Fedora 13 KDE, switchdesk & system-switch-displaymanager

[Art Wildman]

  Hi KDE list,
I like to install a few users & play with new desktops every few releases. I 
actually prefer KDE & XFCE to Gnome, but as sysadmin I have to learn the default 
gnome stuff. It's still nice to be familiar with a few other desktop 
environments & I'm real impressed with the changes to KDE. Lots of COOL changes 
since F11...

I have a new install of F13-64 & installed the yum groupinstall "KDE 
Compilation", plus got the switchdesk packages, but could not switchdesk from 
Gnome to KDE? As a regular user, the switchdesk gui would popup & KDE was 
selected, but I was unable to get the user's desktop to switch after 
restart-X/reboot & login again. It appeared to have created the proper .Xclients 
files, but I'm not sure I remember the details now. I don't understand why it is 
so difficult to switch from gnome to kde now in f13? The default Gnome GDM 
doesn't have session menus either like it used to, to allow the user to pick 
their session/desktop.

Finally I decided to  make KDM & KDE the system defaults & "yum install 
system-switch-displaymanager-gnome" packages. Then ran 
'system-switch-displaymanager KDM" and restarted runlevel 5. Ah, a nice familiar 
KDM login with menus & session choices. Now when the user runs swtichdesk, the 
changes take effect. ref: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/KDE

Could someone please verify if there is a bug with switchdesk, or if it needs a 
dependency to automatically get the system-switch-displaymanager packages to 
work properly for avg users? It shouldn't be this hard to change the default 
gnome desktop to kde? May be I'm doing something wrong... It doesn't make sense 
that users should have to ask an admin to install KDM as the default to be 
allowed to use switchdesk & get at their KDE desktop environment.

Also, it really bothers me the default GDM is so stripped down. The default 
Gnome GDM, doesn't have a session menu anymore... only "Shutdown Options" button 
in lower right corner <ick>. I really dislike the new GDM, & will definitely use 
KDM with it's nice menu choices & left-center layout.

Thanks Rex & all on the KDE dev team, I've been a lurking a long time on this 
list. - Cheers, Art Wildman


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