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Debian Tutorial (Obsolete Documentation)
Appendix B - Summary of GNU/Linux system components

You may be a little confused about exactly what GNU/Linux is. What's the Linux kernel, vs. the GNU utilities, vs. the X Window System? Here's a little ASCII art diagram to show you how it all relates (apologies, it's not very attractive).

     
      Window Manager ----- Gnome Programs/Libraries (in development)
      |   |	    ----------/                     \
      |   |     /                                 ---------\
      | X Clients         Programs/Applications ---- Shared Libraries
      |   |   \                    |                 /
       \  |    ---------------\    |     /-----------       
       X Server -------------- Linux Kernel 
           |                   /    |
           |   /---------------     |
       Video Card -------- Other Computer Hardware (Memory, disk, etc.)

Note that the X Server and X Clients are applications, but they are applications which interact in special ways with the video hardware and other applications.

The window manager is a special X Client, and thus also an application. All the X programs use the Shared Libraries, but no line appears in the diagram.

When the Gnome (GNU Network Object Model Environment) project is completed, it will help to unify the X environment with a special set of programs and libraries, interacting with the window manager and other X Clients.

The GNU utilities are small programs that do simple tasks: mv, cp, tar for example.

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Debian Tutorial (Obsolete Documentation)