Summary

This lesson taught you about the background of graphical user interfaces in general and the X Window System in particular. The use of xinit and other system programs and utilities was also discussed. This lesson also covered how to customize your user environment. It ended with a discussion of window managers and desktop environments such as KDE.

• The X Window System is based on a client/server model.

• The xinit program is used to start the X Window System server.

• The startx shell script is used to initialize an X session, perform basic display functions, and so on.

• The startx command streamlines the process by combining commands into a file that can be referenced quickly.

• If a startup script filename is not given at the command line with the -x option, then the startx command searches for a file specified by the user's .xinitrc environment variable.

• In cases in which a program is not listed, xinit will look for a file in the user's home directory. This file is .xinitrc or whatever is specified.

• The file called .xinitrc will call other programs to load with basic settings that can be defined within the script, such as running in the background with the use of an ampersand (&).

• Client programs are launched from /etc/init.

• If .xinitrc does not exist, you can create it and add it to your home directory.

• The X Window System requires a window manager if you want to add niceties and conveniences such as title bars.