content/blog/2022-10-30-linux-display-manager.org
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Void Linux: Remove the Display Manager
Display Manager Services
In order to change the display manager on Void Linux - or any other Linux distribution - you need to identify the currently enabled display manager.
Disabling the Current Display Manager
Void Linux only has one optical disc image (ISO) available for download with a
pre-built display manager at the time of this post: the XFCE ISO. If you've
installed this version, the pre-assigned display manager is lxdm. If you
installed another display manager, replace lxdm in the following command with
the display manager you have installed.
To disable lxdm, simply remove the service symlink:
sudo rm /var/service/lxdmEnabling a New Display Manager
If you want to enable a new display manager, you can do so after lxdm is
disabled. Make sure to replace <new_display_manager> with your new DM, such as
gdm, xdm, etc.
sudo ln -s /etc/sv/<new_display_manager> /var/service
Set Up .xinitrc
Depending on your setup, you may need to create a few X files, such as
~/.xinitrc. For my personal set-up, I created this file to launch the i3wm as
my desktop.
nano ~/.xinitrc#!/bin/sh
exec i3
If you run a desktop other than i3, simply replace i3 with the shell command
that launches that desktop.
Set Up Your Shell Profile
Finally, in order to automatically launch an X session upon login, you will need
to edit the .bash_profile (bash) or .zprofile (zsh) files for your shell:
nano ~/.zprofile
Add the following snippet to the end of the shell profile file. This will
execute the startx command upon login.
if [ -z "${DISPLAY}" ] && [ "${XDG_VTNR}" -eq 1 ]; then
exec startx
fi
Alternatively, you can ignore this step and simply choose to manually execute
startx upon login. This can be useful if you have issues with your desktop or
like to manually launch different desktops by choice.