X Window System
 

Can someone please explain what this and if it comes with Red Hat? Also, could you dumb it down a little please, I read the explanation on their site and I'm still scratching my head. Thanks very much.

yes it comes with redhat, and during your installation one of the final questions will be, do you want to start X automatcially or not, if you choose not too, then you will boot up to the CLI, and if you choose to, then you will boot into GNOME(i think that is the default, if you install both KDE & GNOME) ....also during the setup in the package list, you have to make sure you have GNOME and/or KDE selected to be installed......

Linux itself runs at a command prompt. It is like a really powerful DOS. In order to have a graphical environment a program has to run to provide it, this is what the X window system does.
( somewhat like Windows 3.1 running on top of DOS if you remember that ) X window doesn't actually specifiy the look and feel, that is done by the window manager ( KDE, Gnome, etc ), what X window does is provide the underlying tools the window manager uses. In very basic terms Linux boots up and takes you to the log in screen, after you log in the X window program starts and then the window manager.

Thanks, that was a very helpful explanation:O)
Do you know if it also comes with Mandrake?
I've not decided yet on what distro but leaning towards Mandrake.

The free implementation of X (XFree86) comes with all modern linux distributions. The only distributions without X are the purposely minimal (designed to boot of a single floppy or such).

XFree86 is more properly called an X server. Graphical programs are X clients. With the server running, you can run clients which communicate graphics to the server. The server displays the graphics on your output device (graphics card and screen), and handles input (normally keyboard and mouse). X is a handy design for a graphical system, because the client-server system is equally at home running over a network. But you can read more about that some other time.

Any Windows OS that you are using is running on top of DOS. Think of DOS being the first layer or the foundation (DOS is aka the basement). Windows is the second layer (first story of the house). Later Window OS versions just makes DOS transparent to the user just way too much. UNIX/LINUX has the same setup that is never transparent to the user. The user has the ability to switch to the console on the fly by pressing CTRL+ALT+F1...F9. Then switch back to GUI that is usually CTRL+ALT+F7.

Just about all distributions have a list of packages (programs) that are bundled on their web site. Yep, Mandrake comes with X Window Server.

KDE, GNOME, XFCE, CDE are known as desktop managers. Window manager are blackbox, fluxbox, WindowMaker, IceWM.

Take a look at http://www.plig.org/xwinman/index.html

Mandrake and redhat both have gnome and kde, I would recommend install both to see which you feel is the best. You can have different CLIs on Control-Alt_F1 through Control-Alt_F6 on Redhat and Mandrake (redhat based) to start an x windows server just type startx and it will change you to Control-Alt_F7. You can go to Control-Alt_F2 and type startx -- :1 and open a x server in Control-Alt_F8 ect...

I think I am also a bit confused about this window manager business,

you are talking about GNOME and KDE as window managers but I thought these where not as they actually need to run with a window manager??? whats the difference between a window manager and a desktop environment?

what window manager does gnome come with by default? and how can i check that?
what about the other window managers that are mentioned, sawfish, metacity, fluxbox...? do these all work with gnome?

i know these are probably really basic questions but ive been googling, and i think im getting more and more confused!

thanx
M.