I don't have any "xdm", "gdm" stuff but would like to start my windows manager directly at startup, cause I'm the only one that use it. here is my solution: I use runlevel 3 as default, and add a line of code in "/etc/conf.d/local.start": su - myname -c startx& this works just fine except my scim panel would not shown as before, but if I login in normally with my user name, and type "startx" manually, everything works perfect. I'm wondering what is the difference with those two steps that cause the problem, "ps" shows the scim processes are just running normally, for reference, I pasted my "xinitrc" here: export XMODIFIERS='@im=SCIM' export GTK_IM_MODULE=scim scim -d xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources urxvtd -q -f -o conky -q & exec awesome any ideas? thanks fei