Arch Linux

navi_is_dead

Member

Registered: 2017-01-22

Posts: 1

Trouble with writing config files for a custom Desktop Environment

Hello all! Thank you for allowing me the great opportunity to be a part of the Arch community! Definite No0b here.

I'm having trouble writing the configuration files necessary to create a custom desktop environment. I've followed compared and tried to do this with simple tutorials like this but to no avail. What is currently happening is, if I try to login to a session of my custom DE I get booted right back out.

I have truly tried to be diligent and googled all the things I could think of and searched the forums but it's hard when you don't have the words.

I have tried a few things such as writing type as Application and now XSession. I have done chmod for my sh file. These are my files atm.

/usr/share/xsessions/custom.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Custom
Exec=/home/thisismyname/customDE.sh
Icon=
Type=XSession

/home/thisismyname/customDE.sh

nitrogen &
gnome-do &
cairo-dock &
openbox

I've done my sh file also with everything except openbox and tried tonnes of lines with or without &'s.

Thank you for your help!!

Slithery

Administrator

From: Norfolk, UK

Registered: 2013-12-01

Posts: 5,776

Re: Trouble with writing config files for a custom Desktop Environment

Why not just log in to the openbox session (that the openbox package supplies) and launch the required applications using openboxes autostart functionality?

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No, it didn't "fix" anything. It just shifted the brokeness one space to the right. - jasonwryan
Closing -- for deletion; Banning -- for muppetry. - jasonwryan

aur - dotfiles

seth

Member

From: Don't DM me only for attention

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 74,325

Re: Trouble with writing config files for a custom Desktop Environment

^ This.

Also ensure that "/home/thisismyname/customDE.sh" is executable and it should™ contain a shebang ("#!/bin/sh" on top)
The ampersand forks the command, so the last  command (which will keep the session open) should NOT be trailed by one.
Finally, try a very simple script, just starting an xterm first - if eg. openbox immediately crashes in the above scenario, things won't work.

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