Ryan Walters wrote:
I noticed in a later email you said you could do remote X apps "using the machine purely as an X terminal". I was going to search around for a forward port of XFree86, but not I think I realize that it is some common issue with all the window managers and not XFree86, or at least it runs an X root by itself that you are able (?) to throw remote X applications onto using the right $DISPLAY setting.The reason, is that I have an old laptop that runs perfectly well in X with potato. The minute I upgrade to a later distribution, X is completely not usable no matter what window manager I choose. However, running potato by itself means I can't run most of the software out there because of library differences, etc. I had wanted to install those specific packages I need from a newer distribution and hence have the best of both worlds. At first I didn't think this simple pinning was going to be much of a problem. Instead of pinning based on age, as in stable, testing, I wanted to pin based on distribution, potato, woody. Sounded simple enough at first, but after fighting with it for a few days, its proving quite hard to accomplish.
So, can you config X so that it doesn't start any display manager and you type startx and it just shows that lovely grey screen.
If you modify the /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc to launch xterm and xclock instead of calling /etc/X11/Xsession then type startx, does X start with an xclock and xterm window? I don't have my cygwin xinitrc file in front of me so I can't provide a example script at the moment.
You have probably already tested this, but maybe the issue is with how all the display managers (*dm) are configured. Does startx work? Again if I had cygwin configs infront of me I could show you one that starts wmaker with an xterm and an xclock.
Jacob