Trying to summarize what I have found.
Default X resolution with QEMU is too big, I set it to the minimum size: 1024x768 with: root@debian:/home/paul# cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/paul.conf Section "Device" Identifier "mydev" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "mymon" EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "myscr" Monitor "mymon" Device "mydev" DefaultDepth 24 SubSection "Display" Depth 24 Modes "1024x768" EndSubSection EndSection root@debian:/home/paul# When using xterm inside .xinitrc, it works. But starting any shell with twm's menu, it open a windows with the error: Failed to fdwalk: Too many open files in the system Here is my .initrc file: root@debian:/home/paul# cat .xinitrc xrdb -load $HOME/.Xresources & xsetroot -solid gray & # xterm -geometry +0+60 -ls & # xconsole -geometry -0+0 -fn 5x7 & exec twm root@debian:/home/paul# The cursor tend to go away... I can see some artifacts when moving the mouse... and this why I commented out xterm line, seems the less programs I have, the more the cursor stay visible... Without my own .xinitrc, I sometimes loose the cursor even on the host, strangely. Also, I do "startx" to start Xorg (with twm)... when I do Ctrl-C, I have to "su", "ps a", and "kill -9 [pid of Xorg]" as the normal user, does not seems able to stop the Xorg instance launched as root. Looking at: https://sources.debian.org/src/glib2.0/2.66.4-1/glib/gspawn.c/?hl=1213#L1213 I can see that fdwalk seems to have a fallback implementation there, when it is not on the system. I suppose there is an equivalent for Debian/Hurd on: http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/hurd/glibc.git/ but I did not explore much yet. That's it for now.