Re: X display; xdm; wmaker; windowmaker; twm
Simon Richter wrote:
> > > RTFM, esp. xdm(8).
>
> > Oh, it's that easy? I would suggest 'please post the full text of the
> > error message along with the output of dpkg -l' before I venture any
> > guess to the reason of that error (i.e. what does 'does not recognize'
> > mean, and are all required packages really installed?).
>
> Configuring startx properly can be a pain in the back, and when you can
> avoid it, you should do it. That's what xdm is for.
Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I've never configured anything
for startx. I just run startx and the X server ought to start up. Please
note that I don't expect startx to start any window manager for me; that
would require a sane .xsession or .xinitrc or other rcfile-of-the-day.
Maybe that's what you mean by configuring startx. But it shouldn't be a
problem with Debian (the systemwide xinitrc just runs the very same
Xsession script that xdm uses, which in turn will run the first existing
windowmanager registered in /etc/X11/windowmanagers).
> > And I didn't know there was some conflict or other interaction between
> > startx and xdm. startx uses xinit to launch the X server, so the xinit
> > man page might be more appropriate..
>
> Yes, but xinit(8) cannot tell him a solution.
If startx isn't found by bash my bet is that the xdm man page won't be
very helpful either. startx is in xbase-clients, so xbase-clients probably
wasn't installed. Lots of packages (X fonts, even one window manager)
depend
on xbase-clients so my guess is the whole X install won't be very
functional
anyway. I doubt that reading the xdm man page carefully would have told
anything about this (the way X components are broken down into these
packages is pretty Debian specific I think). The section in the Debian
release notes about the 'Great X Reorganization' is probably more helpful
here.
Disclaimer: it's all guesswork; the original poster didn't supply enough
information to determine what X packages are actually installed ...
Michael
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