starting kde as a user

formerlykikinovak · Guest

Hi,

After having set up a base system, x server and kde (which went more or less flawless), I leafed through the forum until I grasped the way gentoo adds users.

One general remark. As I browsed through the forum with search, I discovered that there are at least two sorts of helpful people:

1) Those that answer the question "how do I add a user with gentoo" by a litany of techno-laconism spiced with code that looks like what my HP Deskjet produces when I disconnect it in the middle of a print job.

2) Those that suggest something like

aardvark · Guru Joined: 30 Jun 2002 Posts: 576

if the .xinitrc in your home dir file looks like this:

exec startkde

it should launch kde when issueing the startx command
you could also edit the general xinitrc file which i believe is in /etc/X11/xinit
It is however WAY preferable to do it in the user home dir with .xinitrc

kirill · Posted: Thu Aug 22, 2002 12:00 pm Post subject: Re: starting kde as a user

Naan Yaar · Bodhisattva Joined: 27 Jun 2002 Posts: 1549

Just curious, do you think either/both these classes of help are deficient in some regard? If so, what would you think would be useful?

Naan Yaar · Bodhisattva Joined: 27 Jun 2002 Posts: 1549

Moving from Installation to Desktop.

dcstimm · Guru Joined: 19 Jun 2002 Posts: 321

this is mine works fine

more .xinitrc

PATH="$PATH:/usr/bin"

startkde

you dont need exec

kikinovak · Guest

Naan Yaar · Bodhisattva Joined: 27 Jun 2002 Posts: 1549

Interesting anecdote. Thanks.

In the useradd example, both suggestions are reasonable. The first is more "portable" and has the advantage of being available on most, if not all, linux systems by default. The latter is more user friendly. Dismissing one of them as being "techno-laconic" doesn't seem very fair to the person who takes the time and effort to post a useful hint, regardless of whether you decide to use it or not. Anyway, I have digressed far from the thread topic...

kikinovak · Guest

Yep. Now to get the right context for my humorous remarks, let me make a point. Up until a week or so, I was a double-booting Windows XP Pro / Linux Debian user, after having tried out Mandrake and Slackware. My Linux experience is about eight months old. Two days ago, I've lost a day's worth of work ( = translation) because XP froze everything, I had to reset my system, and when I managed to reboot, my translation was unrecoverable.

How I resolved that problem: 1) insert DOS boot floppy 2) fdisk 3) format C: 4) format D:. Which means that now I'm writing these lines on Konqueror - KDE3 that runs under Gentoo Linux 1.2. I did it! I took the plunge! Huge pat on the shoulder for all you guys at Gentoo! Your system works *great*. What convinced me to replace my Debian with it: 1) the doc seems better (even though the install is a nightmare for a mortal user like me, it went OK because the doc is excellent) 2) there seems to be the newest version of everything (the Debian guys are still thinking whether they will make .debs out of KDE3 and OpenOffice, but I guess they're too busy ranting about such subjects as whether you should say "Linux" or "GNU/Linux" or similar topics.

And to come back to the question. Despite my humorous remark about what is helpful and what not, I must say that this forum is *really* helpful, and I mean it. startx doesn't startx? xinit unknown? Type startx AND xinit, and here we go, at least five guys got the same problem.

I understand that with these thousands of people in a forum, you have to behave in perfect courtesy. Didn't mean to start a flame here. But it's like the guy who asks the way to the train station here in Montpellier. "Well, first you take the bus to Saint-Martin-de-Londres, then there's a boat to Saint-Maurice-de-Navacelles, then it's about a day's walk through the Vallée de l'Hérault, and when you cross the Cévennes etc."

Why not just say "You're standing in front of it. Just cross the road."

)

cheers,

Niki