Is it possible/easy to have 2 WMs with a choice at booting time?

[jur]

I'd like to maintain 2 TC installations on my hard disk. I want to use just one partition for this.

Both cases boot microcore with Xorg, but they use different desktops, JWM and Xfce4. I use some of the same extensions on both but not all.

Is it possible to just have one, with a choice of different desktops? How about just being able to exit X and restart the alternate desktop? And can this be a boot code?

[bmarkus]

Use the "tinycore desktop=abc" boot option, for example desktop=jwm, desktop=windowlab, ... to select a WM already installed. You can also disable wbar if you wish.

It is worth to study the complete list of boot options:

http://www.tinycorelinux.com/faq.html#bootcodes

[jur]

Thanks I did have a look at the boot codes just after posting... what I lack is what the codes are for the corresponding WMs. You already gave the example for desktop=jwm, what is the one for Xfce4? I would guess desktop=Xfce4?

How would one exit X and startx the other desktop? Is it startx=jwm?

BTW, if I drop back to text mode after booting into Xfce4, there is an error message from the startxfce4 script, "Display X already running on display 0,0" or something like that. Could there be a duplicate call to start X somewhere?

[bmarkus]

You already gave the example for desktop=jwm, what is the one for Xfce4? I would guess desktop=Xfce4?

desktop=xfce4

How would one exit X and startx the other desktop? Is it startx=jwm?

Choose 'Exit to Prompt' in the Logout/Exit menu to stop X. Then just type 'startx' to restart. Do not use startxfce4, it is an internal script used by another script.

WM which will be started is defined in the /etc/sysconfig/desktop file. Edit it if you want to start another WM. You can change it while WM is running, it is used only by startx during X startup time.