X without Display Manager

Usually, the X11 session is started by a Display manager. However, when running a single-user system you may find display managers an unnecessary waste of resources. Fortunately, you can start X11 session without a display manager.

Using startx
The standard X11 distribution contains startx, a small script which can be used to start X11 session from a terminal (it's installed by ).

In order to start X11 this way, type in:

This will start the X11 server with default options and try to find an X11 session (e.g. a desktop environment) to start.

If you'd like to specify the session (program to start) yourself, you can do so as an argument to startx:

You can also pass X11 server options, by preceding them with a double dash:

Using a dedicated session runner
Some of the desktop environments provide their own replacements for startx. For example, Xfce4 provides startxfce4: