Chapter 4. Installing X Windows

Many people expect their operating systems to provide a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to the underlying system. Considering the power of computers today, there is no reason to use a command-line interface. The Macintosh popularized the GUI and showed that computer illiterate people can actually be productive using a computer. The magic behind this productivity is the GUI environment layered on top of the operating system.

In the UNIX world, the X Windows System is the graphical environment of choice. Developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), X can be found on virtually every UNIX system to date. Linux is no exception. Linux uses a version of X named XFree86.

XFree86 is a freely available implementation ...

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