The xorg-server, part of the X.Org releases, is the main component of the X Window system which abstracts the hardware and provides the foundation for most graphical user interfaces, like desktop environments or window managers, and their applications. 0
If you are following along from the KISS installation guide, you should already have the following packages installed:
In order to start the X window system server, you will also need to install and configure ONE of the following packages:
Depending on your graphics card hardware, one of the following graphics card packages should also be installed:
Note: xf86-video-intel is not needed for Intel GPUs as the generic modesetting driver built into Xorg works really well.
Note: Installing a window manager is entirely optional and based on user preference.
A window manager (WM) is system software that controls the placement and appearance of windows within a windowing system in a graphical user interface. There are many great WM solutions available for KISS, most of which have been contributed by individuals via the Community repository.
The following is a snapshot of some of the available WMs at this time:
| Window Manager | Description |
|---|---|
| 2bwm | A fast floating WM, with the particularity of |
| having 2 borders, written over the XCB library and | |
| derived from mcwm written by Michael Cardell. 1 | |
| bspwm | bspwm is a tiling window manager that represents |
| windows as the leaves of a full binary tree. 2 | |
| dwm | dwm is a dynamic window manager for X. It manages |
| windows in tiled, monocle and floating layouts. All | |
| of the layouts can be applied dynamically, | |
| optimising the environment for the application in | |
| use and the task performed. 3 | |
| sowm | An itsy bitsy floating window manager. 4 |
| xwm | A tiny XCB floating window manager. 5 |
A Virtual Network Computing (VNC) is a graphical desktop-sharing system that uses the Remote Frame Buffer protocol (RFB) to remotely control another computer. The following VNC tools are currently offered through the community repository:
What if you need to access your applications remotely (with no additional applications)? The solution is to utilize X server’s “baked in” X11 forwarding solution. For for more information, check out the @/x11-forwarding article.