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GDM and adding a new window manager

I can't get XFce 4 to work in Mandrake

         

encyclo

7:57 pm on Oct 1, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Hi,

I'm fairly new to Linux, and I'm using Mandrake 9.1 on a rather elderly PC. I recently downloaded and installed the new XFce 4 desktop environment - I find that both Gnome and KDE are too slow on my machine, and XFce fits the bill nicely. As the version of XFce on the Mandrake CD is too old and seemingly completely broken, I got the new version directly from the XFce site.

The trouble is, each time I switch on my machine, the choice for XFce has disappeared from the GDM sessions menu, and I can't find any way of making it "stick". I have created a file in /etc/X11/gdm/Sessions called "XFce", with the contents:


#!/bin/sh
exec /usr/local/bin/startxfce4

With the permissions 755. Also, in /etc/X11/wmsession.d I have created a file called "04XFce"

NAME=XFce 
ICON=kde-wmsession.xpm
DESC=The XFce Desktop
EXEC=/usr/bin/startxfce4
SCRIPT:
exec /usr/bin/startxfce4

But each time I boot (or if I run "chksession" from the command line), the XFCE entry is not recognized, and the permissions of the XFce file in /etc/X11/gdm/Sessions are changed to 644 (therefore it won't execute or show up in the GDM menu).

I can't find any manual entries which explain the whole process. I know I'm doing something wrong, but does anyone out there know how to do this properly? Mandrake seems to have messed around with things as it is, as there are a ton of files in the X11 and gdm directories which have been altered by them.

Oh, and I do have KDM and XDM installed, but I want to use GDM for it's auto-login feature, and I understand it is not an integral part of Gnome and can be used separately.

Many thank for your help - and congratulations on such a great forum!

littleman

11:44 pm on Oct 3, 2003 (gmt 0)



Hi, I had to wrestle with this a couple of years ago. Mandrake does not make it simple. Off the top, have you tried to execute the 'XFce' script via command line?

You have two different paths:
/usr/local/bin/startxfce4 vs. /usr/bin/startxfce4