“The last two months, this column provided an overview of Linux
and a step-by-step installation process. This month, we’re going
tell you a little about Linux’s windowing interface — The X Window
System.”
“While there’s not much you can do if you don’t like the
‘look and feel’ of Microsoft Windows (other than change the color
of the background and window borders), you can customize X rather
extensively. With X, you can make cosmetic changes like
changing the size and style of window borders, as well as
non-cosmetic changes, like changing the option in a menu. One of my
pet peeves about Windows is that in order to type in a given
window, you must click in that window and move it to the front of
the screen. It then obscures any other windows on the screen. With
X, you can change that behavior if you don’t like it. In fact,
there are so many things you can change with X that it is easy to
be overwhelmed with the number of options. Fortunately, X
distributions come with some default setups, and you should feel
comfortable with at least one of them.”
“Say, for example, that you are using a word processor under X.
Some software has to be responsible for the actual drawing of a box
on the screen where the text is going to appear and also the
drawing of the text itself. Some other software is going to be
concerned with what words you’ve typed and what font you expect to
see (the actual word processing functions). It’s natural that these
two functions be separate, and in fact they are. The ‘X server’
software is concerned with your display screen — drawing boxes and
shapes, watching where the mouse is pointing, and what buttons if
any are pressed. The XFree86 program itself is the ‘X server’. The
word processor is an ‘X client;’ it only cares about reading what
you type and figuring out what the output should look like. It’s
called a client because it makes requests of the server, as in
‘server please display this text in my window’.”