Arguments immediately following the startxwin 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. By default startxwin passes '-nolisten tcp' to the server, the special server option '-listen' can be used to stop startxwin from doing this. It may be convenient to specify server options with startxwin 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 XWin(1) server and specified in the XWinrc(5) configuration. Some examples of specifying server arguments follow; consult the manual page for your X server to determine which arguments are legal.
startxwin -- -depth 16
startxwin -- -dpi 100
To determine the client to run, startxwin first looks for a file called .startxwinrc in the user's home directory. If that is not found, it uses the file startxwinrc 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, startxwin 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 startxwinrc and xserverrc files are found in the /etc/X11/xinit directory.
The .startxwinrc is typically a shell script which starts many clients according to the user's preference. When this shell script exits, startxwin kills the server and performs any other session shutdown needed. Most of the clients started by .startxwinrc should be run in the background. The last client should run in the foreground; when it exits, the session will exit. People often choose a session manager, window manager, or xterm as the ''magic'' client.
Below is a sample .startxwinrc that starts several applications and leaves the panel running as the ''last'' application. Assuming that the window manager has been configured properly, the user then chooses the ''Exit'' menu item to shut down X.
xrdb -load $HOME/.Xresources xbiff -geometry -430+5 & oclock -geometry 75x75-0-0 & xload -geometry -80-0 & xterm -geometry +0+60 -ls & xterm -geometry +0-100 & xconsole -geometry -0+0 -fn 5x7 & exec fbpanel -profile multiwindow