Re: Updated GNOME FAQ prerelease on CVS

[Robert Bihlmeyer <robbe orcus priv at>]

Hi,

>>>>> On Sun, 21 Mar 1999 12:25:48 -0500 (EST)
>>>>> Gleef <dzol@virtual-yellow.com> said:

 Gleef> The first doosie is "How do I start GNOME?"

I'll try. Text is GPL'd, factual and syntactical corrections welcome.

* With your standard login method and session-management

[The file locations are common guesses, every platform/distro probably
has its own. Sigh.]
Find the file where your initial clients and the window manager are
run. If you're using xdm, this should be ".xsession" in your home
directory. Check out ".xinitrc" in your home directory, if you're
using startx. If the right file does not exist, copy the default one:

        cp /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xinit/xinitrc .xinitrc

or

        cp /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xinit/xinitrc .xsession

The first part of this file normally sets up the keyboard (xmodmap)
and resources (xrdb). Leave this stuff alone. At the end, there is a
section where clients are started (at least one xterm, usually), the
last line normall launches your window manager. You may recognize this
part if you fiddled with this before. Remove all lines starting
clients like xterms, xclocks, and put them into a separate file (e.g.
"my-session"). Make this file executable ("chmod +x my-session") and
keep it around. It will become handy later.

Now remove the line that starts your window manager, and replace it
with the single line

        exec gnome-session

at the end of the file. This starts up the gnome session manager,
which in turn launches all your other apps.

(I'm now assuming that this is your first start of gnome-session as
this user. If this not true, you should get a similar effect by
deleting "$HOME/.gnome/session".)

Start a new X session in the usual way. If all went well,
gnome-session is getting started. Since you have no old session to
restart, it will create a default setup. This includes the panel, the
help browser, the file browser, and a window manager.

Chances are that the window manager is not your favourite one. If that 
is the case, click on the panel's "Gnome Foot" to open the Gnome main
menu, then click "Settings", and finally "Window Manager". You'll be
confronted with a dialog window, where the current window manager is
selected, and you can choose another one. Just click on it and press
"OK". If your favourite WM is not shown, you'll have to "Add" it.

Finally, you can make your Gnome session resemble your previous setup
by starting the same applications. Fire up a terminal, by clicking in
order: "Gnome Foot", "Utilities", "GNOME terminal". From there, start
your "my-session" script, which will put up all programs that were
previously started automatically. You can also close Gnome
applications that you don't need (you don't have to have the
help-browser hang around constantly, for example).

Remember to be polite and exit X by means of the panel's "Log Out"
action (from the menu, or with a log out button). This will ensure
that the session is properly saved. All programs that were running
before you chose "Log Out" will get restarted the next time you run
your Gnome session.

        Robbe

-- 
Robert Bihlmeyer	reads: Deutsch, English, MIME, Latin-1, NO SPAM!
<robbe@orcus.priv.at>	<http://stud2.tuwien.ac.at/~e9426626/sig.html>