0

I just installed KDE under Arch Linux. Problem is, nothing is starting up right with it - no window manager, no panels, nothing. All I get is a small terminal window in the bottom right corner of the screen, which I'm assuming is konsole. From that single window I can do things like start kwin or launch programs whose names I happen to know (like chromium or firefox), but I don't have a panel for starting programs or switching between programs. Even Alt+F2 doesn't bring up the normal dialog.

It doesn't matter whether I start kdm through inittab or manually by typing # /etc/rc.d/kdm start. KDM looks great, but once I log in as my normal user I just get a console window with no decoration.

Is there a startup script for KDE somewhere that needs to run, and usually has a bunch of programs by default - like a window manager, panels, widgets, and all the normal background programs that run in an ordinary GUI? If so, can someone show me the default script so I can work from there with a window manager, decorator, launchers, etc.?

1
  • i know how to do this with gnome and xfce, but i'm lost on kde Dec 30, 2010 at 2:33

2 Answers 2

0

Last time I looked, the script was called startkde.

Are all the kdebase-* packages installed?

See also: SLiM documentation.

2
  • KDM calls startkde as you log in, if I'm not mistaken. Is there a configuration file I can edit to change the behavior of startkde?
    – Shane
    Dec 30, 2010 at 7:25
  • What are you trying to change? What does it do now and what do you want to make it do?
    – Mikel
    Dec 30, 2010 at 20:18
0

Turns out it was the profile in kdm - it was running the failsafe profile instead of kde-plasma. I didn't realize that the shiny button on the bottom left of the login box allowed you to select profiles.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .