@huskerchen:

I installed the Redhat 9 small and VNC server, from the VNC viewer I can only see one terminal window but I cannot move that xterm window. When I run the command "xterm &", the new term covered the same place, so no matter how many xterm I run, I can only see one on the top and I cannot move them. I usually use richer desktop like gnome but how can I configure my linode so I can move the xterm to see a couple of them at the same time?

Thanks!

You are running X windows without a window manager. Lovely, isn't it?

A simple window manager is twm. It's what I run all the time (properly customized of course), the default configuration works well enough for very simple stuff. In your xterm, type:

twm &

And twm will start. Then you can move windows around and resize them. There are other window managers that you can run manually too; I suggest twm only because it's just about guaranteed to be installed on your system, and it is very lightweight.

By the way, if you want to read about all kinds of window managers, check out:

http://xwinman.org

It's very helpful, hehe :)

You can configure VNC to start up any window manager you like.

Edit $HOME/.vnc/xstartup. Although I don't use X on my linode, I do use X and VNC on my home linux box. And I use KDE. So at the end of the .vnc/xstartup file, I have commented out most everything and put "startkde &" at the end. So each time you start your VNC server, it will automatically load up the windows manager of your choice. You can replace startkde with tvwm or "gnome-session" if you prefer gnome, or whatever you prefer.

When I connect, my desktop looks exactly the same as if I was logging in at the local console.

–--------------------

!/bin/sh

[ -x /etc/vnc/xstartup ] && exec /etc/vnc/xstartup

[ -r $HOME/.Xresources ] && xrdb $HOME/.Xresources

xsetroot -solid grey

startkde &

–-------------------------