Start X will not start the GUI

swamprat · 04-03-2020, 11:22 AM

Greetings, I downloaded a bare bones copy of Debian, Looks like its Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster) and all it does on start up is it brings me to a prompt in a bash shell.

I downloaded all the suggested packages suggested by a web post I found which took over an hour, like about 1,200 packages. But when I keyed in 'start x' or just 'startx' the gui doesn't come up. The GUI was supposed to be KDE. Command startx returns 'command not found'.

A further post suggested keying in XINIT first then the Start X command. This returns same results. After trying a number of things, one time I got '$DISPLAY' not found or not configured.

I'm hoping some one out there can help resolve this problem. Thanks.

~$ startkde

drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 512 Mar 31 12:18 .
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 512 Mar 31 12:40 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2353 Feb 13 2019 plasma.desktop
root@win10-64bit:/usr/share/xsessions#

$DISPLAY is not set or cannot connect to the X server. Where would I find the '$DISPLAY' file?

In /usr/shr/xsessions is an entry 'plasma.desktop'

I also created a file in my home Directory .dmrc with the following entry
[Desktop]
Session-kde.plasma

phantom_cyph · 04-03-2020, 11:49 AM

What system are you using? What graphics card? Why Debian 9 rather than 10? Need more information..

michaelk · 04-03-2020, 12:04 PM

What package name did you use to install plasma?

Did you follow the debian howto?

https://wiki.debian.org/KDE

swamprat · 04-03-2020, 01:00 PM

I did read the doc suggested in the last post but it still isn't working. System comes up at a user prompt for Bash.

After checking I have posted the version of Debian which is V10.

Based on the information which I provided, and I hope this is enough, I need to know which files need to be fixed to be able to use the startx command to start kde. All the KDE components appear to be installed.

Thanks

frankbell · 04-03-2020, 07:44 PM

Quote:

I downloaded all the suggested packages suggested by a web post I found

Link?

ondoho · 04-04-2020, 02:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by swamprat

Command startx returns 'command not found'.

That's fairly obvious.
Did you install the xinit package???

erik2282 · 04-04-2020, 05:20 PM

Did it install a login manager? sddm or lightdm? If not, install one of them.

BW-userx · 04-04-2020, 05:25 PM

". Command startx returns 'command not found'."
as ondoho asked,
xorg, and xorg-init, xinit installed?
did you create a .xinitrc file and chmod +x .xinitrc?
in that file did you add something like this?

Code:

#!/bin/sh
#  xinitrc.xfce - modified to work around xfce4session bug
#                 https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8841


########################################################################
##  Merge in defaults and keymaps                                     ##
########################################################################

userresources=$HOME/.Xresources
usermodmap=$HOME/.Xmodmap
sysresources=/etc/X11/xinit/.Xresources
sysmodmap=/etc/X11/xinit/.Xmodmap

if [ -f $sysresources ]; then
    /usr/bin/xrdb -merge $sysresources
fi

if [ -f $sysmodmap ]; then
    /usr/bin/xmodmap $sysmodmap
fi

if [ -f $userresources ]; then
    /usr/bin/xrdb -merge $userresources
fi

if [ -f $usermodmap ]; then
    /usr/bin/xmodmap $usermodmap
fi

########################################################################
##  Start xfce Desktop Environment                                    ##
########################################################################

if [ -z "$DESKTOP_SESSION" -a -x /usr/bin/ck-launch-session ]; then
  exec ck-launch-session dbus-launch --exit-with-session /usr/bin/startxfce4
else
  exec dbus-launch --exit-with-session /usr/bin/startxfce4
fi

to start the desktop of your choice?

colorpurple21859 · 04-04-2020, 07:24 PM

what web post did you follow? Post link to web post that you followed

frankbell · 04-04-2020, 08:20 PM

This article from the Arch Wiki may be helpful: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xinit