There is no fallback mechanism to launch KDE if XFCE fails to launch. startx does not have the ability to switch to a "last known good config". This is less of a Slackware situation and more xinitrc.
In addition to the usual /usr/share/xsession/ files for graphical logins, Slackware still has the old xinitrc scripts for people using runlevel 3. These live in /etc/X11/xinit/. Whenever you type startx (this also applies for all other distros) it starts an X server, then executes xinitrc which then sets up environment variables and then launches something like startxfce4 or startplasma-x11 The order in which startx scans for xinitrc scripts is: $HOME/.xinitrc /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc Again, none of that is Slackware. It's literally the same for all other distros that use (or used in the past..) X. The Slackware specific part here is that we have a shell script (xwmconfig) that copies the xinitrc script to $HOME so that each user can have their own preferred DE. When run AS ROOT, the script does not copy a file, instead creating a symlink to the xinitrc file chosen in the prompt. This sets it as a global default in the event that the user deletes their .xinitrc file. So in the event that a user su's to root, runs xwmconfig to change from KDE to XFCE, and still gets XFCE, there are really only 2 possible causes 1) the user has an old .xinitrc file referencing KDE. This means that startx will ignore the global script and continue as if nothing had changed. 2) the computer has been configured to boot into runlevel 4. Runlevel 4 starts the Display Manager which is SDDM by default. In runlevel 4 all the xinitrc stuff is ignored and Slackware operates in much the same way as every other distro. That's how the system is designed to function. Once you know the happy path for the software, you test and verify each step to find out where it failed. 1) Does $HOME/.xinitrc exist? 2) Which runlevel are you in? -Ben On Monday, April 14th, 2025 at 9:13 AM, Johnathan Mantey <[email protected]> wrote: > I don't know much about Slackware. > In my experience with switching DE's is that the DE package has to be > installed. > Usually you can't choose to try to configure SW that isn't installed. > At the same time, your DE isn't launching, so it's worth a quick check of > your installed packages to confirm Xfce is there. > > On Mon, Apr 14, 2025 at 9:08 AM Rich Shepard [email protected] > > wrote: > > > On Mon, 14 Apr 2025, Ben Koenig wrote: > > > > > The tool in slackware to do this is called "xwmconfig". It's installed by > > > default. > > > > > > It uses dialog to open a semi-graphical selection tool. It scans the > > > default xinitrc files in /etc/X11/xinitrc/, presents a list, and copies > > > the select file into the user's ~/.xinitrc file. startx run runs this > > > xinitrc script to launch the desktop. > > > > > > if ~/.xinitrc is not readable, or if xwmconfig is launched as a different > > > user (e.g. root), then it might not have the intended effect. > > > > Ben, > > > > Please re-read my original post. > > > > Thanks, > > > > Rich
