Mailing List Archive

Claudinei Matos wrote:
> hey,
>
> how to add WindowMaker to GDM Session list?
> I've looked at gdm.conf but there's no lines where could I add
> WindowMaker.
> The only options I have are gnome, failsafe and "default" which is
> failsafe too.
>
> Tks,
>
> Claudinei Matos
>
>

No, the session list is created from the session files existing in
/etc/X11/Sessions and /etc/X11/dm/Sessions.

The way I usually do this is to:

1) open a text editor as root.

2) from within the text editor, open one of the "other wm".desktop files
in /etc/X11/Sessions.

Now, for this step, you have a bit of a problem, since you only have
GNOME, and the GNOME session file is a whole script, which is not what
you so much want or need.

So instead, go to /etc/X11/dm/Sessions, and open the 'custom.desktop'
file you should find there. This at least is in the standard format for
GDM session files (KDM and XDM, too-- they all read from these folders
for their session lists).

My 'custom.desktop' file looks like this:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
# The names/descriptions should really be better
Name=Custom Session
Comment=This starts a custom session
Exec=custom
# The "custom" Exec is a very special one and is handled specially in
# the Xsession script and just runs "~/.xsession" directly
Icon=
Type=Application

Now, what you want to do is edit the Name (to WindowMaker), the Comment
(to something like 'This starts WindowMaker'; optional, obviously, but
it will get annoying to see this tooltip being wrong if you don't change
it), and the Exec= to whatever is the command to start Windowmaker
(something like /usr/bin/wm, isn't it?)

So you would wind up with

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
# The names/descriptions should really be better
Name=WindowMaker
Comment=This starts a custom session
Exec=/usr/bin/wm #assuming that's correct; I really don't remember
Icon=
Type=Application

3) The very most important step-- save this file AS windowmaker.desktop.
Do NOT click "Save" (or you will lose the regular file, which you don't
want).

Anyway, that's it. The Windowmaker session should now appear in your
GDM session list. Dunno why sessions aren't created automatically for
many WMs when they are installed, but they often aren't. Seems to depend
on the WM, and the DM as well to some extent.

Anyway, hope this helps.
Holly

Holly

--
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

Holly Bostick wrote:

> Claudinei Matos wrote:
>
>> hey,
>>
>> how to add WindowMaker to GDM Session list?
>> I've looked at gdm.conf but there's no lines where could I add
>> WindowMaker.
>> The only options I have are gnome, failsafe and "default" which is
>> failsafe too.
>>
>> Tks,
>>
>> Claudinei Matos
>>
>>
>
> No, the session list is created from the session files existing in
> /etc/X11/Sessions and /etc/X11/dm/Sessions.
>
> The way I usually do this is to:
>
> 1) open a text editor as root.
>
> 2) from within the text editor, open one of the "other wm".desktop
> files in /etc/X11/Sessions.
>
> Now, for this step, you have a bit of a problem, since you only have
> GNOME, and the GNOME session file is a whole script, which is not what
> you so much want or need.
>
> So instead, go to /etc/X11/dm/Sessions, and open the 'custom.desktop'
> file you should find there. This at least is in the standard format
> for GDM session files (KDM and XDM, too-- they all read from these
> folders for their session lists).
>
> My 'custom.desktop' file looks like this:
>
> [Desktop Entry]
> Encoding=UTF-8
> # The names/descriptions should really be better
> Name=Custom Session
> Comment=This starts a custom session
> Exec=custom
> # The "custom" Exec is a very special one and is handled specially in
> # the Xsession script and just runs "~/.xsession" directly
> Icon=
> Type=Application
>
> Now, what you want to do is edit the Name (to WindowMaker), the
> Comment (to something like 'This starts WindowMaker'; optional,
> obviously, but it will get annoying to see this tooltip being wrong if
> you don't change it), and the Exec= to whatever is the command to
> start Windowmaker (something like /usr/bin/wm, isn't it?)
>
> So you would wind up with
>
> [Desktop Entry]
> Encoding=UTF-8
> # The names/descriptions should really be better
> Name=WindowMaker
> Comment=This starts a custom session
> Exec=/usr/bin/wm #assuming that's correct; I really don't remember
> Icon=
> Type=Application
>
> 3) The very most important step-- save this file AS
> windowmaker.desktop. Do NOT click "Save" (or you will lose the regular
> file, which you don't want).
>
> Anyway, that's it. The Windowmaker session should now appear in your
> GDM session list. Dunno why sessions aren't created automatically for
> many WMs when they are installed, but they often aren't. Seems to
> depend on the WM, and the DM as well to some extent.
>
> Anyway, hope this helps.
> Holly
>
> Holly
>
> --
> gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>
>
That all correct except it should go in /usr/share/xsessions

--
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

Ralph wrote:

> That all correct except it should go in /usr/share/xsessions
>

It certainly *can* go there, apparently-- but I have never used that
folder (under any distro, and I've used GDM under all the distros I ever
installed-- except maybe SuSE), and I notice that on my system
/usr/share/xsessions contains only gnome.desktop and openbox.desktop --
the fvwm and kde scripts, along with another GNOME session startup
script, and Xsession, are in /etc/X11/Sessions, and custom.desktop is in
/etc/X11/dm/Sessions.

To the best of my knowledge, /etc/X11/Sessions is first in the search
path for all 3 major DMs (gdm, kdm and xdm), but it's good to know that
there's another folder as well; I found it pretty odd that I didn't seem
to have an openbox.desktop entry-- now I know where it was hiding.

Holly

--
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list