X Window System

Learning

• A Political History of X by Keith Packard
• xplain articles
• Documentation on x.org
  • X Window System
  • X Window System Protocol
  • Xlib - C Language X Interface

Allow local users access to the display

This allows $user to connect to (show windows on) a local X server started by you.

xhost "+si:localuser:$user"

Allow remote users access to the (virtual) display

TODO: Look into:

• xserver-xorg-video-dummy
• xvfb
• xpra

References:

• https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Extreme_Multihead

Startup scripts

Use $HOME/.xinitrc if you want to set up your session from scratch. Use $HOME/.xsession if you want /etc/X11/Xsession.d/* to set up a basic session for you (such as D-Bus, im-config, GPG agent, SSH agent) and leave simply starting the window manager (and any other startup applications) to you.

See also:

• Starting the X Window System in the Debian Reference
• XSession on the Debian Wiki
• CustomXSession on the Ubuntu Wiki