Building and Starting Xorg

The X.Org projects are hosted at https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/. The xorg/xserver project builds the X server executables, including X and Xorg. The xorg/app/xinit project builds xinit and its startx wrapper.

Starting a Session #

startx invokes xinit, which starts an X server and then a client session. With no explicit client script, it uses the conventional user configuration or system defaults. The server normally creates a local Unix socket such as /tmp/.X11-unix/X0 and sets a corresponding display number. Desktop display managers perform the same broad tasks but additionally manage login, seats, and session lifetime.

On contemporary Linux systems, Xorg is generally started without permanent root privilege. Device and seat access are commonly mediated by logind or an equivalent seat manager; distribution packaging determines the supported startup path.