from
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)
X Window System
<operating system, graphics> A specification for
device-independent windowing operations on {bitmap display}
devices, developed initially by {MIT}'s Project {Athena} and
now a {de facto standard} supported by the {X Consortium}. X
was named after an earlier window system called "W". It is a
window system called "X", not a system called "X Windows".
X uses a {client-server} protocol, the {X protocol}. The
server is the computer or {X terminal} with the screen,
keyboard, mouse and server program and the clients are
{application programs}. Clients may run on the same computer
as the server or on a different computer, communicating over
{Ethernet} via {TCP/IP} protocols. This is confusing because
{X clients} often run on what people usually think of as their
server (e.g. a file server) but in X, it is the screen and
keyboard etc. which is being "served out" to the applications.
X is used on many {Unix} systems. It has also been described
as over-sized, over-featured, over-engineered and incredibly
over-complicated. X11R6 (version 11, release 6) was released
in May 1994.
(http://x.org/).
See also {Andrew project}, {PEX}, {VNC}, {XFree86}.
Usenet newsgroups: news:comp.windows.x, news:comp.x,
news:comp.windows.x.apps, news:comp.windows.x.intrinsics,
news:comp.windows.x.announce, news:comp.sources.x,
news:comp.windows.x.motif, news:comp.windows.x.pex.
(1999-04-02)