Chapter 5. Graphical User Interface

Table of Contents

Unix and the early versions of Linux used a X Server (Xfree86, Xorg) as infrastructure to enable graphical terminals.

Lightweight alternative X servers are:

XVesa
TinyX

Linux (Android) based devices started to use Wayland for the graphics. Xorg got troubles to maintain their code and got considered to not be the future way to go.

Today modern Linux distributions use Wayland.

For backward compatibility there is XWayland a X server that runs under wayland to support legacy X only applications.

Important

When having Wayland then lot of the X server configuration is not used anymore (as keyboard layouts, ... ). X server commands to configure those parts will not show any effect and could show errors.

echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE will show wayland or X11

Ctrl + Alt + F<n> can be used to get a console screen to log in in case of troubles with the graphical user interface.

When having systemd systemctl set-default multi-user.target causes next boot into console mode and systemd systemctl set-default graphical.target back to the graphical user interface.


Benchmark		X Server