WDM is a small, light-weight replacement for XDM. If you're looking for nice simple replacement to XDM, i would highly recommend it.

Its fairly easy to add fluxbox (or any other window manager) to its list when logging in.

__TOC__ I assume you've got WDM installed and working properly. If not, go do that and then come back.

Firstly, you'll need to edit two of the config files for wdm. The first being Xclients and the second being wdm-config. On my distribution (Gentoo) these are located in /etc/X11/wdm.

Editing the Xclients file

In the Xclients file we'll need to add a little bit of scripting that will check if the fluxbox executable exists, and is executable.

Open the Xclients file with your favourite editor. The part of the script we want to change starts like this:

 # First thing - check the user preferences
 if [ -f $HOME/.wm_style ] ; then
    WMSTYLE=`cat $HOME/.wm_style`
    case "$WMSTYLE" in

and is filled out with a bunch of items that look like this:

 wmaker*|WindowMaker*)
   # startup WindowMaker
   WMAKER_PATH=/usr/bin/wmaker
   if ! test -x $WMAKER_PATH ; then
      FindInPath $WMAKER_PATH
      if test -n "$result" -a -x "$result"; then
          WMAKER_PATH="$result";
      fi
   fi
   if test -x $WMAKER_PATH ; then
      echo Starting WindowMaker >$HOME/.xwm.msgs
      env > "$HOME"/Xrootenv.0
      exec $WMAKER_PATH >>$HOME/.xwm.msgs 2>&1
   fi
   ;;
   esac
 fi

we need to add a piece of code to tell it to check for the fluxbox executable. so before the finishing code displayed above, add the following lines:

 fluxbox*|FluxBox)
 # startup fluxbox
 FLUXBOX_PATH=/usr/bin/startfluxbox
 if ! test -x $FLUXBOX_PATH ; then
   FindInPath $FLUXBOX_PATH
   if test -n "$result" -a -x "$result"; then
     $FLUXBOX_PATH="$result";
   fi
 fi
 if [ -x $FLUXBOX_PATH ] ; then
   echo Starting FluxBox >$HOME/.xwm.msgs
   exec $FLUXBOX_PATH >>$HOME/.xwm.msgs 2>&1
 fi
 ;;

Editing the wdm-config file

After weve done this, we'll need to add fluxbox to the wdm-config file. Open this file with your favourite editor, and find the line that looks like this:

  DisplayManager*wdmWm:           WindowMaker:None

and change it so it looks like this

  DisplayManager*wdmWm:  WindowMaker:FluxBox

And that's all there is to it. Restart WDM and hey presto, FluxBox apears in the menu.

Enjoy

Category:English howtos