[RndTbl] switchdesk, RedHat, and WMs

[Sean A. Walberg]

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Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 09:41:31 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Sean A. Walberg" <sean at poochie.ertw.com>
To: roundtable at muug.mb.ca
Subject: switchdesk, RedHat, and WMs
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0206120931530.23666-100000 at poochie.ertw.com>
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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 at ertw.com>                    http://www.ertw.com 
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