How to start X and Unity, without gdm?

Solution 1:

Unity needs gdm to be able to start, so you need to start it:

service start gdm

or the good old:

/etc/init.d/gdm start

If you don't want to have to enter your credentials again you can either activate autologin in Gdm or switch the default session to classic in gdm. After login off and stopping gdm, startx should work again.

Solution 2:

startx gets its configuration from the systemwide /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc if you don't have a ~/.xinitrc of your own. I'm on a KDE system so I can't test this, but I think making a ~/.xinitrc for your user with:

exec $HOME/.gnome2/session

might help. If you don't have a gnome session file there, then use /usr/share/gnome/default.session

Solution 3:

Try to create a .xsession file in your home directory like this:

gnome-session --session=classic-gnome