Bug 17197

Summary: arg to specify DE in startx line
Product: [Retired] Red Hat Linux Reporter: Kevin Breit <battery841>
Component: XFree86Assignee: Mike A. Harris <mharris>
Status: CLOSED WORKSFORME QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 7.0Keywords: FutureFeature
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Hardware: i386   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Enhancement
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Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2000-11-14 17:43:40 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description Kevin Breit 2000-09-03 02:26:51 UTC 
I'd really like a way to specify an arguement at the console when you type
startx to load a certain desktop environment.  For example, I type:
startx gnome
and it'll load gnome.
startx kde
will load kde, etc, etc.
Comment 1 Mike A. Harris 2001-03-14 03:53:37 UTC 
This already exists more or less.  The "switchdesk" package.  For more info,
make sure switchdesk is installed, and read the manpage for it:

man switchdesk

You could create a bash alias to do what you want something like (untested)

alias startgnome='switchdesk gnome;startx'
alias startkde='switchdesk kde;startx'

Changing the way the arguments to startx works would break a lot of
documentation, when there is already a way to do this.  Hope this helps you
figure out something useful.