LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Objective 4: Install and Customize a Window Manager Environment

The selection of a desktop environment for X is a personal decision. At a minimum, you need a window manager such as twm to provide basic window frames, menus, and controls. On the more elaborate side, an integrated working environment such as KDE or GNOME offers a rich set of applications. Regardless of how you configure your desktop, it's important to understand some basic customization techniques.

Starting X and a Default Window Manager

Starting XFree86 can be as simple as issuing the X command as root. However, X alone doesn't give you a working environment. At the very least, you also need to start a window manager and an application and set up basic X access authority. (X authority configuration is beyond the scope of the LPIC Level 1 certification and is not covered in this book.) You may also wish to choose from among multiple desktop environments and window managers installed on your system.

The XFree86 start up process

Assuming for the moment that we're not using xdm, the process of starting X goes like this:

1. The user issues the startx command. This is a script provided by XFree86 and often modified by distributors and administrators. startx is intended as a frontend to xinit.

2. startx calls xinit with two main arguments:

   1. An Xinitrc script, which contains X programs to run. This script could be .xinitrc from the user's home directory, or if that doesn't exist, a systemwide default found in /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc ...