major newb needs help

guy4286 · n00b Joined: 27 Jun 2003 Posts: 36

ok.... I'm new with Gentoo, heck, I'm new with Linux or even Unix for that matter! Here's my question: What the heck is XFree86? Is it sometimes just referred to as X? Is this the same thing as XWindows? Why do I need to have this stuff installed in order to get KDE going? How exactly do the two interact?

O.k., so I had more than one question - sorry. ;-p
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maor · Guru Joined: 28 Aug 2002 Posts: 323

Xfree86 is impelemention of the X protocol . X do all the graphics display on screen (there r other way's but that is the populat method this day's) , all the graphical desktops an wm working on top of the X server that's why u need it when u emerge kde.

gwion · Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2003 12:22 pm Post subject:

xfree86 (http://www.xfree.org) is a free implementation of the xwindows system (http://www.x.org)

for a good description of what x does go to this page: http://www.x.org/X11_protocol.html

hope this answers your question(s)

cheers