Arch Linux

dunchy

Member

Registered: 2015-02-22

Posts: 4

Replace gdm+gnome3 with lightdm+xfce4

Not long ago I've had my first successful attempt to install arch from scratch but unfortunate choice of picking gnome3. It didn't work well for us and I'd like to move to xfce4, but keep my installation setup and not go through it all again.

So, how to move to xfce4 with minimal effort, but also abandon gdm login/window manager since it is freezing my ati260 (xf86-video-ati driver) after a while (at login and at screen-lock) ?

I would also like to completely remove gnome3, i.e. not to have 2 choices for desktop environments at login, but only xfce.

What is the best practice to accomplish that? Can I remove gdm / gnome within the gnome session? What file do I need to edit? Should I register something in systemd before I logout for the last time from gnome3? Basically a newbie recipe ...

onslow77

Member

Registered: 2014-09-21

Posts: 279

Re: Replace gdm+gnome3 with lightdm+xfce4

Basically a newbie recipe ...

Hello,

Welcome to arch linux dunchy!

The best newbie recipie is to search and read the arch wiki pages. For example, howto install and uninstall packages, see the pacman wiki page: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/pacman, to setup xfce, see https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/xfce, and so on.

If you stumble on a more narrow problem, for example: an error that you after searching did not found a solution for, a specific part of an instruction that is unclear, or whatever it migh be. There are in my experiance plenty of people in this community that are more then willing to help you out, me included.

Regards
Martin

Last edited by onslow77 (2015-02-22 15:04:03)

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ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 19,804

Re: Replace gdm+gnome3 with lightdm+xfce4

A couple hints.   It is not required that you have only one DM/WM installed.   You can have both Gnome and xfce4 installed, and kde, and i3.
As to the display manager, just disable it  with systemctl.   If you really want another login manager, install it and enable it.  Just don't enable more than one at once.

Consider just using startx.   With a ~/.xinitrc, you can choose which environment you want from the console.  Here is mine:

#!/bin/sh
#
# ~/.xinitrc
#
# Executed by startx (run your window manager from here)

if [ -d /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d ]; then
  for f in /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/*; do
    [ -x "$f" ] && . "$f"
  done
  unset f
fi

#xset b off
#setxkbmap -option caps:super
setxkbmap -option ctrl:nocaps
#autocutsel -fork &
#autocutsel -selection PRIMARY -fork &
export GTK2_RC_FILES="$HOME/.gtkrc-2.0" 
export TERM=linux
#twmnd&

case $WM in
openbox)
	exec  openbox-session
	;;
vb)
    VirtualBox -startvm "Windows 7" -fullscreen
    ;;
xfce4)
    exec startxfce4
    ;;
i3)
    exec i3
    ;;
kde)
    exec startkde
    ;;
plex)
    exec plexhometheater.sh
    ;;
*)
    exec i3
    ;;
esac

If I just use startx it will run i3.   If I do something like WM=xfce4 startx   it will run xfce4.
It is even possible to start i3 on one console, Ctrl-Alt-F2 to a different console, and run a totally different environment.  I can have i3 on one console and xfce4, or plexserver, or openbox running simultaneously on a different console.

Anyway, I just wanted to break the paradigm that you can only have one environment installed.

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