I am a newbie at this and I have spent the last 4 hours doing anything and everything imaginable in order to switch deskop environments from the command line. I just want to know if that is a possibility. I know that I can do the same thing using the options provided by the desktop manager at the login scree but if autologin is disabled, can I still set a default desktop environment in either the /etc/sysconfig/windowmanager file in the Default_VM and I have made changes to the gnome.desktop file in /usr/share/xsessions to [Desktop] Session=default. I just want to know if I have exhausted my options or is this actually feasible. I hugely appreciate any help and thanks.
you’re mixing up a few things
the Display Manager (sddm, kdm, gdm, xdm) is used to chose a desktop environment and that is done with a gui, there probably is a command line display manager, one way to do what you want is from run level 3, to edit /etc/sysconfig and then to switch to full desktop by executing init 5
I don’t know if that is possible. But its the wrong way.
Just logout from your desktop. Then select the desktop you want on the login screen. The login GUI will remember that as the default for next time. And that even works if you are using autologin.