Fail to start KDE and Gnome

[Armin Pirkovitsch]

Stephen Liu wrote:
> Hi Jonathan Chen,
> 
> Tks for your advice.
> 
>  
>> If you're going to use "startx" you will need a ${HOME}/.xinitrc with
>> the following contents:
>>
>> 	#/bin/sh
>> 	startkde
>>
>> Make sure the file is 755 permissions. This will start up X with KDE.
>> I would suggest you configure /etc/ttys to start up KDM instead of
>> using "startx"
> 
> Your advice worked here starting KDE.
> 
> What I'm trying to do is running;
> 
> $ startkde
> will start K desktop
> 
> $ gnome-session
> will start Gnome desktop

This won't work since those are just the windowmanagers - you need an X
server to start them.
However you could solve it with some small scripts:


start-gnome.sh:
----------------
#!/bin/sh
rm -f ~/.xinitrc
ln -s ~/.xinitrc_gnome ~/.xinitrc
startx

----------------
################
.xinitrc_gnome:
----------------
#!/bin/sh
exec /usr/local/bin/gnome-session

----------------
################
start-kde.sh:
----------------
#!/bin/sh
rm -f ~/.xinitrc
ln -s ~/.xinitrc_kde ~/.xinitrc
startx

----------------
################
.xinitrc_gnome:
----------------
#!/bin/sh
exec /usr/local/bin/startkde

----------------

make sure all of these files are executable (chmod 755 <file>)
the .xinitrc* files have to be in your home directory - start-gnome.sh
and start-kde.sh in any directory in your PATH (eg. ~/bin if it's only
for one user)

-- 
Armin Pirkovitsch
a.pirko at inode.at