STARTX(1)                                                     General Commands Manual                                                    STARTX(1)

NAME

       startx - initialize an X session

SYNOPSIS

       startx [ [ client ] options ... ] [ -- [ server ] [ display ] options ... ]

DESCRIPTION

       The  startx  script  is  a front end to 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 startx command are used to start a client in the same manner as 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 Xorg(1) server and specified in the 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 .xinitrc in the user's home directory.  If that is not found, it  uses
       the  file  xinitrc in the xinit library directory.  If command line client options are given, they override this behavior and revert to the
       xinit(1) behavior.  To determine the server to run, startx first looks for a file called .xserverrc in the user's home directory.  If  that
       is  not  found,  it  uses  the file xserverrc in the xinit library directory.  If command line server options are given, they override this
       behavior and revert to the xinit(1) behavior.  Users rarely need to provide a .xserverrc file.  See  the  xinit(1)  manual  page  for  more
       details on the arguments.

       The system-wide xinitrc and xserverrc files are found in the /etc/X11/xinit directory.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

       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  -auth  argument,  from automatically setting up insecure host-based authentication for the local host.
                                See the Xserver(1) and Xsecurity(7) manual pages for more information on X client/server authentication.

FILES

       $(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 .xinitrc file.

       /etc/X11/xinit/xserverrc Server to run if the user has no .xserverrc file.

SEE ALSO

       xinit(1), X(7), Xserver(1), Xorg(1), xorg.conf(5)

X Version 11                                                        xinit 1.3.2                                                          STARTX(1)