xdm for RS6000s?

[Chin Fang]

Hi, I am working on a project at my school's computer center to make all    
workstations having the same greeting face to users.  This involves writing
a shell script, I call it x which does all sorts of things for the user,
like setting up FONTPATH, MANPATH, checking whether /bin/X is in the user's
PATH and whether the user is silly enough to try to run more than one server
on one machine etc.  

A minor problem that I have found out is that IBM, in it's arrogance, didn't
even provide xdm client. (correct me if I am wrong).  Furthermore, IBM forces
RS6000 users to use the by now infamous xinit script (instead of a binary 
executable) and uses that ackward Cntl-Alt-Bkspc stuff.  

The console is not much useful without a X on it.  Since we have set up xdm 
for our DECstations, we would like to do the same for RS6000s too. Because I 
am handling this job, I would like to know if anyone has taken this route
already? If so, could someone tell me how straightforward it is?  Now I am
pretty leery about RS6000's software environment. But no matter what I am 
going to build xdm on it and never let the ugly 25 lines stuff show up in
day light again.  But I would be very appreciative if anyone can tell me 
any problems that were encountered in so doing and get arounds/solutions
before I dive in sometime next week. 

Finally, I also wonder why so many people are willing to put up IBM?  It
didn't even provide MOST standard X11R4 clients from the core distribution!
Not even xkill.  Why IBM dares to do this?  Just because it's big?  I have
seen people flame Sun and the like, why IBM can get by doing this kind of 
silly thing?  Unless I am wrong somehow.

This is not to say that I don't like the machine.  On the contrary, other
then the STUPID flickering display in graphic mode, it's a very lively 
machine with very good float point performance.  Nice for medium number 
crunching jobs.

Look forward to hearing any input/thought

Regards,

Chin Fang
Mechanical Engineering Department
Stanford University
fangchin at leland.stanford.edu