On Fri 23 Feb 2018 at 09:12:04 (-0600), Richard Owlett wrote: > On 02/23/2018 05:46 AM, Richard Owlett wrote: > >History > >I run MATE, but to paraphrase a restaurant - "I want Debian MyWay" ;) > >It was suggested that I wanted what KDE calls "activities". > >It looked promising. I installed it. It suffers from featuritis. > >fvwm-crystal was also suggested. When installed it was in some > >sense "cleaner" but still too busy. Launched fvwm which had been > >installed by the fvwm-crystal package. > > > >The problem > >It had "inherited" configuration items from fvwm-crystal. The web > >pages I had read spoke of a default 1st run display. I could not > >figure out how to get that to appear. > > > >Having adequate space available I used netinst to do a base > >command line only install to a new partition. It was followed by > >doing "apt-get install fvwm". > > > >I rebooted expecting a minimal fvwm display. I got a command line. > > To clarify I got a console command line (Whole screen is one window > with no graphical ornaments !) > > >I found that though a "/home/richard/.fvwm" directory had been > >created, it was empty. I couldn't find copies of what files should > >have been there on initial first run. Only instructions/examples > >for adding this or that doodad. > > > > It was suggested that > >So to get you kick-started, > >just create a file named "config" in your /home/richard/.fvwm > >consisting of this one line: > > > > Read /usr/share/fvwm/default-config/config > That did not solve my problem. > > I copied the file at > http://www.einval.com/~steve/debian/fvwm2rc.example to > /home/richard/.fvwm2rc . > I then executed `fvwm2 -f "FvwmM4 .fvwm2rc"' > The result was " [fvwm][main] <<ERROR>> can't open display > > Reasoning by analogy with use of startx I had tried "fvwm" at the > command line and received "can't open display". > > I tried issuing "startx" itself and received "command not found". > > When I had initially done "apt-get install fvwm", should some > portion of the Xsystem been installed?
It sounds to me as if you're misinterpreting the concept of Debian's dependencies. The idea is that when you install package A (which needs library B) and run it, the call to library B doesn't point into outer space but into an installed library. It doesn't mean that if you install a package designed to run on X that apt will immediately install all the packages required for a functional X system. So what fvwm does is to run, look around, then say "I don't see anything upon which I could usefully perform, so it gives up in good order after saying why. Cheers, David.
