Man page 1 : startx

startx - initialize an X session

startx [ [ client] options. . . ] [

-- [ server] [ display] options. . . ]

The startx script is a front end to

R xinit (1) that provides a somewhat nicer user interface for running a single session of the X Window System. It is often run with no arguments.

Arguments immediately following the startxcommand are used to start a client in the same manner as

R xinit (1). The special argument '--' marks the end of client arguments and the beginning of server options. It may be convenient to specify server options with startx to change on a per-session basis the default color depth, the server's notion of the number of dots-per-inch the display device presents, or take advantage of a different server layout, as permitted by the

R Xorg (1) server and specified in the

R xorg.conf (5) configuration. Some examples of specifying server arguments follow; consult the manual page for your X server to determine which arguments are legal.

startx -- -depth 16

startx -- -dpi 100

startx -- -layout Multihead

To determine the client to run,

startx first looks for a file called .xinitrcin the user's home directory. If that is not found, it uses the file xinitrcin the xinitlibrary directory. If command line client options are given, they override this behavior and revert to the

R xinit (1) behavior. To determine the server to run,

startx first looks for a file called .xserverrcin the user's home directory. If that is not found, it uses the file xserverrcin the xinitlibrary directory. If command line server options are given, they override this behavior and revert to the

R xinit (1) behavior. Users rarely need to provide a .xserverrcfile. See the

R xinit (1) manual page for more details on the arguments.

The system-wide xinitrcand xserverrcfiles are found in the /etc/X11/xinitdirectory.

• DISPLAY
                           This variable gets set to the name of the display to which clients should connect. Note that this gets set , not read.
• XAUTHORITY
                           This variable, if not already defined, gets set to $(HOME)/.Xauthority . This is to prevent the X server, if not given the -authargument, from automatically setting up insecure host-based authentication for the local host. See the

R Xserver (1) and Xsecurity (7) manual pages for more information on X client/server authentication.

• $(HOME)/.xinitrc
                           Client to run. Typically a shell script which runs many programs in the background.
• $(HOME)/.xserverrc
                           Server to run. The default is X .
• /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc
                           Client to run if the user has no .xinitrcfile.
• /etc/X11/xinit/xserverrc
                           Server to run if the user has no .xserverrcfile.

R xinit (1),

R X (7),

R Xserver (1),

R Xorg (1),

R xorg.conf (5)