What (who) is X Window System - definition

GRAPHICS CONTROLLER AND NETWORK PROTOCOL FOR UNIX-LIKE SYSTEMS

X Windows; X-windows; X-Windows; X11; X-Window; XWin; X windows; XWindow; X window system; X Window system; Xwindows; X Windowing System; X Window; X11R4; X11R5; X11R6; X11 server; XWindows; X Window desktop; Xterminal; X11R7; X-based; X-Window System; X11 Window System; X11R7.1; X-server; Xwin; X servers; X (window system); X window; X-window; X Consortium; MIT X Consortium; X-Consortium; Xdialog; XWS; X-Server; Draft:X Window System; User:Gimhan Mihiranga/sandbox

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)

X-Windows

<spelling> A common misnomer for the X Window System. (1997-06-10)

X11

X window System version 11 (Reference: X-Windows)

Wikipedia

X Window System

The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems.

X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting with a mouse and keyboard. X does not mandate the user interface – this is handled by individual programs. As such, the visual styling of X-based environments varies greatly; different programs may present radically different interfaces.

X originated as part of Project Athena at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1984. The X protocol has been at version 11 (hence "X11") since September 1987. The X.Org Foundation leads the X project, with the current reference implementation, X.Org Server, available as free and open-source software under the MIT License and similar permissive licenses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X Window System