Artix Linux Forum

Starting Xfce
Is it possible to start Xfce when I login on the console?
Yes, there are three different ways to do this:

You can just login with the command startxfce4
You can add exec startxfce4 to your .xinitrc in your home directory and simply use startx.
You can put the following in your .bash_profile/.bashrc if you want Xfce to start automatically when you login on tty1:

Code: [Select]

if [ "$(tty)" = "/dev/tty1" -o "$(tty)" = "/dev/vc/1" ] ; then
  startxfce4
fi

Is it possible to use Xfce with DMs?
Yes. It's probably the default behavior of most distributions.

Setting up LXDM
LXDM is the display manager of LXDE, but it is universal. It has no GNOME or KDE dependencies, a nice interface and is very complete. Most distributions have a package available that you can install. Regarding the configuration, check the presence of a file (or add) /usr/share/xsessions/06xfce4.desktop (the location may differ depending on the distributions), such as:

Code: [Select]

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Xfce4
Comment=Use this session to run Xfce4 as your desktop environment
TryExec=/usr/bin/startxfce4
Exec=/usr/bin/startxfce4
Icon=/usr/local/share/pixmaps/xfce4_xicon1.png
Type=Application

Lines TryExec and Exec may also differ between distributions.

Setting up SLiM
If you want to avoid GNOME or KDE dependencies and have a more attractive interface than XDM, you can give SLiM a try. See the SLiM manual for more information.

Setting up GDM
If you installed Xfce system-wide and you want to use the GNOME Display Manager (gdm) to start your Xfce session, you will have to create a .desktop file to teach gdm how to start the Xfce session. This is a sample desktop file, Xfce.desktop:

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  [Desktop Entry]
  Encoding=UTF-8
  Name=Xfce4
  Comment=Use this session to run Xfce 4.4 as your desktop environment
  Exec=/usr/local/bin/startxfce4
  Icon=/usr/local/share/pixmaps/xfce4_xicon1.png
  Type=Application

It is usually enough to simply copy the example file to the session directory used by gdm; this directory is usually located in /etc/dm/Sessions, /etc/X11/gdm/Sessions, /usr/share/xsessions, /usr/X11/share/gnome/xsessions or some other location. Refer to the documentation of your system for details. You need to restart gdm after you created the file.

Setting up KDM
If you installed Xfce system-wide and you want to use the KDE Display Manager (kdm) to start your Xfce session, you will have to create a .desktop file to teach kdm how to start the Xfce session.

First you need to find where kdm searches for its .desktop files:

  locate kde.desktop
Common locations are /usr/share/apps/kdm/sessions or /usr/local/share/kdm/sessions. Once you found the kdm session directory, you need to create a new file named Xfce.desktop with the following:

Code: [Select]

  [Desktop Entry]
  Encoding=UTF-8
  Type=XSession
  Exec=/usr/local/bin/startxfce4
  TryExec=/usr/local/bin/startxfce4
  Name=Xfce4
  Comment=The Xfce4 Desktop Environment

Login problems
When I start Xfce a dialog pops up saying "Could not look up internet address for..."
Xfce simply wants your hostname to be in /etc/hosts. Example input: 127.0.0.1 localhost

Logout problems
When I try to log out by pressing the logout button in the panel, I get a dialog asking me whether I want to quit the panel and/or xfce4-session-logout reports that no session manager is running, but it is!
For some reason, your X applications cannot connect to the session manager. Possible causes for this are: your hostname cannot be resolved (see Login problems section), your home partition or partition containing /tmp is filled up, your hostname contains non-ascii characters (no umlauts allowed, in particular) or either ~/.ICEauthority or /tmp/.ICE-unix have wrong permissions. Check .xsession-errors for clues.

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Nope, still happening, and i don't have a screensaver.