Re: Towards an instructive minimalist intall of Openbox
On Wed 13 Aug 2014 at 00:03:54 -0600, Bob Proulx wrote:
> Brian wrote:
> >
> > A "correctly" set up X on Debian uses ~/.xsession and not ~/.xinitrc.
> > (I kept the quotes because you said they are significant).
>
> Brian, I can't tell if you are joking or not. :-) But obviously a
> correctly set up X could use either a .xsession file or a .xinitrc
> file. The choice depends upon what is trying to be achieved. And
We know that using startx with ~/.xsession means files in Xsession.d at
/etc/X11 are sourced and that using ~/.xinitrc means those files are not
sourced.
The man page for startx says:
To determine the client to run, startx first looks for a file
called .xinitrc in the user's home directory. If that is not
found, it uses the file xinitrc in the xinit library directory.
The system-wide xinitrc and xserverrc files are found in the
/etc/X11/xinit directory.
If ~/.xinitrc is found /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc is not used.
Because of system design a ~/.xsession is likely to lead to users
encountering fewer problems and having less grief. If there is a counter
argument for recommending ~/.xinitrc for the majority of users I have
yet to see it spelled out.
If the benefits of ~/.xsession do not matter to a user then purposefully
setting out to avoid Xsession.d and to handle everything in ~/.xinitrc
would be ok. The issue is that, AFAICS, such purpose is usually not
stated and ~/.xinitrc is recommended on the basis of historical usage
with little regard for how Debian structures X. The web is awash with
advice to use ~/.xinitrc, which is fine for Arch Linux users but
suboptimal for most people with Debian and startx.
> I know you are aware that there is also the .xsessionrc file too.
With ~/.xsession this file (if it exists) is automatically sourced;
~/.xinitrc would have to be told about it. This is a situation where the
lazy route is to be preferred. :)
(I have seen it advised to put 'xterm &' and 'exec WindowManager' in
.xsessionrc. Following the advice usually leads to great wailing and
gnashing of teeth).
> I use a .xsession file when using one of the xdm programs. But since
> recently when gnome and gdm abandoned my hardware I have been using
> xinit again and an .xinitrc file. It is working correctly in that
> combination.
For your setup I'm sure it does. But try getting power management to
work with Xfce and the same setup as a Wheezy user.
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