Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Lesson03(Part02):Linux Basics Continued

Lesson03:Linux Basics Continued

Logging In to a Linux System continued

On systems that boot directly into the X Window System, what you see depends on the display manager being used. The default graphical login for Red Hat Enterprise Linux is gdm, the GNOME Display Manager. (Display manager is the technical term for a graphical login.) And again by default, the display manager starts the GNOME desktop. Each user has a home directory for personal file storage. By default, a user’s home directory is located inside the /home directory.

Switching between Virtual Consoles and the Graphical Environment

A typical Linux system will run six virtual consoles and one graphical console, but there are exceptions: a server system often only has virtual consoles, whereas a desktop and workstation typically have both.
Virtual consoles allow users to have multiple logins when the X Window System is not being used. They provide full-screen, non-graphical access to the system. To switch between virtual consoles press Ctrl-Alt-F[1–6]. To access the graphical console from a virtual console, press Ctrl-Alt-F7.

Elements of the X Window System

The graphical environment for Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the X Window System. The version of the X Window System used by Red Hat is Xorg, which is an open source group that supplies X-related packages, including the server and many clients.

X is a client/server protocol that regulates the communication between applications (clients) and the system that provides display services (server). X does not define the particular look or behavior of the windowing system; this is done by the desktop environment.

A desktop environment is a collection of configurations and tools that define how a graphical environment should look. Red Hat provides these desktop environments:

1. GNOME: The default desktop environment
2. KDE: An alternate desktop environment

Both GNOME and KDE provide consistent user interfaces; panels for managing menus and launching applications; and sets of standard X-based tools.

Starting the X Server

On some systems, the X server starts automatically at boot time, depending on the configuration. If the X server does not start automatically, only the six virtual consoles will be displayed. In this case, you need to manually start the X server.

For this to work, the administrator needs to have previously configured the system to run the X server. If the X server is properly configured, you can start the X server by following these steps:

1. Log in to a virtual console as usual, using your login name and password
2. Run the startx command

The system will then start the X server on Ctrl-Alt-F7 and will automatically switch to the X server. You can still return to the consoles by pressing Ctrl-Alt-F[1-6].

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