Using rxvt-unicode in client/daemon mode
Yesterday, my eye fell on the word “daemon”, when reading the rxvt-unicode changelog. Apparently, using the rxvt-unicode daemon doesn’t only minimize the amount of processes, but mainly improves memory usage and startup speed of the terminal.
Put the following in your .xinitrc, meaning we’re not interested in a message, we only want it for this X session, and have it fork():
urxvtd --quiet --opendisplay --fork
Starting and stopping your X session will now start and stop the daemon too. Use urxvtc like you used urxvt to open up a terminal window.