Introduction to X Windows

Logging In

Find a Linux computer (not a Windows machine) and if the screen is blank, move the mouse to deactivate the screen saver. You should now see a login banner asking for your username. If you see anything else, the terminal is either in use or not working, so find another one. Type your username, press Return, type your password (it won't appear on the screen) and press Return again. If you get a ``Login incorrect'' message try again - remember that passwords are case sensitive. If you don't get a ``Login incorrect'' message, but the login banner reappears, try once more before consulting me.

Identifying Your Window Manager

You will now be running X Windows, a graphical interface to Unix, and your screen will probably look a bit like one of the following two pictures. By seeing which one it resembles, you can tell the name of the window manager you will be using for this session. (A window manager is a program which decorates your windows with borders and titles and allows you to move them around the screen.) Most new users will be using fvwm95.

Window Manager	Appearance of Screen
fvwm95
twm

Using X Windows

The window which your typing goes to is known as the active window. You can recognise it because its border looks different from that of the other windows. In fvwm, you click in a window to make it active (click to focus). In twm, whichever window contains the mouse cursor is the active window (focus follows mouse).

N.B. It is quite possible for no window to be active. In this case your typing disappears into thin air.

Moving the mouse cursor to the background and holding down a button will give you a pop-up menu - a different menu for each button.

To use Unix commands, you'll need at least one Unix terminal window or ``xterm'', so here's how to get one with each of the window managers illustrated above:

fvwm95: Click on the background with your left mouse button and choose the ``X shells'' submenu then ``xterm''.
twm: Click on the background with your middle mouse button and choose ``Local'' (another choice would give you an X terminal on a different machine).

Logging Out

Before logging out, exit any programs such as pine, elm and emacs that are running, because otherwise the computer may think they have crashed. To log out of a Unix command window, type ``exit'' in that window. To finish your X windows session, click on the background with your left mouse button and select ``Exit''. (If using fvwm95, you will then have to select ``Yes, really quit.'')