Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2001 14:41:29 -0600 From: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> To: "Charles Burns" <burnscharlesn@hotmail.com> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Quick, unimportant X question Message-ID: <15356.4473.809351.469065@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <75075045@toto.iv>
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Charles Burns <burnscharlesn@hotmail.com> types: > "XFree86" seems to execute /just/ X, the server, but not Gnome. > According to the handbook, it should run X with Gnome if I altrer .xinitrc > appropriately. I did and put on in /root and one in /etc/X11/xinit (or > something like that) and it seems to completely ignore the entry. > > Running "xinit", however, runs Gnove fine. Now, X is working great so not > problem here, but, why? I just happenned to try 'xinit' as a command for the > heck of it. I don't understand the whole way X works yet. The only GUI that > I have used for years is... Well, you know... X is normally multiple different servers, one for each display type. It looks like Xfree86-4 has changed that to one server that loads the appropriate driver dynamically. xinit provides one command to start the correct server based on the environment, then start a client - or run a shell script to start multiple clients - to provide a simple way to get your X environment up and running. Startx is a shell front end to xinit that allows easy local customization. On FreeBSD, it's provides tweaks to make the X environment more secure. This is typical for Unix applications. Instead of having one monolithic piece of code that does it all, you have multiple smaller programs that cooperate with each other through clearly defined interfaces. This improves the stability of the system because you can write one piece of the system without having to worry about how it affects everything else and vice versa, except through those interfaces. <mike -- Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Q: How do you make the gods laugh? A: Tell them your plans. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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