xprofile

~/.xprofile and /etc/xprofile allow you to execute commands at the beginning of the X user session, before the Window Manager is started. Therefore it cannot be used to start window-based applications. See Autostarting#Graphical for that.

xprofile is similar to xinitrc (~/.xinitrc and /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/).

Compatibility

xprofile (and xinitrc) files are natively sourced by

• GDM (/etc/gdm/Xsession)
• KDM (/usr/share/config/kdm/Xsession)
• LightDM (/etc/lightdm/Xsession)
• LXDM (/etc/lxdm/Xsession)

Making it compatible with xinit

It is possible to make xprofile compatible with these programs:

• startx
• xinit
• XDM
• SLiM
• any other Display Manager who uses ~/.xsession or ~/.xinitrc

All of these execute, directly or indirectly, ~/.xinitrc (usually copied from /etc/skel/.xinitrc), or /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc if it doesn't exist. That's why we have to source xprofile from these files.

~/.xinitrc and /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc and /etc/skel/.xinitrc

#!/bin/sh

# Make sure this is before the 'exec' command or it won't be sourced.
[ -f /etc/xprofile ] && source /etc/xprofile
[ -f ~/.xprofile ] && source ~/.xprofile

...

xinitrc.d/* files are already sourced from the default xinitrc file.