ridiculous; xdm is totally broken since it never starts anything which resembles
a "login shell".  As a result, no configuration is brought into a process
context to give to future xterms or *sh shells and thus cause them to run their
.profile or .kshrc or such a thing, to get futher configuration.  Therefore
people are left with a totally bland unconfigured Unix environment in their
xterms, and don't know how to change this since .profile is ignored.  This
problem shows hundreds of thousands of google hits.  xdm is fundamentally
broken, but we must solve this also for the startx methods, too, and for people
running csh.  It is clear that .xsession is not a solution to this problem at
all (that is, assuming the people who suggest such a thing really mean a
.xsession file with the execute bit set).  This now becomes the recommended
way for new users to get out of this stupid situation; if someone does not
like it they can change it or delete it.  Few will.  Just watch.
ok kettenis guenther millert