October 1999
Beginner to intermediate
360 pages
10h 18m
English
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Chapter 5. Installing and Configuring the X Window System
This chapter helps you install, configure, and use the X Window System (often known simply as X). Once X is up and running, you can choose how to start X. This chapter explains your options and also gives some tips on optimizing the performance of X.
What is X?
X is the standard graphical user interface for Linux. Like other graphical user interfaces such as Microsoft Windows and Mac OS, X lets you interact with programs by using a mouse (or other pointing device) to point and click, providing a simple means of communicating with your computer.
Originally implemented as a collaborative effort of Digital Equipment Corporation and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, X was first released in 1987. Subsequently, the X Consortium, Inc. became responsible for the continued development and publication of X.
Despite its age, X is a remarkable and very modern software system: a cross-platform, network-oriented graphical user interface. It runs on a wide variety of platforms, including essentially every variety of Unix. X Clients are available for use, for example, under Windows 3.x, 9x, and NT. The sophisticated networking capabilities of X let you run a program on one computer while viewing the graphical output on another computer, connected to the first via a network. With the advent of the Internet, which interconnected a sizable fraction of the computers on the planet, X achieved a new height of importance and power.
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
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I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.