4.2. Playing Games In X Without a Window Manager
When playing a game under X, you should consider starting X without a window manager (WM). Heavyweight WMs, like Enlightenment, or full-blown desktop environments like GNOME or KDE, may produce a noticeable slow down. Even lightweight WMs, like twm, rob your CPU of clock cycles (and in twm's case, even full screen games will have a frame around the window). Running a game without a WM or DE depends on how you access X. If you usually log in to a Virtual Console and start X with "startx" try the following:
Modify ~/.xinitrc , which tells X what to run upon starting. Here is what my .xinitrc looks like:
#quake3 +set r_gldriver libGR.so.1
#exec ut
#lsdldoom -server 2
#exec tribes2
exec /usr/bin/enlightenment
You'll usually see a window or desktop manager being executed from this file (GNOME or KDE). Comment out the lines containing the WM or desktop manager with a pound sign (#) and place your game on a new line with any command line arguments you want to pass. If the game is not located in your $PATH, give its full path name.
If you log directly into X using gdm, then things are a little different. These instructions are for gdm 2.4 or greater. They *may* work with kde, but I cannot say for certain.
First, check your gdm.conf (usually in /etc/X11/gdm or /etc/gdm ) file for a line that says begins "SessionDesktopDir=blah ". One of the directories listed as options should be "/usr/share/xsessions ", and is the directory which will be used in this example. As root, change to the "/usr/share/xsessions " directory and take a look at its contents. It should contain some .desktop files, each corresponding to an entry you'll see in gdm's Session menu, e.g gnome.desktop , enlightenment.destop . This example will show you how to log in to Doom3. Copy any of the desktop files to "doom3.desktop " and open the new file in your favourite text editor. The file will be full of alternative languages, so cut out everything you don't want and make the file look like this:
[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=DOOM III
Comment=iD's Doom III
#if game is not in path, remember to put the full path here
Exec=/usr/games/doom3/doom3
# no icon yet, only the top three are currently used
Icon=
Type=Application
Save the file and log out of your window manager. At the gdm login screen, you should now see "DOOM III " as an option in "Sessions". Naturally you can add a .desktop file for each game you have installed
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