On 9/21/07, Siju George  wrote:
> I have a similar doubt.

quoted text
> What happens when I have a lot of windows open in my fvwm2 and I click

> on my desktop and click "Exit Fvwm2" ?

>

> Will all the X11 applications be shutdown decently?

> Or is it better to type "halt" in an xterm?

> What is the right way to shutdown a desktop?

There are some mechanisms to tell applications to shutdown when you

quit X (either by exiting the window manager, or more brutally with

Ctl+Alt+Backspace). They are a bit complex, and no all applications

handle the events they get. (and not all window managers implement the

same protocol).
For instance in my experience, firefox manages to remove its lock (in

~/.mozilla/firefox/hexstuff/) most of the time when I exit from X

(using Ctl+Alt+Backspace) without quitting it first.
But the safest way is to quit each application 1st, then exit the

window manager. Of course this is mainly important for applications

with pending changes like text editors, e-mail clients, or such.

xclock or xload don't care if they are terminated badly.