I've become attached to some console programs and had been running them in a sort of console window manager called "twin" on a second VT. Works nicely (if you can get the right vga mode to work with your video card) but there are some inconveniences--for example if you need to run some X app when you try opening an email attachment or something. The combination of those two problems led me to consider instead running a lightweight, console-like WM on that second VT. I decided on ion3, since I've had some experience with that.
I discovered through some web searching that setting this up to work "manually" was very easy under Debian. It was easy because Debian apparently does not use an .xinitrc file found in the user's home dir when starting up Xwindows on display :0 (hope I've said that at least somewhat correctly). However if you create an .xinitrc file in your home directory that points to a valid WM binary on your system, then start Xwindows on display :1 in a second VT, it will use that .xinitrc file and get the WM running on the second display. This can be either a second copy of the same WM or a different WM altogether. One can alternate between the two by use of the ctrl-alt-F7 and ctrl-alt-F8 keys. An example of the command line way of doing this is to press ctrl-alt-F2 to get to the second VT and a (login, then) command prompt. From the prompt, simply issue startx -- :1.
Works fine. The question I'm currently trying to resolve however, is getting the WM to start up automatically in the second VT. This should happen either after I log into the system (using xdm), or, short of that, automatically. I gather it can be done by editing inittab, though I'm not sure of the exact syntax. I suppose it might also be accomplished by editing/creating some xdm config file. A third way might involve tweaking startx. And this is what I'd like to ask advice on.
Finally, my question. Can anyone offer suggestions on ways of getting the second WM running on display :1 automatically? E.g., after I log in to xdm? Hope this will be as easy as it seems.
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