The X Protocol in Software

Encode Code 3 of 9 in Software The X Protocol

The X protocol was developed for Unix systems in the mid-1980s to provide a networktransparent graphical user interface (GUI) The X protocol organizes display operations into a client and server relationship, in which a client submits display requests to a server The client is known as an X client and the server as an X server The client, in this case, is an application, and the server is a display This relationship separates an application from the server The application acts as a client sending requests to the server, which then does the actual work of performing the requested display operation This has the advantage of letting the server interact with the operating system and its devices, whereas the application need know nothing of these details An application operating as an X client can display on any system that uses an X server In fact, a remote X client can send requests to have an X server on a local machine perform certain display operations In effect, the X server/client relationship is inverted from the way we normally think of servers Usually, several client systems access a single server In the X server model, you have each system operating as an X server that can access a single system that holds X client programs

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The Xorg Foundation (wwwxorg) is a nonprofit organization that provides free X Window System servers and supporting materials for several operating systems on PCs and other microcomputers The X server, client programs, and documentation supplied by the Xorg Foundation are commonly referred to as Xorg The Xorg server is available free and includes source code The project is funded entirely by donations Xorg uses one server, called the Xorg X server, with additional driver packages for your specific video card You need to install only the Xorg X server package along with basic support packages such as those for fonts, as well as the driver for your particular video card, like the xf86-video-ati-X11R6 for ATI cards or xf86-video-nv-X11R6 for Nvidia cards The Xorg X server will have support for given video cards and monitors implemented as static libraries or as modules it can load as needed Currently, the Xorg X server supports the Intel, Alpha, PowerPC, and Sparc platforms The Xorg server supports a wide range of video cards and monitors, including monochrome, VGA, and Super VGA, and accelerated video cards Your Linux distribution will normally notify you of any updates for Xorg through their update tools Updates can then be automatically downloaded and installed It s always preferable to download from your Linux distribution sites, since those packages may be modified to work better with your system The entire Xorg software release includes the Xorg X server and its modules, along with several supporting packages such as those for fonts and configuration files Table 7-1 lists the current Xorg packages Alternatively, you can download the source code for new releases at the Xorg website For the source code versions, it is strongly recommended that you use the Xinstallsh installer Xinstallsh will query for installation information and then download and install all needed Xorg components In addition to the server, Xorg includes support programs and development libraries Xorg applications and servers are installed in the /usr/bin directory Supporting libraries, such as the specific video card module needed, are installed in the /usr/X11R6/lib directory Documentation for different packages can be found at /usr/share/doc, with package directories beginning with the prefix xorg A detailed hard copy documentation of all Xorg components can be found at /usr/share/X11/doc The Man page for the Xorg server is Xorg, and the server application is /usr/bin/Xorg Configuration files are placed in the /etc/X11 directory Applications written to support X are usually install in the /usr/bin directory