Linux: start new X with WM

Tried to keep the title short. In this article I’ll be trying to explain how to start a new X screen with some WM in it.

I wanted to use it to launch a new X screen for gaming purposes.

The code

In a nutshell, this is code that resembles the most basic functionality of startx (without the use of xinitrc of course). I found a serious lack of documentation about this… Although it is far from hard :)

Xorg :1 -ac -config xorg-game.conf &
DISPLAY=:1 openbox

This is actually really basic. It basically tells Xorg to start a new screen. Instead of :0 (standard), this will launch on :1 -> next we only need to make a wm (in this case openbox) start in that screen.

The script will take you directly at the new screen. Getting back at your first requires ctrl+alt+f7, your new one is at ctrl+alt+f8, and the next would be at ctrl+alt+f9, and so on.