On Tue, Nov 11, 2014 at 11:34 AM, James B. Byrne <byrnejb at harte-lyne.ca> wrote: > >> >> Try including the session manager in the startx invocation, e.g., >> >> startx /usr/bin/mate-session >> >> (Or whaterever the MATE session manager is called. I'm guessing the >> above by analogy with gnome-session.) >> > > Yes! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. > > Now, to test this I removed Gnome3 rather than start over with a fresh > install. So it is possible that installing Gnome Desktop makes some > configuration change of which I am unaware that permits Mate to work > thereafter. However, using startx /usr/bin/mate-session does indeed bring up > the Mate desktop without Gnome3 installed. > > This whole exercise in frustration was due to the fact that I am singularly > unimpressed with the Gnome3 experience. Others have made all the arguments > and comments respecting its opaqueness and inflexibility that I can think of; > and quite a few more besides. So, suffice to say, it will not be installed > here. > > What I cannot understand is why an Enterprise Distro is packaging an evidently > tablet based GUI to begin with. Where do they think RHEL gets installed; cell > phones? > I've always heard that managing software developers is like herding cats - so the direction goes more or less toward what someone wants to write instead of what would be most useful. I mostly run remote sessions under x2go, where gnome3 won't work at all so I'm using MATE on CentOS 7. But I don't really object to having the gnome desktop installed if it brings along settings and maybe some applications to help things work. Disk space is cheap. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com