Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 14:52:50 -0800 From: Erik Steffl <steffl@bigfoot.com> To: freebsd-questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: X11 and Xfree86 Message-ID: <3F9EF342.4040703@bigfoot.com> In-Reply-To: <000a01c39da1$bb981e70$fb65a8c0@ocfl061> References: <002a01c39cb4$11062e90$0501a8c0@canada> <000a01c39da0$0cdb1b40$fb65a8c0@ocfl061> <3F9EE982.5040001@magidesign.com> <000a01c39da1$bb981e70$fb65a8c0@ocfl061>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
M.D. DeWar wrote: > Thanks. > Now for a more stupider question. > What is the purpose of them exactly. I have read the sites but being alien > to the unix world it confuses me. > Do they just make unix a windows type enviroment ? X Windows System is a windowing system, but not complete GUI solution, it provides grpahic services (transparently over the network). Using X a program can display windows, lines, bitmaps ansd other graphical primitives. But there is no way to manipulate windows, no decorations (widnows do not have borders, title etc.), no buttons, combo boxes, menus etc. (called widgets in X world). generally on top of X you have: widget libraries: there is number of them, these are various buttons, menus, combo boxes etc. the common ones are motif (or free implementation lesstif), athena, qt (used by kde), gnome has its own widgets etc... there is a large number of widgets libraries and this is a source of constant criticism (they all look and behave differently and make user experience inconsistent, which might or might not be a problem:-) window manager: makes it possible to manage windows, it is responsible for windows decorations (borders, titlebar, titlebar buttons), it provides ways to move and otherwise manipulate windows, usually has some kind of menu/program launcher etc. > Is KDE/GNOME the same or they like themes to X windows. ? kde and gnome are one layer up, they try to provide complete desktop - in addition to what window manager provide they provide - means for apps to communicate, common look (themes), drag and drop, task bar, main menu (kinda like start menu in win), common way to configure desktop etc. They are kinda like window manager on steroids (there are other ones as well, CDE, nextstep/gnustep etc.) > So confused. but am trying to get away from microsoft. good luck, fun experiment (to see what X really is:-) - try to run X from text console (just like that, not xdm, not startx) - you should get pretty much empty screen with mouse cursor - that's plain X. Now you can go back to text console (hit ctrl-z, run bg to run X in background, alternatively just go to another free text console) and run xterm -display :1 (or :0, depends on whether you already run X) and go back to your X (alt-ctrl-Fn where Fn is one of the function keys on top of keyboard). You should see xterminal, but plain window - no borders etc. you can write in this terminal but you cannot move it... next step is to run window manager (e.g. twm, it's usually installed by default, or any window manager you like) - you can run it from xterm that you just opened. erik
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?3F9EF342.4040703>