How to force boot with xfce

**mynot** · February 27th, 2014

Hi. I've been running Xubuntu 13.10 with xfce environment and thought I'd try Cinnamon which I'd installed some time ago. It seems ok until I open any of the panel items (eg Menu), at which point it appears to lock, ie it won't accept keystrokes or mouseclicks. This means I can't select Logout from the menu and thus can't get back to xfce. How can I tell Xubuntu to boot with xfce? (I have several Linux os's on the system and a rescue cd).
Note that I'm not interested in solving the problem with Cinnamon, only getting back to xfce.
Thanks

**ajgreeny** · February 27th, 2014

One of the problems of using autologin is that the system automatically goes to the last chosen DE. If you can not get to the logion screen for the reason you cite here, and do not know how to kill a frozen xsession, you can not get to a login screen to change to a different DE.
From your running cinnamon desktop, there is probably a command to stop the cinnamon session, but never having used cinnamon I do not have a clue what it may be.

So as a workaround you can hold Rt Alt+Print screen+K to kill the xsession. This should get you back to the lightdm login screen, where you can again choose Xubuntu session.

**zvacet** · February 27th, 2014

On login screen you can choose witch desktop you want to start.Select xfce and login.

**Bucky Ball** · February 27th, 2014

Hit Ctl+Alt+F1. This will give you a command line. Type 'sudo reboot now' (without the apostrophes). Enter password, hit enter and the machine should reboot.

When you get to the login screen click 'Sessions' and choose xfce session.

* Just realised it won't accept keystrokes. Scratch that. But give it a try anyway ...

**Bashing-om** · February 27th, 2014

mynot; Hi !
How a bout this approach ?
Boot up with "text" as a boot parameter (grub boot menu)
I expect you will boot to a text terminal;
Login-> username and password;
What results from either (as we do not know what is set up in the control file ~/.xinitrc)

Code:

startx
##or##
startxfce4

Then perhaps we can see about removing cinnamon(??).

When all else fails

there is always the command line

**zvacet** · February 27th, 2014

Boot in recovery mode and type

Code:

nano /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf

find the lines

Code:

autologin-guest=false 
 autologin-user=username
 autologin-user-timeout=0
 autologin-session=lightdm-autologin

and make them look like this

Code:

#autologin-guest=false 
#autologin-user=username
#autologin-user-timeout=0
#autologin-session=lightdm-autologin

Ctrl+X to exit and save file and that is it.Reboot and you should find on login screen option to login to xfce.

**mynot** · February 28th, 2014

Thanks for the replies. After getting things into a worse muddle ZVACET's suggestion to edit lightdm finally solved the problem.

Now, can anyone please point me to a good description of what happens between Linux loading and the desktop being displayed? What, for example, is the relationship between Linux, X11, lightdm and xfce? What configuration files are used? (Not asking anyone to answer these questions - just point me to a source.) At the moment it's a mystery and solving problems is a matter of picking posts more or less at random and trying things.

Thanks again.

**Bucky Ball** · February 28th, 2014

Please mark this thread as solved to help others and start a new thread with any other questions. These new ones are unrelated to your thread title and you have more chance of support in a new thread. Thanks.