[lug] X, Window Managers and KDE/gnome 101

[Tkil]

>>>>> "Nate" == Nate Duehr <nate at natetech.com> writes:

Nate> There's no direct relationship between whether or not X starts
Nate> and the run level of the machine unless you make it so.

true.  but i suspect that, even on Debian, you would want to start
looking at /etc/inittab to see what is started when the machine
starts.  (unless Debian uses something other than sysvinit, which i
doubt, but would welcome corrections.)

Nate> RedHat has chosen to do so, and they automatically start X (I
Nate> believe using XDM) whenever the system is at runlevel 5.

they switched over to `gdm' or `kdm' (?) by 6.x at the latest, but
it's the same basic principle.

Nate> Debian takes a completely different approach to this.  If XDM's
Nate> installed, it's assumed that you want to launch X automagically.

uhg.  out of curiosity, where's the magic?  does init launch something
that conditionally launches x, or... ?

Nate> I'm not sure how the other distros do this, but I just wanted to
Nate> make sure that everyone realizes that the "a certain runlevel
Nate> causes X to start up" is strictly something that RedHat
Nate> popularized.

i'm fairly sure that most commercial [workstation] unicies i've worked
on over the years have had very similar arrangements to that used by
Red Hat.  counterexamples welcomed, however.  your use of ``popular-
ized'' might be accurate, but i'm inclined to think that Red Hat was
just bringing their system in line with a fairly common industry
practice. 

t.