Running
without a restart.

Switch from gdm to kdm to manage your Linux Logins

LinuxPPC 1999 comes configured with the very boring Gnome Desktop Manager (gdm). If you installed the K Desktop Environment (KDE), you can have the option of using their desktop manager: kdm.

I like kdm better because it can be configured from the KDE Control Center. You can select colors, a graphic, fonts, and how to display users.

The preferred desktop manager (prefdm), is determined in the last line of the file: /etc/inittab. basically, it launches an alias at /etc/X11/prefdm.

How do you find where your copy of kdm is located? With the which command. Open a terminal and type:

which kdm

My response (and probably yours too) was

/usr/bin/kdm

If you want to permanently change to kdm, open /etc/inittab and change the path in the last line to /usr/bin/kdm -nodaemon.

If you're an experimenter like me and like to switch back and forth, I swap out the prefdm alias for one that points to the desktop manager of choice. Look at the graphic below:

Here I have links pointing to kdm and gdm. For which ever one I want to use, I just replace the prefdm alias.

After making the change to kdm, restart to see the slick new login screen!