ROXTerm uses the "session" bus, which should be started along with your desktop environment. Current versions of ROX, GNOME, XFCE, and KDE session managers all launch D-BUS. If you use some other session/desktop/window manager which doesn't launch D-BUS you can start it by inserting something like this near the start of your .xinitrc or .xsession: if test -z "$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS" ; then eval `dbus-launch --sh-syntax --exit-with-session` export DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS fi