From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.1) Gecko/20020827 Description of problem: I installed a system using kickstart. In the configuration file I have the following line: xconfig --depth=24 --resolution=1024x768 --defaultdesktop=KDE --startxonboot the problem is with the defaultdesktop directive. It doesn't work! I traced it to be the following problem: in previous versions, the configuration file /etc/sysconfig/desktop should contain DESKTOP="KDE" In version 9. it should contain DISPLAYMANAGER="KDE" but it still contains the 'DESKTOP' line, which isn't interpreted by /etc/X11/prefdm I'm not sure if this is a bug in kickstart, or in anaconda. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Install RedHat Linux 9 using kickstart (or perhaps even manually) 2. 3. Actual Results: cat /etc/sysconfig/desktop DESKTOP="KDE" Expected Results: cat /etc/sysconfig/desktop DISPLAYMANAGER="KDE" Additional info:
I installed 2 machines, 1 personal and one custom with all packages, manually - out of the box and experienced the same thing on both machines.
Doesn't the default gdm login screen come up ok, with KDE as the default desktop once you install? GDM is the login manager we configure, independent of the default desktop.
In previous versions the choice for displaymanager was done from the default desktop. In /etc/X11/prefdm on 7.3 you'll find the line [ -n "$DISPLAYMANAGER" ] && DESKTOP=$DISPLAYMANAGER That's why my approach worked in earlier versions. Apparently this has been abandoned in newer versions.
We always default to gdm if it exists. Will forward this bug to gdm so that its maintainer can explain the reasoning and how to override.
The default desktop setting changes your desktop; the default display manager setting changes your display manager. The settings are separate, so you can set them separately. For example, a default install sets them separately. But if you want to set the two settings to "match" you can of course do that. Do you want changing your default web browser to magically change your default email client? It doesn't make sense to have two apps just randomly bound together.