Moving onto Rocky 9 from a non-Gnome non-KDE system

I have, for years, used fvwm/fvwm2 as my window mnager.I did not have and absolutely do not want:
Gnome, Gnome accessories GNome taks bars or anything else from that environment. I work exclusively with xterms under fvwm2

I do not have and absolutely do not want any form of login manger. I have survived for years using console logins (into text mode) or ssh logins. When and if I want a grahical display I have a script to start fvwm2. I can then use its coniguration to open xterms with my mouse. I don’t get thrown off or re-asked to log in after periods of apparent inactivity.

So thequestion very simply is:
How do I excise every trace of gnome such that I can run startx as and when I want.?

I have a feeling that I saw somewhere that the use of startx is deprecated.

systemctl isolate graphical.target is the current ā€œtelinit 5ā€.

Inactivity does at most start the screenlock. One can disable that.

Terminals are my main tool too. In Gnome.

I could well look at using systemd instead of startx. At the moment, I am simply being frustrated by almost everything. I wanted chrome and opera available as browsers. The topmost google advice on getting chrome ignored some security issues preventing adding the key for the google repo. found the correct answer and got both browsers installed, Went to the horrible activities page, tried to bring up a terminal, just like I’d done before. Result was spinner for about 10 seconds followed by nothing. logout/login didn’t hep. Reboot didn’t help. Log in as root and i can get a terminal. Log in as me and it’s dead.
This can get very discouraging (I won’t go into what it took to compile fvwm on rocky 9)

I do have a page on RHEL9 and clones, discussing what repos had some things and what had to be built from srpms. You can do a minimal install and install X afterwards then start it with startx. Whether RH, which seems to be the MS among Linux distributions, will gradually try to make that impossible, I think it will be awhile before they manage to do so.
My page is at RHEL9 and clones and while it doesn’t specifically mention fvwm, it might be useful for those who don’t want to install Gnome. Note that RH is deeply tied to Gnome and you’ll almost certainly have to pull in some Gnome bloat while installing packages.

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Thank you, I’;; look at that page, Some 6 or 7 years ago I installed CentOS 7 on my laptop (I may well have started with a Gnome display manager), then converted it to using fvwm2. Maybe the fact that anything that wants me to run xdgopen when I’m browsing seems to bring up Fireox (which I never use during normal browsing) is some sort of Gnome residue. I just wish I’d kept notes on what I did. I also de-Gnomed a Ubuntu instllation on 2 different work laptops, again I took no notes of what I did,

I’ve compiled fvwm2 and tried killing the Xserver on my Rocky 9 laptop, then running the xinit and xinitrc tuf copied from my CenOS laptop,

And progess of a sort, I don’t really know how Xre886 which moved to Xorg and I still ā€œunderstodā€ had moved to wayland, so I don’t really know how to stop the server and restart it with a new window manager,
I do know that Ive manged to change the non-root ā€˜terminal’ app into a time delay and exit. meaning I
have to either login as root and su to me or ssh in from outside, I was pleased to see that
ssh acer and xterm installed (to rid myself of the huge load of cruft someone thought the terminal app should have) works:

ssh -AY acer xterm
(pops up a local xterm running on the rocky9 laptop)

But:

ssh -AY acer gnome-terminal
(I think gnome-terminal is the actual terminal app, but it would not suprise me to find it’s buried deeper)
give:

Error creating terminal: Could not activate remote peer.

I realise I may seem to be obsessed with getting stuff out of my way, but the whole point of Linux is supposed to be just that. Use what you need Avoid what you don't

And we’re going the Windows way of ā€œyeah but lots and lots of people use this so it should become mandatoryā€

Error creating terminal: Could not activate remote peer.