X Windows and xFree86

[Randeeb]

Can someone please explain what the HE*L "X Windows" is. And also, what is XFree86. I assume it's some kind of driver database that goes along with a certain version of the Linux Kernal, and X Windows. How do they inter-twine? Even more, there are different versions of the Linux kernal (2.0, 2.2, and the latest I think is 2.4), I assume this is from various optimizations. Further there are different versions of the distros of Linux, like Mandrake 7.0 and 7.2, red-hat 6.2, 7.0 etc... What's the difference here? Or did I answer my own question there.......

Ran

 

[Elledan]

'X Windows' is the name of the GUI of Linux. XFree86 contains the drivers for videocards and monitors.

The differences between distro's are rather small, although a distro like Mandrake is more for the beginning Linux user, while Debian, Slackware, SuSe etc. are more for the poweruser. Instead of releasing patches for only a view different versions of each distro, new releases of each distro are constantly made instead.

Hope this helps.

 

[Randeeb]

So "X Windows" would be the KDE, GNOME, etc... programs that run the GUI, while the "Xwindows" is an identifier of the GUI under a Linux environment?

XFree86 contains ONLY drivers for video cards and monitors?

Are there any good sites to download Linux games?

 

[Soybomb]

Sadly Elledan is wrong though. Xwindows isn't a gui! Go read this thread, there is some good info in there that I don't want to type out 🙂
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=38&threadid=356783

 

[thornc]

Let me try to make things even clear..

X-Windows is the windows gui program of most unix/linux OSes...

Xfree86, is the X-Windows port to GNU/Linux, xfree86 handles all the hardware part
of the display, it works on a client/server implementation... xfree is the server
and applications like windows managers ( Kde,Gnome,WindowMaker ... ) are the clients...

...as for the linux games try: ...Happy Penguin...

have fun...

 

[perry]

Hmm.. The different distros are all based on the same Linux kernel, but with different installation programs and different setups for some files and the GUI and stuff. RedHat, Mandrake, et. al, all run the same kernel. The version numbers of the distro are just numbers that the companies assigned to them. They usually have no relation to the kernel except that a higher number means more recent versions of software comes packaged with it.

The kernel numbering scheme is pretty simple. You have the 2.x series which is current. Then when the x is odd that means the development track of the kernel. Generally, development kernels are used on test machines. When x is even, that is the current stable version that can/should be used in production machines. 2.4.2 is the current stable release of the kernel, 2.2.18 (maybe even 19) is kinda considered an ultra-stable release right now.

I'll just confuse myself (and you) if I try explaining XWindows, XFree86, and GNOME/KDE/etc.

Linuxgames with a very fitting domain name...