Re: changing desktop manager from gnome to xfce in debian
On Sun, 3 Nov 2019 12:41:51 -0800
Dan Hitt <dan.hitt@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I recently switched from using debian 9 (stretch) to debian 10
> (buster). I did this on a new partition of my disk so i think it
> should be a clean install, and it seems to be.
>
> The desktop manager looks different: i think it is gnome, but i'd
> like it to be xfce.
>
> What i did was to install the xfce4 package, then ran
> sudo update-alternatives --config x-window-manager
> switching from (iirc) mutter to lightdm. Then i rebooted.
>
> But everything looks the same, so i imagine that my
> update-alternatives was not the right move, and/or i didn't
> understand the page i was reading.
>
> So my questions are:
> (1) How can i identify which desktop manager i have? Ideally i'd
> like to do that with some command line move, like running
> 'which-desktop' or something like that.
> (2) Having identified it, how do i change it?
>
> TIA for any info!
>
If you have multiple desktops/window managers, you can normally select
among them in the display manager at login time, and some allow you to
select for just this login, or persistently.
I think a few DMs don't have this explicitly on the login page, but
most do. I'm currently using KDM, the KDE display manager, which has a
bar at the top of the login screen with drop-down selection of DE/WM.
--
Joe
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