rootninja

Most Linux distributions today boot to a graphical desktop environment by default. Whether that desktop environment is KDE, GNOME, Xfce, or one of the more obscure offerings, that choice is up to you. You can mix and match from different terminals too.

The exceptions to this rule would be forensics distributions and a barebones secure installation that would either have a desktop environment but choose not to load it or it might not be installed at all.

To start a new desktop environment, open a terminal. You can do it from inside your current desktop environment if you want to run the new desktop as the same user, or switch to a new tty if you want it logged in as another user.

Lets say you’re logged in as batman but you want another desktop logged in as root. Most distributions will set you up with one graphical display and several tty terminals, so switching should be as easy as CTRL-ALT-F3.

Fedora Release 27 (rootninja)
Kernel 2.6.99.12-34.fc27 on an i986 (tty3)

localhost login:

Login as the second user and start the X session. Assuming the first user is logged into display zero, and you want to start the desktop on tty8:

user@localhost ~$ startx -- :1 tty8

You can leave off the tty8 and it will just start it in the next tty. Wait a minute for it to startup, if it doesn’t use CTRL-ALT-F8 to switch to the other desktop.

By using startx to bring up the new display, you will find that your second display starts the same desktop environment. If gnome and the metacity window manager was your default, that’s what you’ll get.

You can run gdmsetup to reconfigure