On Sun, 3 Nov 2019 12:41:51 -0800 Dan Hitt <dan.h...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi, > > I recently switched from using debian 9 (stretch) to debian 10 > (buster). I did this on a new partition of my disk so i think it > should be a clean install, and it seems to be. > > The desktop manager looks different: i think it is gnome, but i'd > like it to be xfce. > > What i did was to install the xfce4 package, then ran > sudo update-alternatives --config x-window-manager > switching from (iirc) mutter to lightdm. Then i rebooted. > > But everything looks the same, so i imagine that my > update-alternatives was not the right move, and/or i didn't > understand the page i was reading. > > So my questions are: > (1) How can i identify which desktop manager i have? Ideally i'd > like to do that with some command line move, like running > 'which-desktop' or something like that. > (2) Having identified it, how do i change it? > > TIA for any info! > If you have multiple desktops/window managers, you can normally select among them in the display manager at login time, and some allow you to select for just this login, or persistently. I think a few DMs don't have this explicitly on the login page, but most do. I'm currently using KDM, the KDE display manager, which has a bar at the top of the login screen with drop-down selection of DE/WM. -- Joe
