Originally posted by hgreenfi
I am a recent convert to os X from various flavors of linux. Sounds to me like you are running xwindows without a window manager. Xwindows is responsible for drawing pictures on your screen. The window managers job is to handle movement of windows, resizeing, iconification etc. Each window manager provides its own look and feel. I like Windowmaker (fink install windowmaker) but there are many others. At start up xwindows looks for a file in your home directory called .xinitrc. This is a hidden file, notice the leading dot. .xinitrc is a plane text file that specifies what applications are lauched when xwindows starts. It seems that by default xdarwin launches three xterms of different size. You can change this behavior by editing or creating a new .xinitrc file. One thing to know is that normally all but the last command specified in .xinitrc are launched in the background by following the command with a & character. My .xinitrc for example is as follows:
xterm &
xemacs &
wmaker
The result is that xwindows starts an xterm, an xemacs session, and in the forground wmaker (the window manager) because the first two commands are run in the background they can be closed without shutting down xwindows. In effect xwindows is waiting for the last command run in the foreground (wmaker) to exit before it itself exits. Any command can be used as the foreground hook for xwindows, and your session will stay alive untill that application exits. Make sure that the last entry and only the last entry in .xinitrc is run in the foreground or weird behavior will result. I hope this helps, good luck and have fun.
