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

[Nate Duehr]

On Wed, Dec 20, 2000 at 11:11:13AM -0700, Tkil wrote:
> 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. 

Possibly this is true.  Still, there is no direct relationship between
run levels and X running.  :)

Debian uses exactly what you mentioned, but the packaging system removes
the startup scripts from /etc/init.d/ when xdm (or kdm, or gdm or
whatever) is removed from the system using the package management tools.  

Debian systems "normally" run in runlevel 2 all the time, and scripts
are just added to the normal startup if XDM is installed to launch X at
startup.

I'm not advocating one way or the other.  Either is "fine".  How things
get started is pretty much a religious debate when it's undertaken
anyway... I just wanted to make sure that newbies didn't get into the
mindset that certain runlevels = X running.  

Once you know how your X is really launched by reading whatever your
distro of choice uses for shell scripts to launch it, you can tweak it 
to your heart's content... as with all thinks *nix.  :) 

-- 
Nate Duehr <nate at natetech.com>

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