The xsession program is a session manager. It is normally executed by your ~/.xinitrc (or ~/.xsession) script and controls your X Window session. As soon as it is started, xsession launches a window manager and some applications of your choice. At anytime during your session, you may switch to another window manager or execute some other applications from the xsession menus. You may also lock your screen using an independent locker application. The window contains a message area which is used to notify the user whenever an application or a window manager starts or ends, and also to display all the output and error messages of the programs (the applications and the window managers) run by xsession. The console output messages can also be shown either in this area or in a second, separate area. One useful feature of xsession is the preprocessing of window managers' configuration files. When a window manager is launched, its startup file can be filtered through m4(1) or cpp(1). Some macros are defined (such as the host name, screen size and so on) that will help you customize your menus and screen layout. One advantage of this feature is that several window managers can share the same startup file: some lines are protected by a test on the "WM_NAME" macro, but the other lines are common. This saves a lot of time if you want to maintain the same menu structure for several of them. You can also use "include" statements in your file. Note: This slackbuild builds xsession without sound support. If you wish to have sound support see the Imakefile and INSTALL files within the source tarball.