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Launch Sessions

LXQt X11 sessions are launched by a script startlxqt while LXQt Wayland sessions are launched by startlxqtwayland instead. Both are handled by a binary ("session manager") lxqt-session which belongs to lxqt-session.

Launching from virtual terminals#

X11#

In Linux, add the following line to the file ~/.xinitrc.

exec startlxqt

In FreeBSD, add the following line to the file ~/.xinitrc. 

exec dbus-launch --exit-with-x11 ck-launch-session startlxqt
The session can be launched by invoking startx shell command.

Note

Ensure one of the following conditions is true regarding the ~/.xinitrc file:

  • only one entry exists
  • multiple entries follow the rules described here.

Wayland#

The Wayland session can be started directly invoking startlxqtwayland. It launches the compositor configured in "Session Settings > Wayland Settings" which should launch lxqt-session && <exit-command>.

Launching by display managers#

Display managers like SDDM, the one recommended for LXQt, or LightDM are looking for available x11 sessions in files $XDG_DATA_DIRS/xsessions/*.desktop where $XDG_DATA_DIRS is set to /usr/share/ most of the times,while for the Wayland sessions the directory is /usr/share/wayland-sessions/.

LXQt is providing the files lxqt.desktop and lxqt-wayland.desktop (if lxqt-wayland-session is installed) so its sessions should normally be detected and made available by display managers automatically, restarting the latter may be needed upon installing LXQt.

Note if LXQt was installed in /usr/local file lxqt.desktop is stored in /usr/local/share/xsessions which is not considered by most display managers. So you'll either have to copy the file to /usr/share/xsessions/ or create a symbolic link.

Known Issues#

Fixing crashes for apps using dbus-daemon (common when using lxqt-config-monitor)#

Important: This applies only to systems running systemd which have this problem.

On some systems (like the default ArchLinux install), dbus-daemon is started as a systemd service before the xserver thus it has no $DISPLAY variable set in it's environment, leding to crashes. Systemd by default includes a script to fix this by fetching the variables in /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/50-systemd-user.sh. If you encounter this kind of crash add the following lines to your .xinitrc before exec startlxqt

if [ -d /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d ] ; then
 for f in /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/?*.sh ; do
  [ -x "$f" ] && . "$f"
 done
 unset f
fi