[EasyKill]

Hi, x-windows newbie here. Please be gentle.

Using a combination of the Fink and manual installations I've finally gotten a rootless installation of x-windows running on my Powerbook (10.1), but I'm having trouble configuring it.

-- No matter what I try, I can't switch to any other window manager besides twm. I've tried windowmaker, oroborus, oroborosx, sawfish, and icewm. Fink downloads and installs them without reporting any errors. I modify .xinitrc, relaunch the server, and I get xterm with no window frame or title bar around it. I did run wmaker.inst, which didn't report any errors either. In .xinitrc I've tried both

wmaker (...ice, sawfish, etc) &
xterm

and also

xterm
exec wmaker (ice, sawfish, etc)

...the only thing that works for me is twm, which is almost useless. Any suggestions?


-- When XDarwin quits, it leaves a process running called XDarwinStartup, which I have to manually kill via the OS X Process Viewer in order to relaunch X Windows. Does anyone know how to fix this?


-- Can someone explain how the -geometry settings work in .xinitrc? I understand the absolute positioning from 0,0, but when I try to set the dimensions of, say, an xterm window, the results are never what I expect.


TIA

-- easykill

[Greg Parker]

I assume you used Fink to install the window managers. It presumably installed them into /sw/bin/wmaker, etc. It's possible that /sw/bin isn't in the PATH when xinitrc runs, so xinit can't find them. Try explicitly using the full path in xinitrc (e.g. `/sw/bin/wmaker &`).

"-geometry AxB+C+D" will create a window with dimension A x B, C away from the left edge and D down from the top. You can also use -C and -D to offset from the right and bottom, or leave out the offset or size completely.

Note that I never said "pixels" above. Some programs interpret the numbers in pixels, but other programs use something else. xterm interprets the numbers in characters, so "-geometry 80x24" give you an xterm 80 characters across and 24 lines tall.

[EasyKill]

Thanks Greg! That all makes perfect sense. I've got GIMP running like a champ in rootless mode using windowmaker. Now to find a good Aqua-ripoff theme...