22.1. The X display manager
The display manager is the first thing a user usually sees when sitting down at the computer. It is not required; many users disable the display manager and start X from the text console or from their .login script by running startx (which itself is a wrapper for the xinit program, which starts the X server).
On the other hand, the display manager sports an attractive, user-friendly login screen and adds some extra configurability. The display manager can allow remote logins to other X servers through the XDMCP protocol. It can also handle display authentication (see Client authentication on page 745). The original display manager is called xdm (for X display manager), but modern replacements such as gdm ...
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