Re: Grey screen of death?

[Gleef <dzol virtual-yellow com>]

On Sun, 7 Mar 1999 bob@kehs.ksd.org wrote:
> what is the difference between "exec gnome-session" and "gnome-session" ?

"gnome-session" alone will run gnome-session, and wait until it is
finished before continuing the .xinitrc.  This is almost never what you
want, since gnome-session shouldn't finish until you do.

"gnome-session &" will run gnome-session in the background, allowing the
rest of the .xinitrc to be accessed.  This is rarely what you want,
usually gnome-session should be the last thing that you run in the
.xinitrc.

"exec gnome-session" will run gnome-session, and dump the shell process
interpreting your .xinitrc.  Once sh hits an exec line, nothing further
gets done in that shell script, so putting anything after an exec is
usually silly.  This is the best way for most people to start
gnome-session.  Technically, "exec gnome-session" and having just
"gnome-session" as the last line in .xinitrc should work pretty much the
same, but you save wasted memory with exec.

Best of Luck,
-Gleef