[xubuntu-users] New to Xubuntu: but I'm a startx user. how do I ditch the gui login???

[Joe(theWordy)Philbrook]

It would appear that on Feb 19, Charlie Kravetz did say:

> The gdm login manager is a complete rewrite compared to the
> version in earlier Ubuntu releases. This, along with other changes
> including HAL being deprecated, changed how a lot of things start. A
> look at /etc/init.d will show many links to /lib/init/upstart-job now.
> With the use of Upstart, many apps use a startup file in /etc/init.
> This has a big impact on what will work now compared to what used to
> work.

Yeah, every time I can almost remember how to do more than two or
three simple tasks without having to research the latest methods, Some
developer or other always does some "new and improved method" thing that
totally trashes all my personal notes on what worked last time...

> As linux switches to Upstart (it is not just Ubuntu), the old startup
> methods will be phased out completely.

I can understand that the actual start-up applications would need to be
rewritten. But does that mean that they are planning to rip startx out
by the roots??? Or just that you doubt anyone who knows how, will be
willing to update the startx scripts to use the new methods? Or is it
that the upstart developers are deliberately excluding the possibility
of starting a text only (non X) session on an X capable machine, and
then optionally, starting the X-server as a non-root process???

As much as I find gui login prompts as attractive as an unflushed
toilet, I could put up with one that could be configured to by default
to boot to a console only session. That would then be able to use something
like startx to selectively fire up a gui when and if I happen to need
to do something I can't do with console applications...

Granted I "usually" choose to run startx almost as soon as I logon.
But aside from those occasions where I managed to break my X server
and just needed access to mc, alpine, wget, elinks, and {apt-get or
equo or yum or zipper or "whatever command line package management tool
is currently supported by whichever distribution I'm currently using...}
in order to find out how, and then fix it, and or back up the stuff I
care about before doing the drastic reinstall process, I also sometimes
don't have time to boot the full gui. IE I have a script that opens
a few files with vim, including a simple text log of my meals, blood
sugar and blood pressure readings. When I'm running late I can't see
waiting for the gui to load when I can enter my data, save and start a
"sudo shutdown -h now" quickly enough that I can be running for my
truck about the same moment as I'd just about finally have a working
xterm up if I had to wait for the gui... 

And since I do my email with a console app, if the ONLY reason I'm
booting is to check my mail, I'm likely to do that without bothering
with X. Then if I learn something that changes my plans... I like
being able to do a startx to fire up the gui I hadn't expected to
need... There's no question though, once I've got X running, I'm doing
so many things at once that I'm likely to forget I promised to
shutdown when I've cleared out my inbox, so that I might actually spend
some time with my Lady. And that gets me in Soooo much trouble.

-- 
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|  <?>	 <?>		 Joe (theWordy) Philbrook
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