#linux customization

I hate display managers, because they’re set up to work with desktop environments, not bare window managers. Here’s my solution.

I write a .xinitrc-style file for each window manager I care to have on my system.

I put them each in directories under a directory I made, ~/.sessions, like so.

~/.sessions/”1 i3-gaps” ~/.sessions/”2 CWM”

and so on. Lastly, I put an empty folder called “6 Console.”

then I put the following script in a file called z-login.sh in /etc/profile.d:

if [[ "$LOGNAME" == "alloca" ]] # substitute your username here then        if [[ "`tty`" == "/dev/tty1" ]]        then                clear                figlet Welcome                echo ls -1 /home/alloca/.sessions | /bin/sh | fzf +m --layout=reverse-list --prompt="Choose a Desktop: " --no-info --height=7 | read sessionpath                if [[ "$sessionpath" == "6 Console" ]] # Replace this with whatever number your empty folder ended up being.                then                        clear                else                        startx /home/alloca/.sessions/"$sessionpath"/init                        logout                fi        fi fi

Make sure you have fzf and figlet installed for this. If you don’t want an ascii art “Welcome” banner you can just delete the “figlet Welcome” line instead. Also make sure you don’t have a session manager activated in systemd.

fzf is like dmenu for the terminal. I’ve used several programs that badly want to be fzf, but it took me this long to find fzf itself!

You’ll login at the console logind prompt, then after all the other login scripts, z-login.sh will be run automatically, and you will see a very elegant and minimalist menu.

This is what it looks like, though this is a dry run in a terminal:

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Operating System: MX-21.3 “Wildflower”.

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Based On: Debian version 11.6

Desktop: Xfce 4.18.0

Support for this version ends: June 2026

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Changed System Panel and Colours

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