# Books on windowing systems



## obiwood (Nov 30, 2013)

Hi,

With all the talk going around (Internet) of Wayland vs X11 and Ubuntu doing Mir,  and in addition being a newbie and not really understanding X11 I was wondering if anyone would recommend some reading (books) on the theory of how a windowing system on a Unix system should work. I did google books on X11 but they seem far between and about writing applications on X11, I'm more interested in how the kernel and windowing system interact, how a compositor works etc. Maybe just some advice. I know freedesktop.org is a good place and have looked at some of the stuff there but I kind of wanted a book.

Thxs Thanks for your time.

Regards


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## sossego (Nov 30, 2013)

That's an odd question to ask unless you are looking for an overflow to get root. X.Org is not secure and that has been known by a lot of people since XFree86. The more layers you add, the greater the risk of insecurity.


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## wblock@ (Nov 30, 2013)

But the question was just about the design of X11, which is reasonable.  The Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System_protocols_and_architecture) has some information, and links to articles and some books.  The books are no doubt outdated, but still probably useful for a design overview.

For more current information, asking on the X.Org mailing lists might give better results.


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## obiwood (Dec 1, 2013)

Thanks for your replies*.*


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