Re: From KDE back to Gnome (a subject to future newbie-doc site ?)
On Fri, Feb 09, 2007 at 04:59:21PM +0100, Niels Rasmussen wrote:
> Hi list
>
> I'm running Debian testing (etch) on a AMD64x2 box.
>
> I've tried to get used to the K Desktop Environment but didn't succeeded :-)
>
> Now I have switched back to Gnome again.
>
> I don't know if this is the proper way to do it, but since I couldn't find
> a way to switch from kdm to gdm I altered this file:
>
> /etc/X11/default-display-manager
>
> And changed kdm to gdm. Then I restarted my PC.
>
> Now when I'm happily back in Gnome I checked
>
> Desktop > Administration > Services
>
> Here I can see kdm is running in the background (I cant turn it off, the
> servicemanager dies) ?
>
> And when I type 'top' in my terminal theres a lot of services named
> k.....something running as well ??
>
> Have I missed something here ?
>
> How do I bring this back to a sane state ??
>
> (Nothing suspicious in .xession-errors though !)
>
kdm, gdm, (and xdm) are programs that are intended to get a user
started in a gui environment. They start X, and supervise the
entering of username and password, and do other useful stuff. Among
the useful things they do is pass control of the monitor screen to a
gui and window manager -- whichever one the user chooses. Usually the
choise is automatically the one that you used the last time you
booted. But the _first_ time you run gdm, it assumes gnome, and the
_first_ time you run kdm, it assumes kde. Otherwise either kdm, or gdm
can be used to start either a gnome, or a kde session on the
screen. The kde stuff that you see as deamons is required by the kde
packages that you still have installed. (The gnome deamons were
running also while you were attempting to get used to kde.)
You can remove all that kde stuff using aptitude, but you may be
surprised when some functionality that you thought was a basic
POSIX/GNU/Debian thing no longer works as you remember it working.
On an AMD64x2 box, I think the wasted cycles from running kde services
are hardly worth the work of cleaning it out: a little slower boot, a
few milliseconds slower response to a carriage return, etc.
HTH
--
Paul E Condon
pecondon@mesanetworks.net
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