Gtk-Warning **: Cannot open display

[Kevin Kinsey]

Barnaby Scott wrote:

> So now I can strat Firefox from an xterm, but 2 things still puzzle me 
> though:
> 1) Forgive my stupidity, but why can I not start Firefox from the 
> console? Or rather, what could I do to make it do so with a single command?

I'm perfectly willing to be wrong, flamed, and corrected, but my counter
question (and it seems a good one to me):  how do you expect to run a
graphical program in a non-graphical environment?

If you wish, you could add firefox to your ~/.xinitrc or
(? .Xresources ?) file, and then firefox would be called when
you called "startx" to invoke X Windows.

> 2) I thought Firefox wasn't going to start from the xterm, but really it 
> just took ages - far longer than I am used to with my old OS (same 
> machine). Is there something I am missing here too?

I couldn't say.  I've used firefox, and more often the entire Mozilla
suite (which is now 'Seamonkey').  It probably starts slower and hangs
more often than any other program I run on FreeBSD, (with the possible
exception of the "xrayswarm" screen saver) but I can't say why or that
I've even done much investigating.  I did build a 'debug' version
of Seamonkey last time, but I've not yet done anything with it.  FWIW,
it seems a tad less prone to some of the behavior I saw with Mozilla
(which seems strange, perhaps).

Of course, I use it heavily, so perhaps that characterization is
flawed.

Kevin Kinsey