fvwm unable to initialize in Kubuntu 8.10...

Joe(theWordy)Philbrook jtwdyp at ttlc.net
Sat Jan 31 07:21:28 UTC 2009


It would appear that on Jan 28, Constantinos Maltezos did say:

> 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.
> 

That's what I thought man startx meant. But it didn't seem to work...
But more on that below.

> > 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. 

Well since kde4 didn't seem to use the xorg.conf I took a chance that
any differences in the one that Hardy's installer wrote for this very
same machine wouldn't mess anything up. So I copied it to my Intrepid
installation. Then I tried the "startx fvwm" But it didn't quite work.
The xserver doesn't get far enough to switch the focus from the virtual
console before it terminates... (I forgot the error message)

However another response to this thread suggested that startx would
use an ~/.xinitrc file. And included an example of what needs to be in
such a thing. I didn't seem to need one to get kde with startx. But
when I made an .xinitrc that pointed at fvwm startx began booting
fvwm by default. (that is "startx" not "startx fvwm") If I want to
return to kde all I need to do is rename the ~/.xinitrc file before
running startx... Though I suppose it might work to leave it
configured for fvwm and try using startkde instead of startx at the
command prompt...

> 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.

I hope so too. I'm hoping there is a tool to autoconfigure one to
match kde4's settings. Or that future installers would configure one
with all the auto detected hardware properly configured for any
alternate WM that does use it. They could always add a comment that
explains that editing it won't affect the kde4 session. And if there
was a tool to rewrite one based on whatever the current kde4
configuration was, it would make for a better way to list the details
of your configuration are when asking for help than having to post
links to images of various systemsettings views...

Thanks again for the insightful help. It's much appreciated.

-- 
|   ---   ___
|   <0>   <->	   Joe (theWordy) Philbrook
|	^		J(tWdy)P
|    ~\___/~	     <<jtwdyp at ttlc.net>>





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