@kctipton @rjayasinghe
TLDR On Linux and other Unix-like operating systems if you wanted to see anything other than text you used to use something called XWindows, or X. Everything else ran on top of that. Wayland has now (mostly) replaced it because its been getting really long in the tooth for a piece of software (been around since 1984) and full of kludges to run on modern hardware (although as shade tree mechanics say, if it's stupid and it works, it's not stupid)