>Someone mentioned setting the X server (or whatever) to a negative nice
   >value.  Using xdm, you can do just that -- I renice mine to -15.
   
   This is totally unnecessary.  The autonicer doesn't renice any
   processes running as root.  Most people install their X servers setuid
   root, by default, so this is not a problem (i. e. they'll never get
   autoniced).

who is 'most' ?  i've never run X as setuid root.

.mrg.

(ps, is this to get around some lossage on the i386  ?  :-)