morawski

So, I've just installed a fresh copy of Slackware 10.1 on an old Dell Inspiron 3500 laptop, and I'm trying to set up Fluxbox with xdm. This brings me to my first question: for a slow computer such as mine (PII 300MHz or close to it), is it best to use xdm as my login manager?

And I'm a little confused about something else..My inittab file IS supposed to start up with either gdm/kde/xdm, correct? I can't run fluxbox directly from my inittab file; I'm supposed to use the xinitrc file to specify which WM I want to use, and I need to have an overlying graphical login manager that runs with my WM..right?

See what I said about confused? I think I missed some of the fundamentals, and all this reading/research is confusing me moreso.

Another thing, because I have no .xinitrc file in my home directory, do I just edit /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc? And if so, should I copy the contents of my /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc file to create a .xinitrc file in my home directory?

UPDATE:
After doing a little more checking around my system, I noticed that my /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc file is linked (->) to xinitrc.fluxbox, which resides in the same directory. So, I guess now I'm just curious if I need a .xinitrc file in my home directory AND would I need to create a .fluxbox directory in my home directory with some necessary files?

UPDATE 2 (2 minutes later):
I just ran startx for the first time, and a .fluxbox directory was created in my home directory..so that answers that. I love when you actually learn something from experimenting, as opposed to getting frustrated

Hoping I didn't leave out any pertinent information...if I can shed some light on anything that will help you help me, just let me know.

Thanks in advance,
~morawski

budman7

When you run "startx" what happens?
Does "fluxbox start?

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morawski

Yes, after running startx fluxbox starts right up.

budman7

So, if I understand correctly you want to have X automatically start, and not have to type "startx"?

This is how you do that.

With your favorite text editor, open the /etc/inittab file.
Look for the line that says
id:3:initdefault:
Change that 3 to a 4

Warning, you won't get those really cool quotes when you login though.

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morawski

Actually, that wasn't exactly my question..so let me clarify, because I know I'm confusing in my ramblings :P

After enough tooling around, I answered most of those questions by myself. Now I'm just curious if I need a .xinitrc file in my home directory or is having a /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc the same thing?

budman7

If it does what you want it to do, then you don't need it.
If it doesn't do what you want it to do, then fix it.

In order for me to get KDE to start when I typed startx, I had to put a .xinitrc file in my home directory with one line in it.
exec startkde
See thread here.
http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/topic-41562.html

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morawski

If it's not broken, don't fix it? Yeah, that's a pretty good rule of thumb, I guess I was just splitting hairs at that point.

Thanks for the help all,
~morawski

budman7

Morawski wrote:
If it's not broken, don't fix it?

I was attempting to find a way around that phrase.
For some Linux users, that is a perfectly good reason to fix it. Yes, they have to break it first but.....

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