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So far, very nice. But then X Windows came up. Unfortunately, the monitor I normally use for testing is not a multisync monitor. This apparently was a problem for the system as configured. As a result, the screen became entirely unreadable. Faced with this, I decided to do what any novice user would do: I powered the machine off. Yes, I could have gone to one of the text consoles, logged in as root, and issued the shutdown command, but very few Wal-Mart buyers would know about that

I wonder why that is. Can anybody shed some light on that? I don't normally use one myself.
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x-windows is the graphical interface of linux, so you can have some windows like interface (with windows). Without it you could only use 16 colours or tekst only. If you can't set it up properly (like I do), you will have to have some linux knowledge to repair that...