On Saturday 24 November 2001 08:20 pm, you wrote:
I do not have a $HOME directory, and hence no Autostart.
Everyone has a $HOME directory. The $ means it's an environment variable. $HOME is a directory with the name the variable HOME contains. This variable is automatically set to be the directory you get when you first login or open a terminal window, typically /home/name or for root /root. For example, when I log in as edlin, my home directory is /home/edlin. When one is in the shell in another directory, one go back by typing cd ~, and you get your $HOME directory. This may sound silly, but because Linux is a multiuser operating system this actually is very useful, as it is then possible for a programmer to access configuration files that individual users this multiuser OS have changed without knowing beforehand each individual's login directory by name. Therefore making individual configuration more flexable.