.xinitrc mod to select window manager/desktop environment

[triad]

After many hours of digging around on this forum and googling to death finally found a pretty easy way to select what type of window manager/desktop environment at startx without using a login manager. Basicaly created .xinitrc with this code in it.:

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#!/bin/bash
#
# .xsession/.xinitrc
#
# choose a window manager
#

defaultwm=kde
#set the window manager to $1 if it was supplied
windowmgr=${1:-$defaultwm}
#start the respective window managers
case ${windowmgr} in
kde|kwm|kdestart)
WINDOWMANAGER=startkde
;;
fluxbox)
WINDOWMANAGER=fluxbox
;;
fluxbox_main)
WINDOWMANAGER=fluxbox_main
;;
startxfce4)
WINDOWMANAGER=startxfce4
;;

*) WINDOWMANAGER=windowmgr # default for unknown wm's
esac

exec $WINDOWMANAGER

so at command prompt can type:

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startx windowmanager

where windowmanager is your window manager/desktop environment as specified in script..

I found this useful because I use another x-display to watch videos on my TV via Nvidia TV-out and I wanted to start another instance of Fluxbox without having all my normal startup items specified in .xinitrc appearing on second display. so in my case what I did was create a script called fluxbox_main that has this:

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xscreensaver &
gkrellm2 -w &
bbrun &
amsn &
fluxbox

I put this in my /usr/bin directory

so then at command prompt i would just type

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startx fluxbox_main

This gets me into X with fluxbox and all my startup items going.

Once in this session I have a menu item:

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startx fluxbox -- :1 -layout TV vt8

This opens Session for TV viewing without all the startup stuff.

Hope this makes sense.

Triad

[OneOfOne]

i love it
peace