[Solved] Xfce and Mate on same install?

[mobius]

Is is possible to have both Mate and Xfce on the same installation of Salix, and choose one at boot time (LILO menu), or, boot to command line, then start the one of choice? How does one boot straight to command line?

EDIT: Add [Solved] to title.

[balloon]

These will work:

MATE:

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$ sudo slapt-get --install-set mate

Xfce:

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$ sudo slapt-get --install-set xfce

You can select desktop in the session at login.

when adding MATE from 14.2 Xfce,
Salix is not yet preparing 14.2 MATE.
Therefore you may encounter some problem on MATE.

[jsfarinet]

I had both - and i did not encounter any problem for xfce. Mate did not work as expected, so i gave up on it (although i'd have preferred for a better integration with xmonad wm - now, with the help of the comunity, i found out a way to do the same with xfce + xmonad). But those were not Salix related problems but internal Mate ones.

Cheers.

[mobius]

These will work:

MATE:

Code: Select all

$ sudo slapt-get --install-set mate

Xfce:

Code: Select all

$ sudo slapt-get --install-set xfce

You can select desktop in the session at login.

when adding MATE from 14.2 Xfce,
Salix is not yet preparing 14.2 MATE.
Therefore you may encounter some problem on MATE.

Thanks, balloon. On 14.2 Xfce, installed Mate from /x86_64/14.2 repo successfully; it excluded mate-backgrounds due to unmet dependencies. Got tons of "deprecated path" messages, as jsfarinet mentioned in another thread.

Installing mate-session-manager, got "WARNING: Directory already exists *behind the symlink* on filesystem (usr/share/doc)." Is this of concern?

Upon rebooting, went straight into Xfce DE, as before. How does one choose which DE to use? Can that choice be made in the LILO menu (separate entries for Salix Xfce, Salix Mate, etc.)?

Also, how does one boot straight to command line, with no DE?

[mobius]

I had both - and i did not encounter any problem for xfce. Mate did not work as expected, so i gave up on it (although i'd have preferred for a better integration with xmonad wm - now, with the help of the comunity, i found out a way to do the same with xfce + xmonad). But those were not Salix related problems but internal Mate ones.

Cheers.

Hi jsfarinet. Could you elaborate on the issues with Mate? Thanks.

[balloon]

Also, how does one boot straight to command line, with no DE?

This is summarized in the wiki:
https://docs.salixos.org/wiki/How_to_in ... Salix_core

[jsfarinet]

I had both - and i did not encounter any problem for xfce. Mate did not work as expected, so i gave up on it (although i'd have preferred for a better integration with xmonad wm - now, with the help of the comunity, i found out a way to do the same with xfce + xmonad). But those were not Salix related problems but internal Mate ones.

Cheers.

Hi jsfarinet. Could you elaborate on the issues with Mate? Thanks.

Not exactelysince i removed it. But essentially the problems were related to the problems of dealing with gth2 and/or gtk3 themes as well as with the composite manager. For some apps (mostly those of the qt4 or qt5 world) contrasts and backgrounds were not respected with the result that i had white fonts on white background (= unredable, obviously) and similar.

When i changed to xfce that problems disappeared. Mostly i tried mate because i had a nice instruction to how to use xmonad alongside / inside with mate. The i found out that there is a similar option for xfce, so changing to xfce was harmless for my intents.

[mobius]

Not exactelysince i removed it. But essentially the problems were related to the problems of dealing with gth2 and/or gtk3 themes as well as with the composite manager. For some apps (mostly those of the qt4 or qt5 world) contrasts and backgrounds were not respected with the result that i had white fonts on white background (= unredable, obviously) and similar.

When i changed to xfce that problems disappeared. Mostly i tried mate because i had a nice instruction to how to use xmonad alongside / inside with mate. The i found out that there is a similar option for xfce, so changing to xfce was harmless for my intents.

Thanks for the additional information. Glad you arrived at a working solution.

My interest is in comparing them, to see which one I like better; so I'll see how that goes. First I need to know how to select one or the other at any particular time.

[mobius]

Also, how does one boot straight to command line, with no DE?

This is summarized in the wiki:
https://docs.salixos.org/wiki/How_to_in ... Salix_core

Hmm... that article doesn't mention anything about booting. Could someone kindly take me through it one step at a time?

First booting to command line; then selecting a DE and running it?

[balloon]

That's this part of the wiki page:

To make that window manager the default for your user, do

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cp /etc/X11/xinit/xinit.icewm ~/.xinitrc

for icewm, or

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cp /etc/X11/xinit/xinit.fluxbox ~/.xinitrc

for fluxbox, or similar for any other window manager, you get the point.

You can now test your favourite minimal window manager with:

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startx

This is the same work with Xfce and MATE.

MATE:

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cp /etc/X11/xinit/xinit.mate ~/.xinitrc
startx

Xfce:

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cp /etc/X11/xinit/xinit.xfce ~/.xinitrc
startx