The X server

From Mandrivausers Wiki

In computing, the X Window System (commonly X11 or X) is a networking and display protocol which provides windowing on bitmap displays. It provides the standard toolkit and protocol to build graphical user interfaces (GUIs) on e.g. Linux operating systems and is supported by almost all other modern operating systems.

X provides the basic framework for building GUI environments: drawing and moving windows on the screen and interacting with a mouse and/or keyboard. X does not mandate the user interface — individual client programs handle this. As such, the visual styling of X-based environments varies greatly; different programs may present radically different interfaces.

X deliberately contains no specification as to application user interface, such as buttons, menus, window title bars and so on. Instead, user software – such as window managers, GUI widget toolkits and desktop environments, or application-specific GUIs, such as point of sale – provide/define all such details. As such, the "typical" X interface has varied tremendously over the years.

In order to "see" a graphical desktop, the x-server has to be configured appropriately. This is usually done automatically during the installation of Mandrivalinux and other distributions. In the case of unusual combinations of hardware, it can be necessary to configure X with the Mandriva tools or by editing a config-file manually with an editor.