Some general window manager questions

[smp]

I am ashamed to have to ask this, but I was never really into window managers before, I used windows for that stuff. Anyways..

I've searched, but how do I change my default window manager from gnome to KDE? Funny thing, I changed it to gnome in the first place by adding /usr/bin/gnome-session in my xinitrc .. but, I can't find the kde executable... or don't know what to look for anyways.

How do I get nice fonts? I hear people talking about fonts all the time and only now I get it, the default fonts in mozilla are crap.

Sorry for being such a newb, but this would probably help other newbs too.

 

[n0cmonkey]

4.8.

How do I start KDE?

The most comfortable method to start KDE is to use the startkde script. Simply put the line startkde at the end of your .xsession file (or your .xinitrc or .Xclients file if you are not using kdm or xdm). Please also remove the lines that start your previous window manager. If there is no .xsession, .xinitrc, or .Xclients in your home directory, simply create a new one that contains just one line: startkde.

 

[smp]

Heh, funny I tried that.
Weird thing that happens is that xserver won't start up, it gives me an input device error .. which is weird.
I don't have any of the three files in question, but when I create one and put startkde in it, it breaks xserver.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: smp
Heh, funny I tried that.
Weird thing that happens is that xserver won't start up, it gives me an input device error .. which is weird.
I don't have any of the three files in question, but when I create one and put startkde in it, it breaks xserver.

What is the error it gives you?

I don't use KDE, so I'm probably useless 😉

 

[Kadarin]

Hmm.. I didn't mess with any files, except in Gentoo I put

DISPLAYMANAGER=gdm

in my /etc/rc.conf, and gdm has the ability to change the default windowmanager by clicking the Sessions button as you're logging in. Not only that, but when I compiled KDE, Enlightenment, and Fluxbox, it also automagically added them to the list of wm's I could log into. Spiffy.. (And it looks damn cool, way better than xdm's login screen!)

 

[smp]

So is GDM a window manager then?

 

[drag]

No it's a graphical login screen.

You don't need it, it's a convenience. WHen you log in and out of X instead of going back to the command line it gives you a nice graphical login screen to give your password and stuff. Then when you login in it starts up your normal X session.

It comes in three flavors: kdm (kde login), xdm (XFree86's version), gdm (gnome's)

startkde should work, just put that:
exec /blah/blah/blah/startkde in your .xinitrc file and that should do it.

Some distros (slackware in particular) have sample .xinitrc files in a /etc/X11/xinit folder you can copy and paste into place, instead of editing it by hand.

If you can't find the executable, but it's still in your executable Path you can type
which startkde
to find it's absolute path.

 

[smp]

which startkde
returns nothing

putting startkde in my .xinitr (which I have to create, none of the three files exist - .xsession .xinitrc .Xclents) breaks xserver:

error log

I don't get it.
I'm wondering how I got gnome to start in the first place, because it defaulted to KDE, I just wanted to try gnome .. now I want to try KDE again, enlightenment and fluxbox .. probably others too

 

[cleverhandle]

The X log looks fine - the errors you see are non-fatal and unrelated to KDE and window managers. As others said, startkde should be the right way to do it. What distro are you using? The whole X startup process is pretty non-standardized, so perhaps your distro does things a little differently.

 

[smp]

debian

startkde does nothing, and I don't think it lives on my computer because
which startkde
returns nothing
locate startkde returns nothing as well.

 

[drag]

Do you have KDE installed all the way?

There are a few things to look at. If are sure that you have the full KDE stuff installed, then you need to check your PATH variable.

Shell variables are your enviromental variables. You can see all of them by typing out "set"

The PATH variable is specificly for indicating the locations of folders you need to look into in order to find executable files/scripts/programs.

type:

echo $PATH

to see them. If a file or program is not in your path then you can't use it by just typing out the name of it, like you usually can.

See if you have startkde. Here is a simple one liner I use to find files, I can't find.

du -a / 2>/dev/null |grep startkde
or maybe
du -a /2>/dev/null |grep kde

du is a command to list folders and there file sizes. -a tells du to list all files, not just folders. 2> is a redirector that sends errors to a file. /dev/null is a pretend file (a device file) that acts like a black hole, anything sent to it disapeers forever. | is a "pipe". It sends the output somewhere, In this case it sends the output to "grep" which is another simple tool that shows selected lines based on text strings, in this case "startkde"

try "du -a /" and see if that all makes sense.

Now if you find a startkde file, you probably need to add it's path to your PATH variable.
like so:

exec PATH=$PATH:/path/to/kde/bin/

then if that all works then you can make the change perminate buy adding that exec PATH=$PATH:/path/to/kde/bin/ line to your .bashrc file.

 

[cleverhandle]

In Debian stable/testing startkde is included in the kdebase package. In unstable, it's in kwin. Since your X is v4.1, I assume you're on stable, so make sure kdebase is installed.

 

[smp]

Okay.. i'm running unstable.


I now understand why kde worked and doesn't anymore, because it worked before the dist-upgrade.
Now it doesn't, so I apt-got it, or tried and it gave me errors... errors about running unstable an that the packages might not yet be available, I don't get it, but..
I changed my sources.list to stable again, updated and then installed kde .. it worked, but i haven't tried running it yet.
Now, i'm wondering if what I've done it stupid.

edit: Drag, thanks for the detailed info .. I never knew du before, but I know grep and pipes and stuff. I didn't try it, because I realized that KDE is broken, I probably just broke it more.

now, kde and unstable :\

 

[smp]

Okay, using the stable sources and apt to install KDE worked, startkde in .initrc works now.
This is weird, I sort of expected to further break things.
Anyone know why this is so?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: smp
Okay, using the stable sources and apt to install KDE worked, startkde in .initrc works now.
This is weird, I sort of expected to further break things.
Anyone know why this is so?

Why it didn't break anything? You're running stable. The KDE packages are for stable. Unstable is a development tree, so things will occassionally be broken (much like -current on my OpenBSD machine 😛). Running stable packages on an unstable install is a bad idea. There may have been big changes that can affect the packages between 3 different branches.

 

[smp]

Why it didn't break anything? You're running stable.

I'm running unstable

The KDE packages are for stable. Unstable is a development tree, so things will occassionally be broken (much like -current on my OpenBSD machine 😛). Running stable packages on an unstable install is a bad idea. There may have been big changes that can affect the packages between 3 different branches.

It works though :\
How do people get KDE working on their unstable systems then? Source?

I tried enlightenment and it's pretty, but nothing is there, what am I missing? 🙂

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Running stable packages on an unstable install is a bad idea. There may have been big changes that can affect the packages between 3 different branches.

Ditto that. I'm glad it worked for you, but you're definitely in dangerous territory as far as package management goes. You've got X4.1 and KDE from Woody, and some unknown number of packages from unstable. Debian's package management is great, but it's not all-powerful - it can't magically make incompatible packages work together. Watch your dselect or apt-get output carefully when you're doing future upgrades for conflicts and unexpected package removals.

 

[smp]

I changed all my sources back to unstable and did an update, no errors. I guess this is good.


Onto the window manager stuff .. 🙂

Enlightenment, I have it installed and it works, but like a fresh install of blackbox it has nothing, no menues, no applications etc etc
I need to find a source to configure this thing, google here I come, but if anyone has anything to say about window managers, please speak up.
I keep hearing about fluxbox etc

basically, I don't have OSX anymore and I want an eye candy desktop again :\
woe is me
New iBooks are looking fvcking sweet though!

 

[smp]

So do people still rely on apt when using unstable? Or do they just build everything from sources?

I'm confused, it seems most debian users run unstable because it is latest and greatest and still very stable, or so I'm told. Am I missing something?

 

[drag]

Unstable is great and all that, but..

The sources file dictats what and were you get your packages from.

If you have all stable sources, then your running stable/woody. Or at least you should.
Packages found there specificly look for other packages in stable.

Unstable(sid) sources are for packages made for Sid debian.

If you have stable sources mixed into a OS that should be Sid it will look for other stable packages for dependances. It may decide to sporaticly uninstall a huge bunch of unstable packages just to install one stable package, becuase it's confused. or visa versa.

Best to make sure that when your running stable all your sources are from stable. And when running unstable make sure that all your sources are for unstable. Otherwise your asking for it.

Otherwise unstable is just fine. Ocasionally you can get broken packages and weird conflicts, but these get fixed rather quickly and are usually only a minor inconvenience. Since while running unstable you are sort of volentering to be a tester you have to expect odd things every once and a while. It's not a big deal usually and it's worth it for most people to get the latest versions of programs.

PS. oh when they say sources they mean the apt-get repositories as the "source" for downloading binary packages, not compiling everything from source code. 🙂

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: smp
I changed all my sources back to unstable and did an update, no errors. I guess this is good.

Did you do a dist-upgrade? If so, it should have downloaded and installed about a zillion packages and asked a bunch of questions. If that didn't happen, your machine and/or you are in a state of confusion as to which version of Debian is running.

Enlightenment, I have it installed and it works, but like a fresh install of blackbox it has nothing, no menues, no applications etc etc
I need to find a source to configure this thing, google here I come, but if anyone has anything to say about window managers, please speak up.
I keep hearing about fluxbox etc

Enlightenment was the eye-candy bomb back in the day. But 16.5 hasn't been developed in years and 17 will be released along with Duke Nukem Forever. If you want all-out eye-candy, use KDE or GNOME and forget Enlightenment entirely. {Flux | Black | Open}Box are nice, light WM's. They have similar, but slightly different, styles. Try them all and figure out what you like. Other people around here will suggest alternative WM's as well.

So do people still rely on apt when using unstable? Or do they just build everything from sources?

Apt works fine with unstable. Something is not right on your end.

 

[Nothinman]

Enlightenment, I have it installed and it works, but like a fresh install of blackbox it has nothing, no menues, no applications etc etc

If you have the Debian menu system installed there should be menus, Debian has a system that populates all the Window Managers with a consistent menu automatically.

 

[Nothinman]

Enlightenment was the eye-candy bomb back in the day. But 16.5 hasn't been developed in years and 17 will be released along with Duke Nukem Forever. If you want all-out eye-candy, use KDE or GNOME and forget Enlightenment entirely. {Flux | Black | Open}Box are nice, light WM's. They have similar, but slightly different, styles. Try them all and figure out what you like. Other people around here will suggest alternative WM's as well.

Enlightenment still has things that other WMs don't (although I believe atleast one of the box managers will be getting proper window memory soon or has recently) and I run it on all my machines. Just because it hasn't been developed doesn't mean it's bad, and 0.16.6 was just released earlier this month putting an end to the several year 'freeze'.

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Enlightenment still has things that other WMs don't (although I believe atleast one of the box managers will be getting proper window memory soon or has recently) and I run it on all my machines.

Fair enough. Window memory has always seemed good enough to me in other WM's, but everyone's needs are different. I'd guess that Openbox 3 should have window memory, but I haven't looked into it. It's a great WM in any event and worth a try.

Just because it hasn't been developed doesn't mean it's bad, and 0.16.6 was just released earlier this month putting an end to the several year 'freeze'.

Wow, that's a surprise. Rasterman had been quite vocal in saying that he had abandoned 16.5 in favor of totally new technology - did he have a change of heart or did other people take over?

 

[smp]

Okay, to clear things up a bit.

I used a woody netinstall CD to install woody.
KDE worked here.
Then I changed all my sources to unstable.
Then a apt-get dist upgrade.
KDE didn't work anymore, but I had switched to gnome before doing the dist-upgrade (this is where I got confused)
KDE is broken (I tried apt-get install kde and it gave me broken packages errors)
Switched sources to stable, apt-get install kde (the only weird thing it really installed was wu-ftp, which is weird, but not bothering me yet)
KDE works
Switched sources back to unstable.
I'm running gnome 1.4, which is old, I want 2.4 🙂