I replied to another message from you before seeing this one where you've already answered some of my questions I asked on that one.
Nov 3, 2026 3:47:13 PM Greg Wooledge <[email protected]>: > > On Tue, Nov 03, 2026 at 15:29:51 -0800, Donald MacDougall wrote: >> Fair enough. I misunderstood your usage of the term "omit". I thought you >> were referring to thing I did surrounding the occurrence of the problem. I >> wasn't thinking of things that I've always done for 20 plus years. I'd been >> logging in from the command line long before I ever installed X11. > > I also use startx. It's not common these days, but it's still supported. > Good to know. >> In fact another detail I've omitted from years back is the fact that I >> installed and used X11 many years before I installed XFCE. I downloaded and >> installed my own choice of applications such as Gnumeric and several >> different word professors. I looked at Gnome and KDE and found them too big >> and unnecessary. XFCE seemed to just provide a desktop and leave me to still >> choose my own apps. I don't really remember why I installed it. I did it >> probably 10 years ago or less. > > XFCE runs on top of X11. Yes, it's "just a desktop (environment)" and > you'll add other applications to run on top of XFCE. > > XFCE is one of the common choices among desktop environments. If it > works for you, that's fantastic. I can't personally help with it, > but there are other people who can. > Presumably because you don't use it, and maybe any DE at all? >> Probably obvious since X11 isn't running. >> Maybe I should uninstall XFCE and just go back to X11. > > You need to figure out what's wrong, first. Just randomly uninstalling > things that you use isn't likely to help you diagnose the issue. > > (Besides, what window manager or desktop environment would you be using > if you uninstalled XFCE? You really need *some* window manager. I vaguely recall that I tried several different window managers way back when and settled on one that was somewhat MS Windows like. Some of the ones I tried were so minimalistic that I found them hard to figure out how to use. They seemed to appeal to the real techies . > > Check everything that you can check: > > * Disk space. > * Any significant kernel errors in dmesg. > * Any significant errors in ~/.xsession-errors (this can be a very > noisy log file even when everything's working, sadly). > * Any significant errors in your Xorg.0.log file. > * Any significant errors in journalctl. > * Starting X with just an xterm (startx xterm). > * Whatever else I've forgotten, that anyone else in this thread might > have suggested looking at. > I will try to commandeer my wife's computer and send some of the log files and . xsession-errors and such to see if you or anyone can spot something meaningful that I don't understand. Don
