ive been looking in xterm manpage and xinitrc but havent been satisfied. im trying to use xterm as my 'root window'. putting it in fullscreen mode and starting all my applications from there. the problem is that everything starts underneath xterm, even the menu bar cant get through. is there maybe an argument i can use when i open the program to keep it in the background but still have it fullscreen. thanks-p

The 'fullscreen' part is the problem. If you are running under a GUI and you run xterm as fullscreen, you are defeating your own purposes. Fullscreen under a GUI like x-windows is almost redundant, as the 'fullscreen' mode will not let other windows appear. Games like to use fullscreen mode, simply because it allows them to have complete access to video cards resources, and set the video resolution to whatever they want, without concern about what other applications might need.

You can run everything from a command line, but you cannot do it when an xterm (or anything else) is fullscreen, because everything you run will not have access to the video card. A better solution would be to open a xterm like normal (windowed), and run things from there, or instead of running fullscreen, you could simply maximize the xterm window. That would allow the xterm to take the most screen area, but allow your programs to pop up as well.

thats weird, my tv and dvd have fullscreen that can have screens in front of them, the xterm even
as a small window always stays on top, it must have special properties somewhere. Another thing
is that if i get two xterm windows on the same screen they will flip back and forth like regular
windows. ill post again if i get it figured out.

If you're using KDE, you can go to Window Specific Settings in the Control Center, and make one for xterm where it is full screen and is always below other programs. I just tried it for konsole and it works fine.