Once my computer has started, prompts me to log in. The login manager that I use is LightDM (However, in my days using arch linux, I used a script that automagically started X using .xinitrc when I log into tty1. That script went into .bashprofile). There isn’t much to say about a login manager because it’s pretty common. It asks for a username and a password. Then lets me choose a Xsession to log into.

Since there isn’t much to talk about the login manager, I’d also like to talk about xsession in the same post. As a more easy/common environment, I have xfce installed. To be used by my parents/brother when they occasionally use this computer. There isn’t much interesting stuff in there. However, my other and main work environment is much more interesting. Which is a plain old awesome window manager called awesome.

It will take another post to describe all the nitty gritty details about how awesome is set up, however, what I’d like to share in this post is, how I start awesome from the login manager. It’s not a very fancy trick, it’s not even a trick. It’s the classic way to opening a session. It’s a file called .xsession in my home directory. It’s a bash script that is run every time I start X with startx command or in my case, by LightDM every time I log in. My current .xsession file is as following. You can see all the applications that are started automagically when I log in to my computer.

exec xmodmap .Xmodmap &
exec urxvtd &
exec ~/scripts/xflux -l 23 &
exec conky &
exec conky -c ~/.conkytime &
exec thunar &
#(sleep 4 && exec awsetbg -r ~/wallpapers/) &
exec dropbox start &
exec xfce4-clipman &
exec firefox &
exec emacs --daemon &
exec goldendict &
exec mpd ~/.mpd/config &
exec awesome