[ILUG] desktop switching and stuff

[Tim McAuley]

Somethings I find funny...

I wanted to switch the default desktop of Redhat 7.1 from Gnome to KDE (for
everyone, not just me).

Right, so I change /etc/sysconfig/desktop to 'DESKTOP="KDE"' rather than
GNOME.

I reboot just to make sure everything has taken affect. Guess what... gdm
didn't start! What exactly is "desktop" file in sysconfig supposed to do? It
doesn't seem to work properly anyway... dear dear.

Anyway, I did a bit of reading, and came across various references to
switching gdm to kdm. Now I don't see any point in doing this, because you
can start KDE fine from gdm. However, I am guessing this is what that flag
in sysconfig had in mind...

So all I did was to go into /etc/X11/gdm/Sessions, and have Default point to
KDE. Simple as that.

To my point(s):

1) What does Redhat intend to be the method of switching the default desktop
of the system? If it is /etc/sysconfig/desktop, it doesn't work (not without
switching to kdm first, I guess).

2) This is just one example where I find Linux to be slightly head wreaking
sometimes (it wasn't really in this case but..). I think Linux is great, but
it's things like these that will hold it back from the mass market. Changing
the default desktop should take 1 minute, that's all! Another thing I was
trying to do was set-up my CD writer. It took a while, i.e. having to
recompile kernel with proper SCSI-IDE support and disable the default IDE
controller for the CD drives... etc.. I tried to use X-CD-Roast and that's
fine... but of course it doesn't handle audio CDs. I've gone back to Win 98
to make quick copies of CDs, I'll get it running on Linux running another
day.

3) I guess it all takes time! ;-) Things are getting better. Hopefully
Redhat and other distribution will spend more time on ensuring defaults
set-ups are easy to handle. Compared to a couple of years ago it's
brilliant! Long gone are the days with having to battle with your video
card, even sound works fine after installation now.

4) I have to try some of the other distros sometime!

5) Linux has one advantage... it's easy to do the hard stuff (and good at it
too)... I can setup a whole rake of servers in no time... but when it comes
to home use I'm afraid Windows still seems to win over. Funny that!

Right I'm going to get some food now. Just thought I'd have a slight rant
(even such as confused one!)

Cya

Tim