start another X session

You can have two sessions of your window manager running. Just open up another terminal (CTL+ALT+F2) and type:

startx -- :1

changes to .Xdefaults

You can change the default behavior of some applications that run in X Window by adding lines to the file .Xdefaults, in your home directory.

For example, this will change the default background and foreground colors in Emacs:

emacs.Background: lightskyblue4
emacs.Foreground: ivory

To make comments, start the line with an exclamation mark (!).

To make you changes take effect, issue the following command:

xrdb -merge $HOME/.Xdefaults

change default window manager on Debian

In order to change the default window manager, you need to issue the following command:

update-alternatives --config x-window-manager

set gradient background

To set a background for your desktop that looks something like a sunrise, do the following:

xsri --vgradient --color navy --color2 navajowhite

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