Is startx deprecated

startx

startx says:

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xinit failed. /usr/bin/Xorg is not setuid, maybe that's the reason?
If so either use a display manager (strongly recommended) or adjust /etc/permissions.local and run "chkstat --system --set" afterwards

Obviously, I can chmod 4775 /usr/bin/Xorg, which will work until the next Xorg update removes the suid bit again.
However, how to "use a display manager" instead, as "strongly recommended", is not at all obvious to me!

What does this mean?

  • Is startx deprecated now?
  • What should I have typed instead?
  • Why isn't startx doing the right thing then? This is your life saver in case X goes down; likely one of the first commands one has had to learn.

I'm pretty sure my system is using a display manager.
I've got xdm, kdm, gdm, lightdm and sddm.
It boots to a desktop environment, which when logged out of shows a login screen.
In other words, a bog-standard desktop machine setup, but in case it matters, I'm using KDE on OpenSuse Tumbleweed.

I'm going to accept a properly documented, reasonably complete, list of the various specific commands that startx has been replaced with, on any Unix. If there is anything that doesn't work exactly like that on OpenSuse, I swear I'll write a bugreport. I hate seeing a user interface that we all seem to know turned upside down for purely technical reasons while nobody knows a replacement.

Best Answer

According to the 11.4 release notes, yes, startx is deprecated in SUSE. But they explain how to set the setuid bit so that it won't be lost when updating:

Users who depend on the old configuration can set the setuid bit themselves in /etc/permissions.local by removing the comment sign from the following line:

#/usr/bin/Xorg                 root:root       4711

and running SuSEconfig --module permissions afterwards.

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