This is what happens when a BSD hacker is told to use Linux

Tue Sep 20 18:31:02 PDT 2005

hi ya

On Tue, 20 Sep 2005, David Wolfskill wrote:

> > that should be defined in /etc/X11/xinit
> 
> Not really, unless Linux is doing somethiung fairly twisted:  if xinit
> is used, the logged-in user is starting X.  if xdm (or its relatives)

"linux" is twisted ... every distro has a variation of /etc/X11/xinit
that defines its system defaults ( to use kde or gnmome or fvwm or twm or
mwm as the default window manager )

> are used, a process that need not correspond to a login, or even to a
> flesh-and-blood user (what the law calls a "natural person") is starting
> X.  That's a non-trivial distinction.

if you use xdm, gdm etc... the "natural person" does NOT start X directly
as it's already up ...

> And ~/.xsession is used in xdm-created environments, while ~/.xinitrc is
> used for xinit.

you can also make .xession and .xinitrc be the same so that you
always get the same desktop environment no matter which machine
you login on that is use some foo-dm ( xdm, gdm, kdm... ) flavor of x11
login

c ya
alvin