X Windows

X Windows was written by MIT in the early 1980s. It has since gone through a lot of revisions and is now at version 11 revision 6 (X11R6). From text mode you can start X Windows by typing:

bash$ startx

This will start you with the default graphical desktop which is probably Gnome. If you would like a little bit more control you can instead type:

bash$ xinit

This also starts X Windows, but with much less running. To exit X Windows you can press Ctrl-Alt-Backspace. If you have your machine starting in Graphical mode this will just log you out and restart the X server. The GUI interface the X provides can help a lot, especially as you first start learning Linux.