A windowing system

Architecturex11

Can someone provide me with a very clear and practical example of a "windowing system"? I was reading on Linux, and although I've always known that it's a kernel, I didn't really know what a kernel is because I haven't taken an OS class yet. My understanding of it is that it's basically the layer between hardware and software. Would that be correct? Now the Linux distros everyone uses is combination of GNU/Linux/X Window System. I think I got the Linux kernel part, but what is a windowing system and what is GNU? Wikipedia says GNU is an OS, but then that would mean Linux distros are composed of another OS. Can someone clear this up for me?

Best Answer

GNU (Gnu is Not Unix) is an Operative System, created by Richard M. Stallman. You can use this operative system with different kernel: such as Linux kernel, Hurd kernel, Darwin kernel, etc.

The X Window System (common on Unix like system) is just the basic layer for a GUI environment.

Every Linux distribution is a GNU operative system with a Linux kernel and an X Window System; on top of X Windows, you have the window manager (GUI) such as Xfce, Gnome, or KDE that lets you easily use your system.

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Error in R: Unable to open connection to X11

There are many threads elsewhere related to Cairo package.

One of them mentions the change in X11 type but most of them state that R doesn't know what the display is and suggest doing:

Sys.setenv("DISPLAY"=":0.0")

or, on older systems,

Sys.putenv("DISPLAY"=":0.0")

Ssh – Fastest remote X from Windows

I think the state of the art for the maximum bandwidth is NX, an X11 protocol compression program. It should perform well with respect to latency too. Try using the Windows NX client and the free NX server on Linux.

If possible, use a direct TCP connection instead of SSH. Of course, this is only viable in a controlled environment with no security worries.

I think in most setups a virtual machine running locally will give you the best latency. Even better, run Emacs and Eclipse under Windows; make them edit remote files, or (for even better results) make them edit local files which you then synchronize with Unison or through a version control system.

Best Answer

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Error in R: Unable to open connection to X11

Ssh – Fastest remote X from Windows

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