Can text be viewed without X Server?

[theKbStockpiler]

Does an O.S need a Windows system manager to view anything or can text be displayed without it? Also does anyone know of a decent guide/tutorial on X or the applications that X includes?

Thanks in advance!

[fanderal]

A text file can be viewed, created, deleted and edited without X. There are lots of editors; you can find them in the pkg mgr. An OS doesn't need X or a window mgr unless you want a GUI. Look up xorg in the pkg mgr to view all its dependency libraries and apps. For a guide/tutorial on X, try your distro's wiki, the man pages or google a howto for a specific app.

[theKbStockpiler]

Does anyone know the application that takes the place of X if it is not used?

[hazel]

When X is not running, you use the shell (also called the Command Line Interface or CLI). There are actually several possible shells but the default shell in Linux is called bash.

You type commands into bash and bash runs the program whose name corresponds to your command, then prompts you for the next command.

Using bash and the numerous command-line apps and utilities, you can do almost anything that you can do in a GUI, including editing text.

[Cabhan]

So the X server is what enables graphical applications. It doesn't really "come with" applications. I suppose you could argue that xterm, xclock, etc. come with it, but that's not really the point.

Most normal users will never interact with the X server directly. Even developers use libraries like Gtk or Qt to develop graphical applications instead of speaking directly with the X server.

There are a few X server alternatives, but they are incredibly rare, because basically nothing works with them. There are also multiple implementations of the X server standard, the most common in the Linux world being X.org.

The major alternative is to run a purely console system, which uses no graphical applications. This sort of environment can also be accessed by using a terminal application (xterm, Gnome Terminal, Konsole, etc.).

Text can be viewed in a console by tools like cat (print a file to the terminal), vi/Emacs (powerful console text editors), and various other programs.

[elija]

If you want to see what can be done without X, have a look at INX Is Not X : A command line and console Linux "Live CD" based on a minimal Ubuntu, without the X window system graphical interface. INX has some surprising capabilities...

[Rubberman]

Does anyone know the application that takes the place of X if it is not used?

Consider X to be a front-end that the user can interact with. The primary interface for users to run applications on Linux is the shell. There are a fair number of those, and each user can specify which shell they want when they login to the system. The default shell for Linux is bash (Bourne Again Shell). On some Unix systems it is ksh (Korn Shell), or csh (C Shell). There are a number of others as well. They all provide similar capabilities - a command line, some command editing capabilities, shell variables and control structures (loops, if/then/else, while, case, etc). The differences between the various shell programs is syntactic, and not semantic, in nature - the specific commands are different, but the intention and net results is the same.