Answers inline, below: Regards, Thomas Cameron, RHCE, CNE, MCSE, MCT Cameron Technical Services, Inc. http://www.camerontech.com (512) 454-3200 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Rob Wultsch" To: Sent: Friday, May 02, 2003 4:43 PM Subject: Whats with X > What is with it? Why is it that x is larger than a very minimal install > of 98 (windows lite)? X is actually a very small package. I suspect you are talking about all the window managers included with your distro. > Could x not be implented in the kernnel with a very basic vesa driver > (so that it will automaticly kinda work) and have the process of > changing drivers be nontrivial? Yes, but that would be a Bad Thing (tm). X lives in userland for a very good reason - if it gets hosed, the server keeps running. Unlike in Windows, where if your video driver, which is in kernel space gets hosed, you have to reboot. Remember, Linux is a milti-user OS - it would really suck if the user at the console did something stupid with X and killed the machine while 100 people were logged in. > Could a distro not package two versions of the kernel one with x and one > without? Probably, but think of how much extra work that would be.