“The three major milestones in the early going for any Linux
newbie are: 1) installation, 2) X Window setup, and 3) PPP connect
to the Internet. We’ve worked our way through the basics of
installation and have started to learn enough Unix to work the
system. We’ll return to this theme soon, but in this installment
let’s get X Window up and running. Down the road we’ll tackle
PPP….”
“First, you should understand that the X Window System (its
full, official name) is based on a totally different design
philosophy than Microsoft Windows or the Mac OS. The X Window
System is not a fundamental, integrated part of the operating
system. You can set up a powerful, completely functional Linux
box without ever putting X on the system at all. In fact, many
Linux administrators prefer to omit X entirely on a production
server. X Window is intended primarily for workstation use–i.e.,
personal computing on a Linux box.”
“Because the X Window System was developed as a networked GUI
(graphical user interface), X has two components: server and
client. The server can actually be on one computer and the client
on another but in most cases they’re both on the same machine. You
need to match a server with the video card you have in your system.
There are X Window servers for VGA, SVGA, S3, ATI, and a large
number of other video adapter families.”