An update to the previous comment. It is true that typing `nohup emacs &` directly into the shell does not help, i.e., Emacs dies when the shell dies. Example:

An update to the previous comment. It is true that typing `nohup emacs &` directly into the shell does not help, i.e., Emacs dies when the shell dies. Example: $ cat /etc/debian_version 10.0 $ $SHELL --version | head -n 1 GNU bash, version 5.0.3(1)-release (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) $ nohup emacs & $ ps -ef | grep emacs | grep -v grep susam 22210 22046 2 13:59 pts/0 00:00:00 emacs $ ps -ef | grep 22046 | grep -v grep susam 22046 22042 0 13:45 pts/0 00:00:00 bash susam 22210 22046 0 13:59 pts/0 00:00:00 emacs susam 22224 22046 0 14:00 pts/0 00:00:00 ps -ef The parent of the emacs process is still bash, so when bash dies, Emacs dies too. However, invoking `nohup emacs &` from another shell script does work. The PPID of Emacs gets assigned to 1 and Emacs continues to keep running even after killing the shell. Example: $ bash -c 'nohup emacs &' $ ps -ef | grep emacs | grep -v grep susam 22229 1 2 14:02 pts/0 00:00:00 emacs $ dash -c 'nohup emacs &' $ ps -ef | grep emacs | grep -v grep susam 22229 1 0 14:02 pts/0 00:00:00 emacs susam 22238 1 2 14:03 pts/0 00:00:00 emacs $ ps -ef | head -n 2 UID PID PPID C STIME TTY TIME CMD root 1 0 0 Dec29 ? 00:00:01 /sbin/init In the second experiment, the parent of the emacs process is the init process, to it continues to run successfully even after the shell or terminal exits. To summarize, yes, we can use nohup in the startup script and make it POSIX compliant.