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I am trying to setup DWM in Ubuntu 10.10. The package is successfully built - and now I am trying to get it up and running. I created the dwm.desktop file with the proper text and the path to the dwm exec is correct. On login screen, I can see dwm as a alternate session : but if I select it, still gnome starts.

I even tried another window manager (fluxbox) - same problem. I can see and select it in the login screen, but gnome starts up.

Trying gconftool-2 -s /desktop/gnome/session/required_components/windowmanager dwm --type string also does nothing. Killing the windows manager just restarts it - even if I chvt first. Also, don't see the xinit daemon running.

Any ideas ? This setup was trivial in Debian, and older versions of Ubuntu. What changed ? I am guessing gnome integration is to blame - but am clueless as of now.

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  • When you installed fluxbox, was that done natively (via apt-get or software center)? I am able to select flux/blackbox from the GDM login without problems on those.
    – belacqua
    Feb 9, 2011 at 19:11

1 Answer 1

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You shouldn't have to mess with gconftool if there haven't been customizations to your system. You should be able to use sudo apt-get install dwm or sudo apt-get install fluxbox

A that point, you should have a new entry appear in xsession . It should look something like this:

$ ls -l /usr/share/xsessions/
total 36
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 229 2008-06-12 03:35 blackbox.desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 149 2007-04-29 23:18 matchbox.desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 117 2010-09-13 08:48 xsession.desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 170 2010-09-13 08:48 xterm.desktop
[...]

Here's what my fluxbox entry looks like:

/usr/share/xsessions$ cat fluxbox.desktop 
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Fluxbox
Comment=Highly configurable and low resource X11 Window manager
Exec=/usr/bin/startfluxbox
Terminal=false
TryExec=/usr/bin/startfluxbox
Type=Application

[X-Window Manager]
SessionManaged=true

If this doesn't work, check to see if you do have an xsession entry, or an .xsession file, and post those.

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  • After running sudo apt-get install dwm I don't get a login entry. This is my /usr/share/xsessions/dwm/ [Desktop Entry] Encoding=UTF-8 Name=Dwm Comment=Dynamic window manager Exec=dwm Icon=dwm Type=XSession
    – daithib8
    May 5, 2011 at 17:27
  • This fixes it:sudo mv /usr/share/xsessions/dwm /usr/share/xsessions/dwm.desktop
    – daithib8
    May 5, 2011 at 18:05

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