Linux Architecture

The Linux architecture is build on multiple layers. There are basically three types of user applications in Linux:

the text applications,
the X window applications,
and the GTK/GNOME desktop applications.

Generally, text applications are more obtuse and GTK/GNOME applications being graphical and standards compliant are more intuitive.

You will encounter text application in a Terminal, X windows applications are still around but slowly being replaced by GTK/GNOME/KDE applications. GNOME and KDE are the two rival desktop management system on Linux (FreeBSD as well). Fortunately, most GTK apps. will run on both systems.

The following architectural diagram illustrates a simplified version of the Linux system with their various components.

These dependencies can be summarized as follow:

The Linux kernel and its various modules depends on the computer hardware;
Text applications are dependent on the kernel, its utilities and libraries;
X applications are dependent on X server, Xserver depends on the kernel and its utilities and libraries;
GTK applications are dependent on GTK libraries and the X server;
GNOME or KDE applications are dependent on GNOME or KDE desktop and their libraries. GNOME and KDE are GTK applications.

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