As the title says.
I've spent several hours on search engines with no clue.
for the time being..
....
>>> login as root
>>> logout login as user
>>> start mate desktop
.... or if not possible
>>> login as root
>>> start mate desktop
>>> mate desktop asks for user password.
..........
Which file or file line should be changed/removed/commented?
....

pw is your tool to create, remove, modify & display system users and groups: https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?que ... ease-ports

I don't want to remove the user, per se, I want to be booted into the root account and THEN log into the user
to start X. More efficient that way... I can setup firewalls, backup, etc which are problematic [ timewise]
from an X terminal.
.....
I've renamed-removed .xinitrc in the user's directory, and another like it. No change.
I've renamed xdg/autostart to xdg/AUTOSTART, made the mate desktop prettier, [ less compositining? ] , No change.
.....

bump. no setting to login in at bootup NOT into X ??? ...

I think you have to disable lightdm from starting up at boot time: . This should give you a command line UI after the system starts. Then you would login as root or the user and manually start up lightdm.

NOTE: I have not tried this myself as I'm still troubleshooting my own system, but your question seems straight-forward enough that this should meet your needs. Please let me know if I've misunderstood what you are looking to accomplish.

That answers my question perfectly if it works. Won't have time to test for a few days... thanks.

Worked. Now remains to test...
start MATE by some mate-session OR lightdm command, or setup xinitrc to do the same...

would `startx` not work for your use case? I think startx does some environment initialization then calls xinit. And since you are already logged in, there would not be any password prompted for, you would be running as the calling user, whether root or your regular user account.

Probably, but am short of time to setup an xinitrc. I found 'lightdm' after logging in as root, gets to the MATE desktop as usual, so problem fully solved.