Changing the default window manager

Learn how to change your default window manager or desktop. Switching window managers isn’t hard, but it’s still one of the hardest things to figure out. I’m not covering kdm or gdm here, this tuXfile teaches you how to change the default window manager if you’re using xdm or starting the X Window System manually with the startx command.

Edit a text file >

Alright, you’ve installed a really fancy new window manager and want to try it out? If you’re booting to command line and starting X manually with the startx command, you’re probably wondering how to make that new fancy window manager your default. Or, if you use xdm as your display manager, you’re probably wondering the same thing because it doesn’t provide you with any menu that lets you change your window manager. You need some other way of telling X what window manager you want to use.

The good news is that changing the default window manager or desktop in Linux is really simple: you just need to edit a little config file. For editing that file you can use any text editor you’re familiar with.

startx and .xinitrc >

If you use the startx command for starting up the X Window System, you’ll need to edit a file called .xinitrc that is located in your home directory. If the file already is there, just open it with your favorite text editor. If you don’t have such a file in your home directory, create a new file with that name. Note the dot in the file name – it shows you that the file is a hidden file and doesn’t show when you do a normal directory listing.

If you already have a .xinitrc file in your home directory, it may be a huge scary-looking text file with a lot of text that makes just as much sense as a file produced with a random number generator and encrypted after writing. If you want to make a backup of this file, rename it to something like .xinitrc.backup or whatever you wish:
mv .xinitrc .xinitrc.backup

Now you can use your text editor for creating a new, blank .xinitrc file. Although the file may be a complicated multi-line geeky script, it can be very simple, too. In its simplest it just contains a single line with the name of your new window manager. So, add a line like this to your file:
exec windowmanager
where windowmanager is the command that starts the window manager you want to be your default. For example, to make Window Maker your default window manager, you’d have a line like this:
exec wmaker

The commands for starting some popular window managers and desktop environments are:

• KDE = startkde
• Gnome = gnome-session
• Blackbox = blackbox
• FVWM = fvwm (or, for FVWM2 it’s fvwm2 , surprise)
• Window Maker = wmaker
• IceWM = icewm

After editing the .xinitrc file, save your changes. The next time you do a startx , the new window manager will be your default.

xdm and .xsession >

If you have a graphical login and have xdm as your display manager, you may also be wondering how to change the default window manager because xdm doesn’t provide a way of choosing your window manager when you log in. You’ll have to edit a text file just like in the case of editing the .xinitrc file, but this time you need to edit a file called .xsession .

The .xsession file is also located in your home directory, and you edit it exactly the same way as you’d edit .xinitrc , only the file name is different. So everything I said above applies to .xsession too. If the file isn’t already in your home directory, just create it. After editing .xsession and saving the changes, your new window manager starts up the next time you log in via xdm .

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Jun 7, 2009

Changing window manager in ubuntu

The problem that you might face when you install ubuntu is it’s default window manager GNOME is quite heavy on resources and tends to be buggy (for my pc configuration at least) so to cope up with resource crunch you can shift to a light window manager like fluxbox, XFCE etc as they tend to provide better performance than GNOME or KDE but are a little un-user friendly.

To change the window manager follow these steps:-

1) Install MENU :- The precondition for changing to any new window manager is to install the program MENU that manages the application menus so that you can launch the applications without the need of Gnome or KDE launchers.

To install MENU

• Open terminal i.e Application->Accesories->Terminal or press ALT+F2 and choose run in terminal
• Then type the following command in the terminal :-

sudo apt-get install menu
you will be asked for your password, enter it and the package menu will be installed.

2) Install the window manager :- The next step is to install the window manager itself. I would be explaining about how to install the FLUXBOX window manager.

The fluxbox window manager provides tab options, styles menu from which you can change the theme and wallpapers, configuration menu for configuring window display (including transparency,icons etc), wsm (text browser) and by default comes with 4 workspaces that you can toggle between, more workspace windows can be added. The thing that i like about it is that it’s very fast.

To install fluxbox execute the following command:-

sudo apt-get install fluxbox

3) Changing the window manager :- Now all you have to do is logout from ubuntu and then from the options on the login screen choose select session, choose Fluxbox and choose the window manager for current session only so that you can try it out before choosing to make it default.

CentOS

The Community ENTerprise Operating System

How to change default window manager?

How to change default window manager?

Post by Slonobassik » 2013/09/22 19:00:18

Re: How to change default window manager?

Post by tigalch » 2013/09/23 17:42:35

Hello and welcome to the fora.

yum groupinstall ‘KDE Desktop’
should do the trick

How to change default window manager?

Post by TrevorH » 2013/09/23 18:08:31

Re: How to change default window manager?

Post by centkfoster » 2013/11/03 22:50:01

There is something broken in 6.4 as to getting KDE to run. I did use the livedvd install if that makes a difference — but I’m seeing posts all over about this issue so I’m not sure it it matters that I used the livedvd.

The gdm login screen no longer has a ‘Session’ option to select KDE as the desktop.

Normally I could edit the /etc/sysconfig/desktop file and that would do the trick. Not now. I’ve even read of others that once they get kdm as the login screen then it will no longer accept their password — it keeps returning to the login screen. That happened to me also.

Using startkde would give a message that it couldn’t open up DISPLAY — I then set export=DISPLAY=:0.0 and ran startkde but no dice.

To make it work — and this is just a hack — I set the runlevel in /etc/inittab to 3:

/.xinitrc with only one line:
startkde

Next reboot — or kill your X session completely. Then:

This as I said is a hack — but at least I got KDE going. And no — I am not a CentOS newby by any means — something is broke or changed.