Setting up an additional WM

Okay, so I hope there are some Xperts (its a pun get it!? :D) on X11. I guess I will explain my situation and see if anyone can help.

So I am not a big gnome fan, at all, but under some circumstances I am forced to use it on some computers that I do not have admin privs on. I want to use Awesome WM on these machines and I don't wish to virtualize an entire other operating system on a computer for performance reasons.

So my question is simple, does anyone know a way to configure the machine to load another WM upon an account login? Again, I am not a privileged user so I know it will be difficult, but it is a detail that can be overlooked if someone has some insightful information on how X11 operates.

Your .xinitrc file contains your xwindows profile/configuration. Replace the existing exec statement in this file with a statement to launch awesome (e.g. EXEC /usr/bin/awesome). This will allow you to start an Awesome X session by typing startx from a command shell.

Configuration to launch startx upon account login varies by distro.

CSR

Thank you thank you. This gave me the stepping stone I was looking for. :D

Or, if you don't WANT to screw with configuration files, you simply do one of the following:

#1. Easiest... Type "init 4" on Slackware, and "init 5" on everything else in Linux, and it loads the GUI log in screen which is normally KDM or GDM (KDM for KDE based stuff, and GDM for Gnome, but you don't have to pick Gnome from it).

#2. At your login prompt, log in, then, type one of the following:

kdm &

or

gdm &

or

xdm &

You get the idea. That loads one of those GUI log in thingers that let's you log in and select the GUI you'd like to use when you log in. KDM and GDM both ask if you want to make the X Window Manager the default for log ins after you've selected one, so it can remember it for you too.