How to switch back from TWM

[Vernon Brown_1]

I used RedHat 7.2 Desktop switching tool to move between GNOME and KDE. Now I have selected TWM from the switching tool and can't find a way to get back to civilization :o) without deleting the user account and adding it again.

Does anyone know where in the user files the desktop preference is stored ?? Would save me lots of pain. Thanks !

[Claudio Cilloni]

I'm not so sure... It should be the .wmrc file in the user's home dir.

hth,
Claudio

[Mark Grant]

Bingo!

You have found another of Red Hats' wonderful gotchas. I once spent ages tring to work out exactly how the decision was being made on which WM to start. It's dead easy if you actually know but a tortuous trawl through a mass of annoying scripts if you don't.

The way it SHOULD work is to be able to select a session from the login program "xdm/kdm/gdm/whatever" which sets a variable which you test for in your $HOME/.xsession and run the appropriate session. This allows you to do things like "xinit Gnome" for example when your log in box is brocken and things like that too.

However, as Red Hat like obfuscating things in a million files, you might find the simple way out of this is to create a .xsession file in your $HOME directory containing the startup command for your favourite window manager. Then start X and select the desktop switching tool to choose the one you want again and then, remove your .xsession file.

It wouldn't surprise me too much if Red Hat ignores $HOME/.xsession though.

[Vernon Brown_1]

Thanks guys; I'll keep working on this. I know there must be some place where the WM info is stored. Once the location is known, it would be simple to create a script that would fix the thing.

[Paul Cross_1 · Accepted solution]

Did you try just running switchdesk?

[Vernon Brown_1]

I didn't know about switchdesk. I'll try it. Maybe man will know the syntax.

[Vernon Brown_1]

switchdesk works great!!!