HOWTO: Have another X session in a window

[ajdlinux]

GNOME 2.14 has this feature already, it's in the Desktop menu.

KDE 3.5 has a feature to start another X session (though not in a window) as well, choose Start New Session under Switch User in the K menu.

OK. Make sure you have the xnest package installed before you start,

Create a script called 'start-new-session' or whatever you want to call it. Open it with an editor and put in:

#!/bin/bash
Xnest :1 & DISPLAY=:1 startkde (NOTE: swap startkde for whatever DE you want)

Run chmod 755 on it. Run the script.

Limitations: you can only run one of these sessions at a time because it always uses display 1. If anyone has a patch for this please tell me. Also I have had some trouble getting it to work using su or sudo.

andrew

[anaximander]

You could do something like this to allow more than one nested X session:

Code: Select all

#! /bin/bash
disp=${1:?Display?}
host=${2:?Host?}
Xnest :$disp -query $host -geometry 1024x704 -name $host -kb &

Then just invoke it as start-new-session 2 hostname , etc. Could also parameterize the geometry in the same way.