I am trying to use Nix to run a GUI app and I would like to replace the Fluxbox window manager that launches when running a GUI app with XFCE.
I tried to follow the XFCE documentation’s “getting started” guide close-ish
I installed all of the included packages with xfce (as listed by the Debian documentation here: Xfce - Debian Wiki, because Nix doesn’t have any).
dbus, xrdb, and xinit are also installed because previous errors when starting xfce said they were missing.
I have the .replit file running startxfce4
See the repl here (if not updated): https://replit.com/@B2server/Desktop-test
I am currently dealing with errors related to x-server already running, and dbus not working properly (see the replit for exact errors, copy paste from the console isn’t working for some reason)
I do wonder if it is even possible at all.
Any help is appreciated 
Sorry, Replit is normally too small to run XFCE. You could always try making a portable version from source, but it’ll take up too much space. From what I know, the only other desktops you can run on the platform (via nix) are i3, awesomewm, and openbox. For example running i3 needs to kill fluxbox and not Xorg first:
$ nix-env -iA nixpkgs.i3
$ pkill fluxbox
$ i3
You will need to do something similar if you somehow get XFCE build from source.
Wishing you luck!
- pxlmastr
Would LXQT be possible instead? I’ve tried it instead, and dbus is also a problem, not storage space etc.
Openbox seems to work fine with some minor tweaking but I would rather not use that or Fluxbox for multiple reasons…
I assume it’s not possible to run any “standard” DE because of that dbus thing, but I just thought I’d ask…
This topic was automatically closed 7 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.