first of all, read 'man X':
STARTING UP
There are two main ways of getting the X server and an initial set of
client applications started. The particular method used depends on
what operating system you are running and whether or not you use other
window systems in addition to X.
you will learn, that, depending on how you bring up the xserver, 2 scripts are used for starting things after the xserver came up:
- .xinitrc (for when you launched the session via
startx
(which fires up xinit
))
- .xsession (for when you logged into your system via a display manager (xdm))
(i personally ln -s .xinitrc .xsession
, so it does not matter, how i bring up the xserver).
depending on what you use to log into your system (and i think it is either gdm or kdm these days), things get a bit different. normally gdm and kdm (and other display managers as well) offer the user to select the "user session" or something similar labeled. if you pick this "user-session" then mostly these display managers will launch ~/.xsession
. you would be responsible for bringing up your applications AND the desktop environment / windowmanager.
the other possible solution is to find out how the different desktop environments / windowmanagers support the concept of "autostart". i personally avoid these mechanisms and stick to the good old .xinitrc / .xsession
way.
an example .xinitrc would look like:
xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap
xsetxkbmap de
autocutsel &
xflux -l 52
exec /usr/bin/fluxbox