<tab> no longer switched between
>   the 4 configured desktops, <alt>+<tab> popped up a list of the open
>   windows from all 4 desktops, And if I selected an open window from
>   another desktop it would change to that desktop...
> }
> It occurs to me that Intrepid uses kde4 and for some reason it
> doesn't appear to keep it's configuration settings in:
>
> /etc/X11/xorg.conf
>
> I know this because that file contains zero bytes.

This is the whole deal.  I was unaware that KDE4 did not need to use 
xorg.conf.  That's kind of neat, but I don't like the idea that xorg.conf has 
been left useless by the install.  But maybe the Kubuntu people smarter than 
me.  Still, to run anything but KDE4, you're going to have to set up X in its 
usual way.  To be honest, other than making it by hand, I have no clue how 
you'd go about this.  There's probably a GUI way and I hope someone else on 
the list can clue you (and me) in to it.