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Jason Haslup
jason at haslup dot com

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Wed, 08 Sep 2004

Multiple X Sessions
blog :: linux

I'm a little embarrassed to say this, but... something I've never tried before on linux that surprised me: setting up multiple X sessions on my machine at home!

Here's the deal... we all know about the virtual consoles in linux: press ctrl-alt F1 and you get a pure-text console window. Press ctrl-alt F2 and you get virtual console #2. You get four of those.

What some people miss out on, though, is that when you've started X (usually runlevel 5), ctrl-alt F7 is the X display's console -- that is, your actual graphical display. And if you extrapolate from the four virtual text consoles... yes, that's right, ctrl-alt F8 can be setup as another totally different X session.

So I set that up, which is a piece of cake. If you're running gdm as your display manager, simply comment out a line in the default config, restart gdm, and you're up and running. Users of kdm will find something similar.

This is pretty handy as I continually try new window managers and such. I can always have a "good" session going (so I can refer to docs, change configs, etc...), but also have a "development" session running simultaneously. Pretty darn cool.

Speaking of window managers (you knew this was coming)... believe it or not, I'm trying something new. I'm currently running fluxbox which is a nice & lightweight app, but I'm also trying out the new ion3 development series. For some reason I just can't give up on that window manager, even though it's one of the most frustrating ones I've used.

I'm enjoying fluxbox, though, so that might become my interim WM of choice. It supports a "tabs" feature (where two client windows share the same window space), but I think I like it most of all because it just seems clean.

Another huge part of my current at-home-linux-happiness is my new Dell 17" LCD monitor. Dell was having some crazy deal, so on the advice of Mystique, I picked one up to replace that crappy 19" used monitor I bought. I couldn't be happier with it... the fact that it's "only" 1280x1024 hasn't bothered me a bit... it's just a pleasure to look at. Nice and bright and very crisp. I need to figure out a way to get a few more of these at home... I'm a believer, now!

Ok, that's it... no more talk of window managers for at least a day. Alright, one more thing: still using ratpoison at work and now have fluxbox on the laptop. Once I get my config down, I might go with ion3 at work. Someday.

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