The gdm option to invoke several X sessions is wonderful. Unfortunately, there is no way to have gdm invoke .xinitrc, which is what startx does. It would be good if gdm could emulate startx's behaviour. gdm default simply invokes /etc/X11/xdm/Xsession. That script will invoke .xsession or .Xclients, but not .xinitrc. One fix is to change Xsession to also look for .xinitrc. The other is to add an option to gdm to invoke the user's .xinitrc for login.
Gnome makes use of session management rather than using .xinitrc to determine what to start at X initialization. ------- Additional Comments From 06/28/99 12:10 ------- gdm is not only for Gnome sessions - it also launches KDE, AnotherLevel, and the standard X11 Xsession. Maybe this is not really a gdm issue, but rather an Xsession issue.