This repository is dead: nowadays I use GNU Shepherd to manage my user services: https://github.com/alezost/shepherd-config

About

These are my systemd user units located in $HOME/.config/systemd/user. I use systemd not only for running daemons, but for starting X session, window manager, various GUI utils and applications.

For information about systemd user session and about managing X session with user services, you may read:

• systemd/User - ArchWiki
• Automatic X login without a DM - Arch Linux Forums

Description

Basically the structure of my user units is the following:

• user daemons (like gpg-agent) and gui@.target are "attached" to (WantedBy) default.target;
• gui@.target provides a GUI interface – it starts:
  • xbase@.target – X server with configuration utils (xmodmap, xset, ...);
  • GUI applications (emacs, xterm, ...) "attacted" to this target.

For turning X server into a daemon (for x@.service), notifying when it is ready, i use a wonderful tiny bash script x-daemon from joukewitteveen/xlogin. Previously i used sofar/xorg-launch-helper.

It is possible to organize multiple X sessions with different settings and starting applications: DISPLAY :0 will be run on vt7, DISPLAY :1 on vt8 and so on.

Example

Here is my configuration of X session.

Window manager and vital apps:

systemctl --user enable stumpwm@0
systemctl --user enable emacs@0
systemctl --user enable conkeror@0

X settings:

systemctl --user enable numlock@0
systemctl --user enable setxkbmap@0
systemctl --user enable xmodmap@0
systemctl --user enable xrdb@0
systemctl --user enable xset@0
systemctl --user enable xsetroot@0

I want this X session to start on login, so:

systemctl --user enable gui@0.target

(I set up autologin as described at Automatic login to virtual console - ArchWiki)

Sometimes i need another instance of X server with another configuration:

systemctl --user enable numlock@1
systemctl --user enable xmodmap@1
systemctl --user enable xrdb@1
systemctl --user enable xset@1
systemctl --user enable openbox@1
systemctl --user enable xterm@1

Actually i have a shell alias scu for systemctl --user (and sc for systemctl), so i can run the second X session with scu start gui@1.target (it will be started on virtual terminal 8, i.e. Ctrl+Alt+F7/F8 to switch between X sessions) and if i don't need it anymore, then just scu stop gui@1.target and there is no sign of it.