My default GNOME WM is GONE!!

[heljy]

I am running mandrake 8.0 with gnome (1.x) as my desktop environment. When I first setup, it has this nice window manager with icons on the desktop and the gnome panel and all that.

However, I couldnt get that back once I tried iceWM and blackbox. The only option that I have for wm is only iceWM, blackbox, and sawfish. I know that sawfish is the default WM for gnome, but when I started it, it only has a blue screen with NOTHING on it, no icons, no nice panels and only the middle mouse button works (with very limited options)  

Is there anyway where I can get back the orignal desktop that I have (as in the original setting).

Thanks in advance.

[voidmain]

Rename any directories under your home directory that start with ".gnome" to something else. Log off and back on it should create a new default gnome desktop when you log in using the Gnome desktop option.

[heljy]

I tried doing that, but it didnt work. Firstly, I start X using 'startx'. And if I use mandrake's graphical login screen, i would have to choose a default wm. So do I choose sawfish?

I am currently using iceWM by 'exec icewm' in the .xinitrc file.

Do i have to change anything?

[voidmain]

I'm not sure if Mandrake is the same, but in RedHat you would run this command:

$ switchdesk GNOME

You surely should change your .xinitrc to launch Gnome rather than IceWM if that is what you want. I have 2.x and it's called "gnome-session", not sure if it was the same in 1.x. Also you might want to look at your .Xclients file if you have one.

If you don't have Gnome on your graphical login then I am wondering if you don't have it installed.

[ October 10, 2002: Message edited by: void main ]

[heljy]

Well, I will look into it. Actually I am not very bothered by it, iceWM is working great for me. Just dun like it when you cant control what you want  

[ October 10, 2002: Message edited by: heljy ]

[voidmain]

You might be interested in this trick:

http://www.cafecomputer.com/page6faq.htm

It makes it so you can type "startx gnome", "startx icewm" instead of having to change your .xinitrc file every time you want to switch desktops.

[Calum]

nice page, void main! i think i will download FVWM95now, as a KDE replacement and see how it fares!    i keep an eye out for linux things that will help my windows/mac raised girlfriend feel at home with linux.

[voidmain]

It's sorta Win95 like. It's the first one I ever used that had the start bar type menu like Windows has. It surely is more lightweight than KDE or Gnome. Now I would be surprised if you can run KDE/Gnome programs under it but they may have added that support in. It's been quite a few years since I used that one.

[Calum]

just for the record, i spent a long time tracking down fvwm95, and i found it at http://www.go.dlr.de/fresh/linux/slackware/slackware/xap/

i just thought i would post the url to save somebody else doing the rounds and getting as many dead links as i got.

[heljy]

The script works really great! Thanks!

However, my system still doesnt want to run gnome-session...

Do I need to install something?? :confused:

[voidmain]

I'm guessing you probably need to install Gnome.

[Calum]

try doing a 'which gnome-session' just to see if it is installed, and if so, if it is in your path.

[voidmain]

You may have meant this but "which" will not tell you if something is installed. It will only tell you if a specific command is in your PATH and is executable. If I were him I would do a:

rpm -qa | grep gnome

or more specifically

rpm -qa | grep gnome-session
rpm -qa | grep gnome-desktop

[ October 10, 2002: Message edited by: void main ]

[Calum]

yup, would that work only if he had used rpms to install it though? (this would have been the case though, wouldn't it, if it had been installed by the linux installer) What would one have to do to check this out if the package had not been an rpm one? would you have to then use 'find'?

[voidmain]

Yes it would have had to have been installed as an RPM which I assume it was since he is on Mandrake. But if he did not use RPMS and used source then he could always do a "locate gnome-session" which will search the locate database created by the "updatedb"  command which is pretty much installed and run daily by default on all Linux distros these days.

It would search for any occurance of "gnome-session" appearing in the name of a file or directory on your hard drive, but do it *much* faster than the "find" command can do as it searches a database. updatedb is usually run nightly from cron on a default install.