Just installed Gentoo and now I want to install Xorg. Xorg creates an .xinitrc in the user folder where you can run a desktop environment or a window manager from. What happens when no users are created and you install Xorg as root?
Where will .xinitrc be?
How about other applications' config files? Will they be created if I install them as root? If so, where?
The root user has a home directory, just like any other user. On many Unix system, it's /root, although I've never used Gentoo Linux (it would be the directory that cd with no arguments takes you to, when running it as root). Configuration files that are automatically created for the use by the root user specifically would be created therein.
I would strongly suggest that you don't use the root account for anything other than the occasional administrative task though. The root user should never have to be customised or be set up with a desktop environment. There is no overhead to setting up a non-privileged user that you occasionally use sudo with, for example.
Related:
