Starting user software in X

There are currently many ways of starting software when a user session starts.

This is an attempt to collect a list of pointers to piece the big picture together. It's partial and some parts might be imprecise or incorrect, but it's a start, and I'm happy to keep it updated if I receive corrections.

x11-common

man xsession

systemd --user

dbus activation

X session manager

xdg autostart

Other startup notes

~/.Xauthority

To connect to an X server, a client needs to send a token from ~/.Xauthority, which proves that they can read the user's provate data.

~/.Xauthority contains a token generated by display manager and communicated to X at startup.

To view its contents, use xauth -i -f ~/.Xauthority list