Talk:X Window System/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Client vs Server

Someone switched client & server recently; this could be a problem with people unfamiliar with X terminology. Obviously there is a clash. In X, the server is the display, and the client is the machine running the program. This is the reverse of the more common nomenclature seen elsewhere. Should the paragraph point this out? Pagan 06:55, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

• The article does exactly this in the ==Architecture== section. I wonder if that earlier mention of clients and servers is really needed. The concepts are covered well enough in the article anyway and if "network transparency" is really an important term to use, then it could be blended into the ==Architecture== section. Bevo 07:02, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

You have to summarize the most important information immediately, and in particular what X is and what it does, rather than burying it several paragraphs down in a subsection. Steven G. Johnson 20:44, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

My elaboration in the intro was quickly reverted. I'm leaving it as is for now, but don't think that my extra words were extravagent. Anyone new to X needs some direct explanation of how "server" and "client" are used. The usual impulse is to think that remote machines are the servers (not the clients), but it's reversed with respect to proving "display services" in the X model. Bevo 20:21, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I've just done a chunk of rewriting. I hope the current intro makes the point clear in not too many words. It's a major point for anyone trying to get their head around X (I have seen it explode brains) and needs to be made clear in the intro. - David Gerard 17:39, Feb 12, 2004 (UTC)

When explaining why the X server is a server I've always found it useful to try to get the person to concentrate on the ephemerality of the programs involved: the X server is a single program which runs all the time (until the user logs out), while the individual client programs often run for much less time. Anyone think it might be useful to add this to the article? TheGoblin 22:20, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Common non-Unix X servers

Does anyone use WeirdX other than its developers? I thought Exceed was obscure until I had to administer it, and even then ... - David Gerard 00:57, Feb 13, 2004 (UTC)

I've taken out the word 'commonly' in the list of X servers for Windows. The problem is that there is no X server that can be said to be "commonly" used - it's a very small market without a dominant player at all at present. I suppose we could list whatever current software we can think of ... - David Gerard 10:21, Feb 13, 2004 (UTC)

Recent history of XFree86

XFree86 is the most popular version. (MacOS X has more installations, but the X11 server is far from widely used.) Now, there's all the fun stuff with the recent history of XFree86 vs. Xouvert vs. Freedesktop.org/Keith Packard ... see [1] and particularly the summary called "Grokking the situation" posted by "Karl" (sorry, no link for the single comment). Can any of this be digested for the article? Or perhaps the XFree86 article. - David Gerard 23:21, Feb 25, 2004 (UTC)

"X Windows"

David Gerard wrote: "reread NPOV. descriptive, not prescriptive. think GNU/Linux."

That's not relevant because there actually are no entities that officially use "X Windows" (both because that's wrong and because it might actually tick off Microsoft's lawyers). The phrase may be common, but it's wrong to imply that it is somehow not incorrect, in an unofficial context -- in fact odds are that most people who use(d) it know that it's incorrect. And they generally switch to simply "X" after finding out... --Shallot 12:29, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It's a common usage. It's been common since before MS Windows 3.0. That it's officially incorrect (I don't use it myself) doesn't change that.

No, but it also doesn't change the fact it's still incorrect, officially or unofficially. --Shallot

And I hardly think Microsoft's lawyers are about to swoop down upon Wikipedia for this entry - David Gerard 12:42, Mar 7, 2004 (UTC)

I didn't mean to imply that they would. --Shallot

How about "generally considered incorrect"? I really don't think it should be said in a prescriptive manner. Also, there's using it deliberately for a purpose knowing it's officially deprecated, as per the UNIX Haters' Handbook - it's not going away. - David Gerard 13:10, Mar 7, 2004 (UTC)

I've just done a new version of ==Nomenclature==. What do you think of this one? - David Gerard 13:14, Mar 7, 2004 (UTC)

That's better, I guess. Thanks. --Shallot

Should this be included with the other alternative names at the start of the article? Even though it is officially deprecated, it is, IMO, the commonest way to refer to the system in everyday speech as a first instance (before one has established what X one is talking about). --Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley _{talk contrib} 17:22, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't think "X Windows" is even common anymore! My coworkers refer to it as "X" or "X11", for instance. The "X11" usage is probably being made more common by the largest Unix vendor referring to their X environment by that name. If someone said "X windows" people would think they were talking about individual windows on the screen. --FOo 17:45, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Screen shots

What would be interesting is screenshots of various usual X Windows interfaces over the years. KDE and GNOME have screenshots. We need one for CDE (I'll get one from my Solaris 8 workstation tomorrow). But it would be really good to have the usual X interface as of 1987, 1991, etc. Earlier ones if such can be found. Any ideas where one would go looking? - David Gerard 23:46, Mar 15, 2004 (UTC)

Just added KDE, GNOME and CDE screenshots - the first two from their respective articles, the last taken by me today. They don't look perfect because the KDE and CDE shots are both 1280x1024 (5:4 aspect ratio) and the GNOME shot is 1600x1200 (4:3 aspect ratio). I don't want to change any of the screenshots for now, though, on the assumption we'll be able to get more. Must ask around some usual haunts ... - David Gerard 13:59, Mar 16, 2004 (UTC)

Some more screenshots, do with them what you will (all in the public domain):

• DECwindows running on VMS V7.3-1 Alpha: [2] [3] Or not. Let's try a real screenshot of DECwindows: [4]. I know what the hell I'm doing...
• A basic X session running twm etc: [5]
• xterm-only X session: [6]

—Lady Lysiŋe Ikiŋsile | Talk 23:21, 2004 Jul 2 (UTC)

Thank you! Those DECwindows shots are spectacularly ugly. Is that the default? God help us ...

For a shot of 'basic X', I think I'll be emailing the X luminaries themselves fairly soon as I mentioned on irc to see if they have anything from the late 1980s - David Gerard 00:22, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Yes, that is the default DECwindows/CDE desktop in all its fugly Motif glory :-) It's possible to change the colour scheme and fonts, but remote X-over-ssh-over-cablemodem is rather … painful, so I wasn't really inspired to spend too long making it look nice :-) I've heard noises from OpenVMS Engineering about porting KDE or GNOME, which would certainly be a nice improvement, but we'll see… —Lady Lysiŋe Ikiŋsile | Talk 00:41, 2004 Jul 3 (UTC)

Technical details

I've shifted the detailed technical architecture of X to be after the expository text. That's so people whose brains would fall out reading the technical stuff will still be able to get to the implementation and history sections first - David Gerard 19:33, May 22, 2004 (UTC)

More work needed towards Featured Article status

See WP:FAC. Specifically, the current objections are:

• Object. The explanation, especially towards the bottom of the article, could use a lot more detail. For example, what's meant by the color packages? Also, I'd like to see more about its reception. What have critics of X said? How does it compare to MS Windows? Meelar (talk) 13:46, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)
• Object. No mention of Schiefler and Gettys. Nothing on X-extensions. Need to better describe the seperation of powers between components, and (just a one-liner) give the scope of the Xprotocol and Xlib. Need to at least touch on visuals, and server-side image storage. Needs a one-liner compare'n'contrast vs sunray/VNC/windows-visual-networkything. Needs a one-liner on window managers and ICCCM. Needs to cover some of X's real (past and present) and perceived problems: complexity and (supposed) expense of implementation, ageing image-model, neglected and/or costly (pre kde/gnome) widgetsets. History really should talk about the looong pause in innovation s (i.e. much the 1990s) where X's advantages were frittered away. Equally history should emphasise the latterday renaissance of X, and a one-liner for X on embedded systems (who am I to argue with Gettys). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 02:47, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I agree, it needs all that stuff.

I'm working on adding stuff at User:David Gerard/scratch - please feel free to add stuff to the article itself (preferable) or to my document if you don't feel that confident in what fragments you happen to know ;-) - David Gerard 13:10, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Network transparency

As it is currently worded, the net-trans bit is far too complex, detailed and poorly worded. Making the intro stand-alone is fine, but that's not an excuse to just duplicate info. If network transparency belongs in the intro then it should be a simple mention of it, with more detail (including client/server and the apparent reversal of those roles) confined to later sections.Motor 16:50, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Reverted - read the start of this very talk page. The talk page isn't write-only - David Gerard 13:15, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I did read it -- and I've just read it again to ensure I haven't overlooked anything. I also read the entire article from the point of view of a casual user looking for information on X -- which you don't seem to have done. Your comments, besides being rude, are an inadequate brush off. It might be worth you taking a step back before continuing this... you needn't worry, I'm not about to revert again immediately.

Going into the details of client/server and their seeming reversal in X, in an INTRODUCTION section, is utterly pointless and confusing for anyone reading this article. If network transparency is mentioned in the introduction, then it should be at the level of "run a program on one machine, see the results on another" and how X was designed with this in mind... with no mention of client/server and especially no mention of how the roles seem to be reversed. The intro is supposed to be a short, simple overview setting out the basics. Or do you seriously think anyone coming to the article curious about X's use of the terms server and client will only read the intro and give up? This is quite apart from the fact that it is poorly worded and confusing. As it stands, the article is a bit of a mess this bit of the article is a mess despite having lots of useful info. Motor 15:55, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

No, it's important. I've known far too many people not to be able to get their heads around X's usage of "client" and "server" - that's why it went in the intro in the first place. Secondly, X's fully functional network transparency is pretty much its secret sauce at present - Windows and MacOS both work on better layer separation these days than hitherto, but the remote display functionality doesn't work nearly as well as it does with X, where pretty much any X client can display to any other X server with full functionality.

Anyone confused about the roles of client and server in X is not going to read the introduction and give up -- they are looking for specific information. On the other hand, someone casually looking up X is going to find themselves overloaded with irrelevant details right away. Network transparency is an important part of X... even to the extent of deserving a brief and simple mention of the capability in the introduction. I'm not arguing for the removal of such information from the article. What I am arguing for is the removal of client/server and the apparent reversal of those roles from the introduction. It serves only to confuse. Anyone interested in those kind of details can find them later in the article.Motor 17:42, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

This is an article in depth - to serve as a potential standalone, the intro does have to mention the odd usage and the network transparency.

Precisely, it is an in-depth article and needs a quick introduction for the more casual reader. I'm thinking of the people who are new to Linux/FreeBSD, or just someone who has heard X mentioned and wonders what it is. Technical details in the article are important, but there is simply no need to jump into discussions of client/server names/roles in an introduction. You don't get people up to speed on a subject by burdoning them with irrelevant details immediately. Motor 17:42, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

If you can write something shorter and snappier for the intro that does cover the subject and something clearer for the Architecture section, please do try - the current paragraph in the intro was a compromise that was accepted.

I'll have a go later.Motor 17:42, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

What do you think a casual reader wants? Who/what is the casual reader you are thinking of? - David Gerard 17:04, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

See above. Motor 17:42, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

History of X is the history of the politics - refs needed!

I'm still trying to get the 'History' section to a usable state without actually interviewing Jim Gettys personally. (Besides, that'd be original research.) Does anyone have good references to hand? The history of X is really the history of the industry politics and fuckups. I've dredged through a pile of news articles, personal page rants from the '90s, etc. Does anyone know of a decent writeup of the history? - David Gerard 09:58, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Xaw = Project Athena?

I noticed that "Xaw" is a link to a non-existing page. I considered making it merely a redirect to Project Athena (even though it's just a stub right now), but I'm not sure if that's the correct answer. Opinions? --Joe Sewell 17:30, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Xaw is actually the Athena widget set. I'm not sure it should just be a redirect. I have the book on X11R6 here, I really should write it myself some time ... or other ... - David Gerard 23:10, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Color Modes

This section seems silly. Names like "DirectColor" and "PseudoColor" have no meaning to somebody reading an encyclopedia article about X. (And if you know what they mean, you probably don't need to be reminded what their names are.) If we're going to list them, we should describe what they are; otherwise this might as well be "X has 6 different foozleblarg modes: sneej, leezle, briggo, foopy, ..." - 4.16.250.40

You are entirely correct. I looked up documentation on this and couldn't find any online! I'll keep looking, but in the meantime I've commented out the color section ... if anyone is upset by that, please restore it in a way that actually explains each mode! - David Gerard 16:53, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

There are, IIRC, three colour models, TrueColor, PseudoColor and DirectColor. TrueColor and PseudoColor are, basically, RGB values. PseudoColor is a palette (colormap) that you can or cannot change. One of TrueColor and DirectColor is changeable, but I can't, off-hand, remember the correct one. vatine 17:36 2005-04-01

X services and protocol interactions

The five listed items at X services and protocol interactions don't really describe everything X does I think. It leaves out things like inter-client communication, authentication, and the lowly XBell. --fvw* 19:25, 2004 Dec 28 (UTC)

{{sofixit}} ;-)

I have the book on X11R6 ... packed in a box under a couple of other boxes. When I find it, the early history will get filled out in great detail, and the technical section will probably get a good kick as well. - David Gerard 18:47, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

more than negligible vs "significant"

I agree that "None of these systems have had more than negligible uptake" sounds like less use than "None of these systems have had a significant uptake", but on the other hand I think "[not] ... more than negligable" constitutes a rather uncomfortable double negative. Anybody have a third option? --fvw* 21:26, 2004 Dec 28 (UTC)

"none have had significant" sounds like there might be a small core of users out there. "none have had more than negligible" IMO more clearly indicates that pretty much only the developers go near them, and often not even them (e.g. Berlin dying of apathy). Only Berlin/Fresco and Y have had even Slashdot attention as X replacements that I know of; I think the sentence would start "none of these systems have had x notice". - David Gerard 18:47, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Unicode support

Request: could anybody write about the current state of Unicode support in X? — Monedula 14:13, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hummmm good question! Anyone? - David Gerard 18:47, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I did a quick google on "x11 unicode". Markus Krohn did Unicode fonts in 1999 [7], put them into XFree86 as of XF86 4.1 and offered them to X.org saying "hopefully they will be in X11R6.7"[8] - I presume they were. Clients (e.g. xterm) supporting Unicode had been available for a while in XF86. That last page says "hardly any software released before ~2001" supports Unicode, and that the X Logical Font Descriptor included a tag for Unicode from X11R6.4. X's support still isn't perfect - "X11 was never designed for Arabic, Syriac, Indic, and special libraries such as Pango have to be used for these scripts." http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/unicode.html#x11 indicates X11R6.6 had imperfect support for Unicode.

So basically, I'm not sure when you could put 'Unicode support' as a listed feature in the 'releases' chart. But if you want to beat the above into a para in a section or subsection (somewhere), feel free :-) - David Gerard 19:39, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Client-server diagram

Ta bu shi da yu pointed out on IRC that the 'Architecture' section would benefit from a diagram illustrating 'client-server' with examples. Perhaps an xterm and a web browser on the local machine, with an app client running on a remote machine. Anyone with a nice drawing package want to come up with something for nitpicking?

(Also, we could then distribute the screenshots a bit better through the article. Also need examples of what X11R1 looked like) - David Gerard 19:39, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

First attempt. Could anyone who can work Inkscape better than I can come up with something nice based on this? I'd also like a more generic example of an app routinely run remotely than up2date - that sprang to mind because I was running it yesterday.

               user's workstation

     keyboard       mouse        display
    +--------+       /-\      +-----------+
    |mmmmmmmm|       | |      |           |
    +--------+       +-+      |           |
         |            |       +-----------+
         |            |             | 
         v            v             ^
         |            |             | 
+----------------------------------------------+
|        |            |             |          |
|        |            |             |          |
|        |            |             |          |
|    +-----------------------------------+     |
|    |                                   |     |
|    |               X server            |     |
|    |                                   |     |
|    +-----------------------------------+     |
|        |                  |           |      |
|        ^                  ^           |      |
|        |                  |           |      |
|        v                  v           |      |
|        |                  |           |      |
|    +-------------+  +-------------+   |      |
|    |             |  |             |   |      |
|    |   X client  |  |   X client  |   |      |
|    |(web browser)|  |   (xterm)   |   |      |
|    |             |  |             |   |      |
|    +-------------+  +-------------+   |      |
|                                       |      |
+---------------------------------------|------+
                                        |
                                        ^
                                        |
                                        v
                                        |
                               network  Z
                                        |
                                        |
      +---------------------------------|----+
      |                                 |    |
      |         +-------------------------+  |
      |         |                         |  |
      |         |      X client           |  |
      |         |      (up2date)          |  |
      |         |                         |  |
      |         +-------------------------+  |
      |                                      |
      +--------------------------------------+
                 remote server

"This X server takes input from a keyboard and mouse and displaying to a screen. Clients connecting to it include a web browser and an xterm on the local machine and a system updater running on a remote server. Note that the remote application runs just as it would locally."

If you've seen the X.org diagrams on how X works, a detailed version of the above (showing all the application layers, the video card/DRI, etc) based on one of those [9] would be really nice for the technical section as well. - David Gerard 15:29, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

No-one drew it or suggested another remote app, so I've done one myself. Anyone wants to play with it, I can email you the SVG (Commons isn't accepting SVG uploads) or suggest changes here - David Gerard 15:49, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

x window on microsoft windows xp

is there a port for x window for microsoft windows xp? i found cygwin to have the ability to simulate x window - unfortunately it seems to be bound directly to the windows xp operating system i am running on my computer, rather then giving me the opportunity to connect to an x window client at some other place on the internet (i.e. my university mainframe).

thus, maybe someone can explain how the x window system on a given computer can communicate with an x window client far away?

thanks, --Abdull 00:23, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The way it usually works is you go to the other computer (telnet or ssh to it or walk over to it or whatever) and get it to start a window on the server computer. The other computer is the client, so it has to ask to connect to your computer, the server; so you have to tell the remote computer to ask to connect to your computer's screen. Yes, this could do with a clearer explanation ... anyone? - David Gerard 18:16, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I've added an explanation to "Architecture". Does this make sense? Does anything there need to be clearer? (I'm trying to avoid a detailed prescriptive "how-to") - David Gerard 18:36, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Recent section changes

The page hit 30 kilobytes, but the technical section was still in need of great expansion (at least another 15KB), so I've spun it out as a separate article. Still in need of serious work.

I've added a section on the X user interface.

I also emailed the X.org and XFree86 mailing lists to ask for further input and missing bits. Jim Gettys is presently moving house, but when he's moved he should have some nice stuff for us :-D

Is there anything else the article needs before I take it to WP:FAC? - David Gerard 12:03, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Nominated - David Gerard 01:22, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Nominated - wk_muriithi Okay, that may not be the proper way of signing my name, but i hope the it does show my intention. And wonder whether there is any need to expand on X licensing history. See this for more information. [10]

If you want to support the nomination, go to WP:FAC :-) That looks like the typical Slashdot license flamewar - if there's something important to add about it, please do so - David Gerard 00:00, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

not necessary the right place, but

An interesting suggestion [11]

Way too much censorship by David Gerard on this topic

I have see the manner in which certain Wikipedia Administrators use their status to effectively censor the development and maturity of a topic and I see it happening here. I've reviewed the valuable contributions of a LOT of people to this topic and what happens again and again is that David Gerard removes their work and replaces it with his own work which he obviously prefers. The whole topic suffers and ends up being, in this case, a pathetic misrepresentation of the truth that should otherwise exist here. Unfortunately there's no remedy for it and Wikipedia ends up being, for purposes of this topic, a useless and, shamefully, even a misleading monologue. It isn't right and it isn't fair to the readership that something which is supposed to contain the collaborative efforts of a lot of people ends up being little more than a broken story that represents the viewpoint of someone who doesn't even do 'X' for a living. Those of us who DO do 'X' for a living, and who do very well with it BECAUSE we understand it, well, we think that our contributions deserve better than removal under a specious explanation called RV. There have been way too many removals of TRUTH about X by this person here and I regret that one person can weild so much power to have been single-handedly responsible for it. GeneMosher 22:46, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I assume you're 207.189.131.233. It looks like the above should have gone to my talk page and the below to the article talk page:

I strenuously object to the way you butchered my enhancements to the X Window System. You weren't kidding when you recently asked for help with the page and said that contributions would be edited mercilessly. Why on earth would you remove mention of X supporting touchscreens, for instance? You owe us all an explanation, starting there. Your edit amounted to vandalism.

And why would you remove any mention that application specific GUI's can be built with X primitives, virtually forcing people to infer that the only kind of GUI's that can be built with X are desktops and Widget systems? That is just plain WRONG. Are you really that ignorant? You should get used to the idea that learning is a better way to spend your time than teaching with regard to this topic since you don't know what you're talking about when it comes to the X Window System.

I make a very good living by developing X apps, selling X solutions worldwide and pushing the X Window System to its limits. I know damn well what it is and what it isn't, what it can do, and what it can't do. I resent your hatchet job on my work here in explaining what X is.

There are way too many people like you at Wikipedia who think that everything they don't understand or agree with is vandalism and that the only appropriate response that they need to exercise is to revert. Shame on you. GeneMosher 20:25, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Touch screens: I really doubt that touch screens are so very relevant to X in particular that they must be mentioned in the intro itself. Statistically, almost no-one uses a touch screen. Surely they're just another input device; we don't enumerate that X also works with tablets, touch pads, trackpoints, etc. This is not special to X in any way whatsoever.

"Moreover, the remote "server" does not serve up files to any local storage system or application located at the user's local display." - this does not make sense in context of its paragraph: you're switching meanings of "server" mid-paragraph.

X terminals: I'm sure you could, though examples of it being at all current common practice to build what is commonly recognised by the term "X terminal" would be good.

Common criticisms: you cut out several with no comment. Is hardware support now just dandy, and does X no longer control the display directly? "This facility has been added to X." Do you mean serving up :0 via VNC, or another new thing?

"X's network transparency requires the client application host and the remote display servers to operate in a complementary fashion." Yes, but what does that mean? (I know what it means - see LBX - but it's just dropped in there without explanation. Also, it's mixing the answer to the criticism way too closely with the criticism itself, which verges on advocacy.)

Your wording is clumsy and jargon-filled. Read this talk page and the FAC nomination. We have rank beginners here.

Finallly, remember to assume good faith, as doing so helps avoid falling into making personal attacks. - David Gerard 12:23, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm an acquaintance of Mr. Mosher's and thought I'd take a look at the article and discussion since he mentioned it in a conversation yesterday. I see you've added a defensive, personal attack of your own here, one which is irrelevant, of course. At least Mr. Mosher was focused on X while your attack is based solely on a specious claim that you understand Wiki style better than he does. I suspect that he would gladly concede that to you. But he's right about X as far as touchscreens go - touchscreens are everywhere, even if you've not noticed. Touchscreens in restaurants and retail establishments worldwide, they're running the touchscreen software paradigm that Mr. Mosher pioneered and helped to make popular. Touchscreens are on all the latest handheld devices, such as phones and PDAs, too. It's clear that he knows X and touchscreens, and that you don't, especially as X is used in remote GUIs.

If you don't actually build touchscreen X systems that span the globe, as Mr. Mosher does, then you couldn't possibly understand the deeper implications of X's versatility as a network transparent protocol and the value which it therefore has as an abstraction layer for virtually every kind of display and input device. X and touchscreens have something in common, actually. They are both widely misunderstood and misrepresented, even by people who benefit from them. The success of a technology is very much measured by the extent to which a user can benefit from it while being allowed to be totally ignorant of the technology. The way I see it, someone who is too busy making X and touchscreens do new and exciting things took a little time to make Wikipedia a more accurate source of information about X than it was. Then someone who describes himself as a Wikiholic infers from his perception of mastery of Wikipedia style elements a license to censor the work of others. At the very least, one shouldn't justify removal of a contribution by denigrating the contributor as a rank beginner. When you choose to swing a pendulum it surely will return.Bill Cannon 13:40, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I see from Eugene Mosher why Gene put a strong focus on touchscreen point of sale terminals in the X article. You're right, touch screens are everywhere. But why is this particular to X (and not to, say, the many touch screens run by Windows), so very special it belongs in the first four paragraphs of the article? Not to mention the other points.

Also, you talk at length about Gene's work and knowledge (which I've just been reading up on) - but it's hard to tell that from what appears to be an idiosyncratic edit from an apparently hit-and-run IP number, which in itself ("207.189.131.233", who is that at a glance?) carries no credibility.

If you could point out the bit that you think violates Wikipedia:No personal attacks, please do - David Gerard 16:05, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

SteveBaker believes that this article is about X - not about Windows. It's irrelevent whether Windows does or does not widely support touchscreens. If it's a significant fraction of X usage then it needs to be mentioned. I'd agree that it perhaps doesn't need to be in the introductory section - but it does need to be somewhere. Use X on an 'Agenda PDA' with handwriting recognition and a touch-screen and you'll appreciate that this is indeed an important facet of the X Windowing System.

I have to say that David's stance, and his response, seems a lot more reasonable to me than the complaints here. (What about touch screens is specific to X, for example, that it should go in the introduction? Maybe a subsection or sub-article on XInput, but... As for GUIs, isn't it obvious that with primitive drawing operations an application can present any interface it wants? In practice, most X apps seem to rely on one of a dozen or so GUI toolkits to do most of the work, though, and such toolkits therefore deserve the bulk of the emphasis.) Gene, it would be much easier to assess your criticisms if you confined yourself to calmly explaining what you think should go in the article that is contrary to David's edits; simply venting your frustrations about David is not persuasive. —Steven G. Johnson 06:25, September 3, 2005 (UTC)

Tell you what would be really helpful: a screen shot of X in a point of sale application. That would get the point across about the many uses of X nicely.

(And by the way, does anyone have a hardware X terminal they could take a GFDL photo of?) - David Gerard 19:36, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

We should also keep in mind, btw: when it comes to things to do with X, Gene Mosher >>> almost anyone here, particularly me, and his expertise is something Wikipedia can very much do with. I still think I'm a better copyeditor though ;-p - David Gerard 23:01, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Synchronous/Asynchronous - Disambiguate?

At the moment, the Synchronous and Asynchronous links both take you to dismbiguation pages. I don't have enough knowledge to judge whether they should go to more relevant pages. Can someone else help here? --Finbarr Saunders 06:14, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Those are not disambiguation pages. (A disambiguation page would be a list of links to more specific articles like Synchronous protocol etcetera.) They are simply (rather poor, from the look of them) articles on the terms, currently. —Steven G. Johnson 06:28, September 3, 2005 (UTC)

Poor paragraph in history section

I don't like this paragraph, but I don't know enough about the history to re-write it and retain accuracy. Here's the paragraph and my rewrite:

The project solved this by creating a protocol that could run local applications and was able to call on remote resources. In mid-1983 an initial port of W to Unix ran at one-fifth of its speed under V; in May 1984, Scheifler replaced the synchronous protocol of W with an asynchronous protocol and the display lists with immediate mode graphics to make X version 1. X was the first window system environment that was truly hardware and vendor independent.

The collaborators solved this by creating a protocol that could run local applications and was able to call on remote resources. They used the W code base as a starting point. By mid-1983 the initital port of W to Unix ran, but only at one-fifth of its speed under V. By May of 1984 Scheifler had replaced the synchronous protocol of W with an asynchronous protocol and the display lists with immediate mode graphics to make X version 1, the first window system environment that was truly hardware and vendor independent.

I'm making a number of assumptions, any or all of which may be wrong:

• There was no formal project, just some collaborators, as there's no mention of one anywhere.
• The collaborators began with a port of W to Unix, the same port they later modified into X.
• Scheifler didn't do all the work mentioned in the one month of May ,'84.
• X version 1 was hardware and vendor independent.

If I'm wrong about this perhaps more sentences are needed.

Regards,

--kop 19:21, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

I wrote the "early history" section using the history in the Scheifler/Gettys book listed in references as my source. I don't have it to hand any more (I gave it back to Vatine) - if someone can dig up a copy to check again, that'd be the thing to do first.

I think it was a team per se, and I'm not sure whether the 1983 port of W had anything to do with the changes that made X1. Asking on the X.org mailing list might be helpful, it would be good if someone from Wikipedia other than me emailed them ;-) - David Gerard 23:01, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

about "Competitors to X"

What is specific about Tarantella ? VNC also does provide Java applet. At list TightVNC.org package.

Links to year words on their own such as '1986'

In the edit history, David Gerard wrote:

• restore dates (not overlinking - you're supposed to link all relevant dates

Here are my thoughts on the matter: one of the great things about Wikipedia is that it is hypertext. So a reader can easily go from one topic to another. So if the X Window article mentions network transparency, the reader can click on the link and read about 'network transparency'. That is a 'good thing'.

Since there are so many articles in wikipedia, we could go berserk and add a link to each word when such a strategy adds little value. Furthermore if we repeat a word, we could link the second instance of the word, the third instance of the word, the fourth instance of the word and so on. That may appear as a Reductio ad absurdum explanation but if we look at date links in Wikipedia we are not far off.

For example, in this article, we have four instances of the term 1986 in 4 consecutive lines. Each of those has been linked. Three lines later it is linked again. Later on in the article, it occurs again in three consecutive lines, each instance linked. It seems to me that:

• of all the links in this article, terms such as '1986' probably come at the bottom of the list for further reading.
• of all the reasons to repeat a link, a term being unlinked for 2 lines is probably not one of them.

I think one of the reasons why this issue comes up is because of something unrelated to hypertext. It relates to date formats and date preferences. For some reason, the mechanism for permitting date preferences to work has been implemented in the same manner as a link. So that is why many complete dates are linked. However, a year word by itself does not have the date format preference issue. You are not alone in thinking that all dates should be linked but I think that many people do not understand that this is only because of date formatting, not because of a particular Wikipedia philosophy that readers are unfulfilled in their ability to check up on date articles.

This issue comes up from time to time in various places. I have a clear opinion on it and you can, of course, take a different view to me. It is only a secondary interest of mine anyway.

You may wish to refer to the following:

• Manual of Style (dates and numbers) section on date linking
• Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(links)#Internal_links Manual of Style (links) section on over linking

Feel free to do whatever you think will improve the article. Keep up the good work. Regards. Bobblewik 15:31, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Recent edits by 220.233.107.29

Are these recent edits really NPOV? --Joe Sewell 16:44, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

That recent edit and the attempted cleanup of it turned the 'criticisms' section into a dog's breakfast. OTOH it adds useful information. Is there a good writer in the house with time to rewrite it? - David Gerard 12:49, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

The Department of Redundant Redundancy Department went through it and removed most of it — much better now IMAO - David Gerard 13:36, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Client Server "reversed"?

Saying that Client and server are reversed is an oversimplification that can confuse matters further. When I think of "Server" there are two elements I look at. First, my data files are frequently on another computer from the one I am at, but I access programs locally. Thus, in this sense, the "server" just holds data files. My second sense of server is similar to the sense when referring to X, but with one difference. My second sense of "server" provides the drivers for keyboard mouse and display, but also an API for allocating and accessing other system resources. This second part (other system resources) doesn't seem to be part of the X specification. Hackwrench 23:50, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

I would have just said that X running on the local computer is called the server because it waits for incomming connections from the remote programs that wish to display graphics. Ie the terms come from the underlying network model where it is the remote program that initiates the connection. Squashed sultana 10:06, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Inward facing clients

This is my second and more pressing issue with X, which is how are clients made inward facing, which is to say not able to be connected to or connect to a server on another computer? The same question applies to the server too. Hackwrench 23:59, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

If I understand your question correctly: You can (try to) block network connections in a firewall. The server can decide to (try to) accept connections only from local peers, for example by not listening for TCP connections. SSH and other proxy software can of course fool these to some extent. --TuukkaH 23:04, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Peer review of a related article

I submitted X Window core protocol for peer review, as I intend to candidate it for featured status. I would appreciate comments (Peer review page). - Liberatore(T) 17:56, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Quotes

Is there any reason for no quotes about X server in the article? Like Ken Thompson's

OpenVMS / DECwindows reference?

Should "Hewlett-Packard's OpenVMS operating system includes a version of X with CDE, known as DECwindows, as its standard desktop environment" be reworded? Since HP also ships HP-UX (which presumably also has X), perhaps both should be mentioned to avoid confusion, as OpenVMS and DECwindows are legacy DEC products. It just seems a little like saying "DaimlerChrysler's Plymouth Road Runner Super Bird," with the difference that HP is, in fact, maintaining and shipping legacy DEC stuff.

Dunno. You can reword if you like, but OpenVMS is a current product. Just a very high-end one. And considerably less dead than HP-UX - David Gerard 12:16, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Display PostScript did not become Aqua

As seen in the Wikipedia article on Display Postscript (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_PostScript), it become Quartz. Aqua is the visual theme in OS X, not the display technology.

Display Postscript was replaced by Quartz. Neither is a window manager. -Ahruman 15:46, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Ununderstable introduction

Is it possible to begin this article with a sentence using the verb 'to be' so that it can answer the question that everybody wonders:

"What is X Window System ?"

So, I think the article should begin this way:

In computing, the X Window System (commonly X11 or X) is...

and it's up to you to continue... 16@r 22:35, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

I tried just now and couldn't come up with anything. It is both a dessert wax and a floor topping, or a protocol for constructing such, or toolkits for such - David Gerard 12:15, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

I took a shot at it. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 23:46, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Inserted this new text:

Simply put, X11 is the system-level software infrastructure for the windowing GUI on Linux, *BSD, and other UNIX-like operating systems; it is designed to handle both local displays, as well as across-the-network displays (contrast with headless servers). More formally,

In front of this existing intro-paragraph:

[T]he X Window System (commonly known as X11, based on its current major version being 11, or shortened to simply X, and sometimes informally X-Windows) is a computer software system and network protocol that provides a basis for graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and rich input device capability for networked computers. It creates a hardware abstraction layer where software is written to use a generalized set of commands, allowing for device independence and reuse of programs on any computer that implements X.

Note: X11 is not the same than XWindowS (or X-Window-System). X11 is only one of the versions of the standar. Guilloip (talk) 18:54, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

criticisms section and factual inaccuracies/omissions

Many current implementations of X manipulate the video hardware directly. A misbehaving server can render the display unusable even if the underlying operating system continues to function, possibly requiring a reboot.

So what? A misbehaving driver can lock up any graphical system on any OS. I don't see why this criticism is specific to X at all.

Furthermore, at least on some Linux distros, the criticism is not completely true -- if your xserver locks up the GUI session, you can often use Ctrl+Alt+F4 to get to a textmode 'virtual terminal' and use the cmdln to get things working again. (One would use Ctrl+Alt+F7 to return to the now-fixed-up X11 session once again.) This is actually a useful feature of X11, that is not offered on most other OSes, where when the GUI goes down you have no recourse but to reboot. See also, ctrl+alt+backspace. While I suppose it is true that some X11 hardware-drivers can actually make the display unusable even from a VT, that still just means X11 is in the same boat as msWindows and OSX and friends... whereas, with a properly-written X11 hardware-driver, you can fix up the windowing system without a reboot (not the case in windows... not sure about OSX which is loosely BSD-based nowadays -- anybody know this answer?). 74.192.84.101 (talk) 23:54, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

The X protocol provides no facilities for handling sound, leaving it to the operating system to provide support for audio hardware and sound playback.

I thought MAS was part of the official standard now. Granted, nobody uses it...

The device-independence and the separation of client and server do incur an overhead.

All decent graphics APIs are device independent, from Win32 GDI to Quartz to DirectX to OpenGL. That's kind of the point of the API. To provide device independence.

Also, both Windows and Mac OS X operate on the same "separation of client and server" principle also. All modern GUIs do their actual output and GUI apps in separate processes. If every GUI app had direct access to the hardware (as this criticism seems to suggest) it would be a mess!

Also, when you are running programs locally, X will use MIT-SHM and zero-copy sockets, which greatly reduces the affect of this separation.

I just think that many of these criticisms seem to have been put in by uninformed users. – Andyluciano 15:12, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I see that this last point has in fact been given treatment in the article. It needs to be clearer though. I have started editing the section, trying to be careful to do so in a neutral way. – Andyluciano 15:23, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

All modern GUIs do their actual output and GUI apps in separate processes... Not quite sure what 'processes' you mean here. If it is this process, I think you may probably wrong. The actual output could be implemented as a kernel module (or driver) which manipulates the graphical device directly. On the other hand, GUI apps are executed in user space. Each GUI app is a genuine process. However, the module runs in the kernel is not. GUI apps depend on the kernel module to achieve graphics functionalities by making system calls to the kernel. Because GUI apps cooperate with the kernel via function calls rather than IPCs so basically they are in the same process rather than separate ones. - Justin545 (talk) 09:18, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

The criticisms are actual problems that are or were commonly touted. I wrote that para most carefully. I suppose there could theoretically be cites for each ... The device independence one was actually unusual in the late '80s and is addressed about as well as it could be in that paragraph. MAS may be the 'standard', but there is no accepted sound transport standard that people actually use - David Gerard 10:19, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

And I'm somewhat surprised you didn't look up the two sources of criticisms listed at the top of the section! A lot of the criticisms are old and outmoded, but still common - David Gerard 10:48, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

The Unix Hater's Handbook is a patently biased book whose arguments about X were largely specious to begin with, and have become ever less worthwhile with the passage of a great deal of time. This whole section of the article is pretty clearly just a sop to the X trolls, and I find it amusing that the Wikipedia editors let it ride given its non-neutral point of view. Weirdly, the sections on Limitations and criticisms of the Apple Macintosh and Limitations and criticisms of the Windows Operating System contain no discussion of their respective window systems—because they are missing altogether. Who knew? - Bart Massey 11:39, 1 April 2009 (PDT) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.173.201.99 (talk)

Not to mention that some of the "limitations" mentioned are actually unique and useful features that set X apart. Namely, the "criticism" about it having a client-server architecture. Whoever writes this shit? :-/

I am curious why there is no reference to the Apollo Aegis(sp?) windowing system. It was a full bitmapped graphics implementation that was network aware and, as I remember, was why Dec and IBM went to MIT to get 'W' updated to 'X'. They knew they were about to get blown away on UI's. Smart money by DEC/IBM; and to HP who eventually went on to buy Apollo. It was a great system in its day! [Leslie Keller, July 13, 2009]

No Sound Support

Regardless of attempts to actually integrate this in X11, I don't see how the lack of audio support can be a criticism for a 'windowing manager' (there is a clue in the name) any more than we would criticise the fact that it can't make coffee or do any of the other things it isn't designed for in the first place. For this reason, I am removing the offending paragraph. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.153.104.185 (talk) 13:32, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

User interface issues and Computer accessibility related issues

Seems to me that this is about that X not being a full blown Desktop environment, which is akin to the "problem" that X doesn't have support for sound. Anyone mind if I remove them or replace all of them with a new section describing the perceived core problem (that X is not a desktop environment)? FrederikHertzum (talk) 12:47, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

What is this article about?

A toolkit? A protocol? An implementation? A GUI?

No, yes, a fair bit, not quite - David Gerard 12:08, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Intro rewritten as "[thing] is ..." - if that isn't clear, add wikilinks to taste - David Gerard 10:17, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, I imagine over 90% of the world's computer-using population has never heard of the X Window System, so it's no wonder people are confused what this article is about. JIP | Talk 08:39, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

To restore the honor of anonymous poster world-wide: I was not confused, but merely pointing out the inconsistency. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 217.235.209.158 (talk) 21:47, 22 January 2007 (UTC).

Application Migration

The article asserts that applications cannot migrate. This is not in fact true. An early counter example is Gnu Emacs, which has been about to do so since the 1980's (along with replicated display). (diff author: actually Emacs can not only migrate, but co-use multiple displays, very handy for getting one emacs' multiple windows to spread onto a second X server on your desktop - or assist someone over the Internet in the old days when TCP listen was still on by default) This was painful in the past due to colormaps (though if you thought ahead while building a toolkit, it wasn't difficult). It is now much easier, between client side fonts and true color displays being the norm.

A more recent example is that GTK+ applications can potentially migrate, at least if they do not use obsolete interfaces. See the "teleport" application of the GPE environment. What is still missing is both good integrated authentication and security (encryption) of the protocol to make migration "safe" to do. I'd like to see people pursue this: see my paper http://www.linuxsymposium.org/2005/view_abstract.php?content_key=102 And with the rewrite of the input section of the X Server, remoting input devices is also now becoming feasible. Oh, this paper should probably get added to the bibliography.

As I am Jim Gettys 23:57, 01-Jan-2007 (UTC), I leave it to others to verify this and edit the article.

I tried to rephrase the Network section to reflect this, and used your paper as a source. Demian12358 22:41, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

On Portal:Free software, X Window System is currently the selected article

(2007-02-04) Just to let you know. The purpose of selecting an article is both to point readers to the article and to highlight it to potential contributors. It will remain on the portal for a week or so. The previous selected article was GIMP. Gronky 20:13, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

The selected article box has been updated again, the new selectee is FOSDEM. Gronky 12:55, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Broken reference link

One of your references had a broken link.

The means to an X for Linux: an interview with David Dawes from XFree86.org (Matthew Arnison, CAT TV, June 1999)

I used the latest archived page of it since I could not find the page anywhere else.

Psychless 01:38, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

All of these are broken:

31 Invitation for public discussion about the future of X 20 March 2003

32 A Call For Open Governance Of X Development 21 March 2003

33 Notes from a teleconference held 2003-3-27 3 April 2003

34 A Call For Open Governance Of X Development 24 March 2003

35 A Call For Open Governance Of X Development 23 March 2003

36 Discussing issues 14 April 2003

22:10, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

What Happened to X ORG?

I got the following from a post to my local LUG (GWLUG):Both my ISP's and UT=128.83.185.40 's dns servers agree. X.org and www.x.org > > do not exist!

I got "Firefox can't find the server at www.x.org." after my attempt to connect to it at http://www.x.org/

Borgward 16:55, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Whois lists the domain as ok. None of the nameservers are responding so they are offline. Most likely they put all of their nameservers on the same subnet. No one should do this of course but it is quite common. Robert Brockway 17:06, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Implementations

Yeahb, the picture takes a long time to load on AOL 9.0. It will be nice if we could fix that. PLEASE HELP —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.244.187.252 (talk) 20:04, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

OS X is a Unix OS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X). In the part on Implementations that's about Apple, it seems a lot like the author did not know that. This is NOT a feature. Please fix it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.13.127.173 (talk) 06:55, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

GAN failed

I've failed this good article nomination primarily because it lacks reliable sources woefully. Most of the sections are not referenced or referenced thoroughly, and when there are references, they are not complete. Other than that, I recommend sifting through the text and correct any grammatical, spelling, and other problems with the prose. Furthermore, some of this article may be too technical for a general audience wanting to know about X (example client-server). If this review was in error, please take this article to good article reassessment. 哦，是吗？(O-person) 03:50, 31 December 2007 (GMT)

Image X11 ssh tunnelling

The image pretends that one has only to log into another machine using ssh for having an ssh tunnel. But in the example just the call of xeyes is encrypted but not the data xeyes transferes. -- Raubsaurier (talk) 20:33, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

No pretense involved, all data over the net is encrypted; see ssh(1) for details. --24.7.241.89 (talk) 00:59, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

(GNOME, KDE etc.) vs. X Window System

What makes desktop environments such as GNOME and KDE different from the X Window System? --Abdull (talk) 19:58, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

GNOME, KDE, etc., are particular applications that happen to run in X Tedickey (talk) 20:17, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, sets of applications and policies and so on. Marnanel (talk) 02:25, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Requested fix at Talk:X_window_manager#Metacity.27s_compositor:_requested_fix

There's a factual inaccuracy in X window manager which has been noted at Talk:X_window_manager#Metacity.27s_compositor:_requested_fix for a while, which I can't fix because of WP:COI; can someone else step in, please? Marnanel (talk) 02:26, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Fixed (mostly), see comments over at that talk-page. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 02:28, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

versioning system

Can someone explain the versioning system? There are multiple related but distinct version numbers, such as the protocol version (11), the release version (7.4), and the server version (1.4). This is so poorly defined that even Wikipedia can't get it right. For example, the KDrive article says, "As of X.Org Server version 7.1" even though the X.Org Server is currently only on version 1.4.0. It's not clear what to call the thing that the article is actually intending to refer to. (X? X Release? X System? X Window System? X11?) It's usually referred to using the notation "X11R#.#" because even if nobody knows what to call it, at least this notation lets people know what they're talking about. Is there a guide somewhere that sorts this out? Herorev (talk) 15:26, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

The thing that's currently being numbered in the 7.X range is the "katamari" or "roll-up" release, i.e., a full X.Org "official" release. We generally refer to the collection of software being released in this process as "X.Org". As you correctly point out, the components of X.Org, including the X Server, have their own version numbers with their own sequence. This is no different than e.g. Apple's MacOS X numbering, and represents a fairly common industry practice. See http://www.x.org/wiki/Releases/ModuleVersions for a list of the various component versions for recent X.Org releases.

It is fairly common practice, if a bit sloppy, to refer to component versions using the version number of X.Org that they were released with. This saves remembering so many numbers. HTH. --Bart Massey 69.168.48.167 (talk) 17:26, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Using the link above[12], plus some other sources[13][14][15], below is the rough overall-version history as of august 2013. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 04:47, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

rollup	xorg-server	1stCommit	Fedora	Ubuntu	NthCommit	xrandr	evdev	vesa	i810/intel
X11R7.0	1_0	Mar'06	f4	u6	~2006	1.0.1	1.0.0.5	1.0.1.3	i810-1.4.1.3
X11R7.1	1_1	Apr'06	f5	u6	~2006	1.0.2	1.1.2	1.2.0	i810-1.6.0
X11R7.2	1.2	Nov'06		u7	~2006	1.0.2	1.1.5	1.3.0	i810-1.7.4
X11R7.3	1.2	Nov'06		u7	~2006	1.2.2	1.1.5	1.3.0	i810-1.7.4 && intel-2.1.1
n/a	1.3	Aug'07	f6	u7	~2008	tbd	tbd	tbd	tbd
n/a	1.4	Nov'07	f8	u8	~2008	tbd	tbd	tbd	tbd
X11R7.4	1.5	Mar'08	f9	u8	~2009	1.2.3	2.0.4	2.0.0	intel-2.4.2
n/a	1.6	Nov'08	f10	u9	~2009	tbd	tbd	tbd	tbd
X11R7.5	1.7	???'09	f11	u10	Nov'11	1.3.2	2.3.0	2.2.1	intel-2.9.1
n/a	1.8	Apr'10	f12		Nov'11	tbd	tbd	tbd	tbd
X11R7.6	1.9	Aug'10	f13	u10	Nov'11	1.3.4	2.5.0	2.3.0	intel-2.13.0
n/a	1.10	Feb'11	f14	u11	Mar'12	tbd	tbd	tbd	tbd
n/a	1.11	Aug'11	f15	u12	Apr'12	tbd	tbd	tbd	tbd
X11R7.7	1.12	Mar'12	f16		Oct'12	1.3.5	2.7.0	2.3.1	intel-2.19.0
n/a	1.13	Sep'12	f17	u12	Apr'13	tbd	tbd	tbd	tbd
n/a?	1.14	Mar'13	f18	u13?	Aug'13+	tbd	tbd	tbd	tbd

Note that the data in the article does not match the reference-material used to create the table above. Here is the info currently in the article. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 05:03, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

rollup	public_release	XServer	correlation with table above
X11R7.0	Dec'05	1.???	[date_mismatch]
X11R7.1	May'06	1.???	[unknown]
X11R7.2	Feb'07	1.???	[unknown]
X11R7.3	Sep'07	1.4	[version_mismatch]
X11R7.4	Sep'08	1.5.1	[match]
X11R7.5	Oct'09	1.7	[match]
X11R7.6	Dec'10	1.9	[match]
X11R7.7	Jun'12	1.12	[match]

X10.3 vs X10R3?

My memory is fading, but I'm pretty sure that it was called "X10.3" back in the day, not "X10R3" I think the R replaced the dot sometime in the X11 series. linas (talk) 07:28, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Heh, yes. See [16] -- 69 hits for "X10.4 release", vs. 45 for "X10R4 release". linas (talk) 23:51, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Clarity wanting in "Implementations" section.

Third-party servers under Mac OS 7, 8 and 9 included White Pine Software's eXodus and Apple's MacX.

I'm not familiar with the Mac OS scene, but if MacX is actually an Apple product, it's not "third-party". Not sure, but perhaps the intent here is that it did not ship with the OS? In that case, maybe replace with:

Mac OS 7, 8 and 9 did not include an X server, but several X servers were available including White Pine Software's eXodus and Apple's MacX.

--24.7.241.89 (talk) 00:49, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

1994?

Using "The UNIX-HATERS Handbook" (1994) as an intro to the criticism section is a little odd. The book is

1. more like a laughing-mirror for unix users in the year 1994, and more funny than serious,
2. considerably blunt, off-topic and not-very accurate as a real criticism of X, it makes failure prognoses that are obviously wrong by current experience,

I think the statement should be moved somewhat further downwards in the criticism section, as a funny detail to refer to. ... said: Rursus (bork²) 13:50, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

I think the Unix Haters stuff is comedic nonsense and really is not a valid criticism. The fact is X Window System does not use as a lot of resources itself. In the early days, long ago, with computers often having 4 MB of RAM, pretty much any GUI system was considered to be huge. So it does not matter how the GUI system was written, it would have been considered huge to the people who wrote the Unix Haters Handbook. This is simply due to the scarce memory on systems at that time. The Unix Haters stuff makes it seem that X is badly designed. This is wrong. X is not badly designed. X does not really use more RAM than other GUIs like Windows. The server's executable is about 10 MB, entire server uses around 30 MB, much of that is buffers rather than code.Millueradfa (talk) 23:20, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

The section of "The UNIX-HATERS Handbook" should be removed, because the critics are not up to date and it makes no useful contribution to the article. In the better case it can be mentionated in a "culture" section with no all the explanation.--Guilloip (talk) 19:33, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Moving Xming from Free to proprietary

As discussed on Talk:Xming and other places on the web, the product is no longer exactly free nor Free --SeeFood (talk) 13:47, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Is that why it is used by GPL projects andLinux and Portable Ubuntu for Windows, and shares its source code with the Cygwin/X project? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.3.107.196 (talk) 06:55, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

DSPSOFT INC

There are no reliable sources (primary sources don't count) so far for the edits related to DSPSOFT INC Tedickey (talk) 10:40, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Hi, it's ok to remove the red link if you think the link there is unnecessary or inappropriate. - Justin545 (talk) 14:22, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

That, plus MicroXwin, which is the same set of changes (unless you're going to start adding some reliable sources). Tedickey (talk) 17:00, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

If you insist, I suggest to remove that paragraph and delete the article MicroXwin. MicroXwin is kind of new and third-party sources are not easy to be found. But before you take action, please make sure there is no any objection with respect to the removal and the deletion because:

1. If the page can be improved, this should be solved through regular editing, rather than deletion.
2. Disputes over page content are not dealt with by deleting the page. Likewise, disagreement over a policy or guideline is not dealt with by deleting it.

as you can see in Wikipedia:Deletion policy. - Justin545 (talk) 04:22, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Agree more/less - the MicroXwin topic needs sources (I don't see an immediate reason to delete it). Tedickey (talk) 11:04, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Bogus images should be removed

Since certain images have had their Windows background removed, they no longer show what they purport to show. I think they should be removed. Yworo (talk) 18:23, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Actually, all that would be needed to be non-infringing would be to use a screenshot with the plain blue background, and crop out the toolbar. One could add a blue background to the Xming image, for instance, using gimp. Tedickey (talk) 20:44, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

That's true.... though I think somebody should take a new screenshot and do that. The site this was derived from claims to have put the image with Windows in it into the public domain. Since they aren't actually able to do that, should we be linking to that page on that site? Yworo (talk) 22:12, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Already done. The toolbar at the top is open source software. The possibly "non-free" elements that Yworo tried to get the image deleted over have been cropped out and replaced with a transparent background. --Tothwolf (talk) 23:01, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

SunDew/NeWS and the AT&T 7300 UNIX PC vs. X--75.218.5.85 (talk) 02:16, 19 October 2009 (UTC)Jim

A couple omissions to the history here.

First of all the AT&T UNIX PC of which I was one of the first owners did not succeed in the market because it was poorly positioned as a competitor to the IBM-PC. It was much more powerful yet vastly more expensive. At the time AT&T couldn't market anything other than long distance telephone service. More or less the same thing happened with Honeywell trying to market the GE line of mainframes which were eventually sold to Bull of France.

As for the X Window System, SunDew or NeWS was vastly superior yet was deliberately crushed by IBM, HP and DEC because they were angry at Sun's de facto standard for NFS and were bound and determined to prevent another. NeWS was mainly only used by Sun and SGI on high end workstations that most people didn't even know existed at the time.

I could just send a PostScript file to my Sun 3/60's display and could program graphics in PostScript. Show me a X display that can do that even today without some kind of interpreter.

---

Yes, there was a vast conspiracy of evil corporations to crush the wonder that was NeWS. If it had been allowed to flower, it could be as wonderful today as...NFS!!

I could just send a PostScript virus to my Sun 3/60's display and have it propagate itself. Show me an X display that can do that even today without some kind of interpreter.

The fact of the matter is that while PostScript had a better drawing model than X, a Turing-complete window system was (and still is) considered a bug rather than a feature by most folks. There were also various intellectual property...issues. The net today is that X supports primitives that make the PostScript-like drawing model of Cairo (http://cairographics.org) reasonably fast, and OpenGL has also subsumed quite a bit of the need for fancy rendering. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.168.48.167 (talk) 17:37, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

single large expensive, etc.

That's injecting the editor's opinion, by stating in some many words that there weren't any multiprocessors, that all of the X hosts were large. Expensive is relative (costs have always been calculated per-user). Tedickey (talk) 09:51, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Suggestions on trimming the lede

The writing is well polished, and hard to refactor without bruising something, or I would have just waded in and trimmed the lede myself. Instead, a few observations.

Already the second sentence It creates a hardware abstraction layer where software is written to use a generalized set of commands, allowing for device independence and reuse of programs on any computer that implements X. is written for an adept audience.

The second sentence should be X originated at MIT in 1984. Under a permissive license. In was designed at the time to permit time sharing, which is no longer so important, but since it solves some other problems well enough, it remains in widespread use, not without some drawbacks. Then it needs about half as much technical description of which part of the software stack it lays claim to, and what it's like to work at that layer (a world full of windows, fonts, pointers, and C code).

The current protocol version, X11, appeared in September 1987. The lede should state something about the history of the official specification / specification body.

Rather than wading so heavily into enumerating the technical bits and pieces, I would prefer the lede to end on an explanation that X combines the wrong abstractions by modern standards, and is being actively exploded:

• [Phoronix Wayland: A New X Server For Linux]
• [Phoronix A Preview Of Kernel-Based Mode-Setting]

Distilling the essence of this change is the part of the writing process I most enjoyed, before I discovered the scope of the prohibition against OR and gifted illuminations of guru grumblings, so these sources are kind of worthless for the purpose here. — MaxEnt 14:30, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Time-sharing is something different from remote access. X addressed the latter. Tedickey (talk) 15:16, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

As these things do, the intro more or less grew and had subclauses bolted on as time passed. I'd say dive in and condense, moving subclauses into the body as appropriate :-) - David Gerard (talk) 09:45, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

In fact, the entire article is suffering from subclause decay, editorialising, advocacy, advertising and stuff that belongs on the talk page. Do feel free to go the hack on it. Say "see talk page" in the edit summary ;-) - David Gerard (talk) 09:51, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

X lack of success because of Motif licensing should be noted

Although X and specifically DeskView/X offered an alternative to current Windows dominance, the high cost of developing software using Motif led to too few offerings to be competitive. Alternative like Mootif, Lestiff, and Xtif appeared later. Not much about this in Motif article.Shjacks45 (talk) 09:14, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Sure, be bold! Go ahead, add it! Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 18:31, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Workspaces

When did X11 introduce workspaces? I have used them in 1997 already and my guess it that they were available much earlier. but this article does not talk about them, while on MacOS X this feature gets an extra article: Spaces (software). This is typical. -- 86.103.175.109 (talk) 09:03, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

You guessed right — as Spaces (software) says, "virtual desktops existed for quite some time on other platforms"; according to virtual desktop, switchable desktops have been around since 1986, and were implemented on X in 1989. That said, I see nothing particularly notable about "Spaces", and the "Use" section could certainly be trimmed. Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 10:29, 26 June 2011 (UTC) — edited 11:55, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Lack of encryption

X Windows was originally developed in a benign computer environment. Getting two computers at that time to communicate with each other was a tricky, and attacks of the type we see today were not considered.

There should be a paragraph on encryption or rather the lack of it. Yes one can start a session using ssh, but for example if one is going to use Xdm then there is no encryption without jumping through hoops. -- PBS (talk) 22:15, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Encryption can be provided by SSH or another encryption technology, such as SSL (stunnel, etc). There is no need to have encryption in the X server itself as it can be done with tools such as SSH. So, encryption can be done with X. Millueradfa (talk) 23:10, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

The SSH tunnel feature will probably work with XDM, which is different from the port forwarding with the -L option. The port forward forwards a single TCP connection while an tunnel will create a link on top of the entire TCP/IP protocol stack including UDP can be run, using TUN devices. Millueradfa (talk) 14:54, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Primitives

The article talks about these and makes a reference to "software framework". But I still have no idea what a primitive is. The the references article doesn't mention the word. Kelly222 (talk) 08:01, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

undue focus given to Orca

That's a rather large paragraph which isn't reflected in the linked topic, and has the appearance of being mostly promotional rather than informative TEDickey (talk) 21:12, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

It is well justified as Orca is the main means to provide screen reading and magnification on the X Window System. Previously the article gave the impression that X had no accessibility mechanisms. This is not true! X11 has had accessibility features being implemented for it for years.

To mention Orca here is entirely appropriate since it is specifically designed to be used on X Window System and is the main way to obtain Accessibility on X. Most Linux distributions provide Orca through their installer, at no additional cost.

Since the paragraph lets people know that accessibility is available on X and provides information on the main mechanisms for accessibility on X, it is informative, and not promotional. It would be misleading to say that there is no accessibility on X when in fact there is and not to mention the components that provide the features.Millueradfa (talk) 15:09, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

I see (you're justifying the promotional aspect on the basic of "it should be promoted"). Perhaps you'd like to improve the linked topic (though promotionalism isn't an improvement), rather than biasing this topic? TEDickey (talk) 20:38, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

It seems like everything on wikipedia is a promotion. I don't think the paragraph is any more promotional than anything else on Wikipedia. So I do not accept your assessment of this. Millueradfa (talk) 14:59, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

It has the usual earmarks, and your responses aren't helpful. The sourcing is weak, the paragraph goes into a lot of detail that (if it were sourced properly) would belong in the Orca (assistive technology) topic, and does not have much to do with this topic. Take a closer look at Comparison of screen readers, noting that there's more than one application which would run in X and provides analogous functionality, contrary to your comment that "Orca is the main means", etc TEDickey (talk) 16:50, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Reference implementation

Has X.Org Server and its anchestors (back up to X1) always been the reference implementation of the X Window System? --Abdull (talk) 12:33, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

X10 was the first published version. There are numerous comments about it being a reference implementation. TEDickey (talk) 14:37, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Source? --Abdull (talk) 13:14, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Was that regarding X10, or the applicability of "reference implementation" to X.Org and kindred? TEDickey (talk) 11:28, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

By the way, my recollection is that the term "reference implementation" came mainly from the X.Org people to legitimize their fork from XFree86, and that it was less-used during the 1990s. Demonstrating that would take more work than I'd put into a talk-page, though I probably have enough email and so forth if I chose to document it properly as an external page. TEDickey (talk) 11:31, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

x-windowS informal?

The term x-windows (plural) is not informal. It's incorrect.

Suggesting to the reader that this usage is acceptable is about as unfair to the reader as a suggestion that farting in a crowded elevator is likely to be welcomed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.38.196.235 (talk) 01:22, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

It's been there since the project started. There may or may not be a citable claim that the project claims it's incorrect, but no-one's managed to find one in ten years - David Gerard (talk) 08:32, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

As I recall, it was from one of the X newsgroup FAQ's. The point is that the topic here is referring to the existence of the usage, not its correctness TEDickey (talk) 09:48, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Heh. This one? Note title :-D - David Gerard (talk) 10:42, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

yes, I noticed several occurrences. Seems that it's been updated. Google might find an old posting to comp.windows.x which could be used as a source; however google's memory is selective and I frequently find it uncompliant TEDickey (talk) 11:42, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

A search on faqs.org shows lots of people using it as if it means "X Window System". I mean, I remember "X Windows is just wrong!" being a standard assertion - I do know what the IP is on about. But it's like history started in 1995 and everything before then just vanished like morning dew in the hot sun. (I am appalled how much I get this feeling on Wikipedia.) - David Gerard (talk) 22:42, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

My feeling is that if it werent commonly (and incorrectly) referred to as "X Windows" then the org would not have put the assertion that that is incorrect in their faq or manpage. -- [UseTheCommandLine ~/talk] #_ 02:52, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

If you can find a cite as to incorrectness, that would be marvellous - David Gerard (talk) 13:03, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, there's this rant from Matt Landau, who was the X Window System Manager for the X Consortium:

It is the "X Window System", or "X11", or "X" or any of
a number of other designations accepted by the X Consortium.  In fact,
doing "man X" on pretty much any X11 machine will tell you:

     The X Consortium requests that the following names  be  used
     when referring to this software:

                                  X
                           X Window System
                             X Version 11
                     X Window System, Version 11
                                 X11

There is no such thing as "X Windows" or "X Window", despite the repeated
misuse of the forms by the trade rags.

So it's a pretty authoritative source, but the publication venue (a Usenet post from 1993) may not meet WP:RS. Alternatively you could take the not-unreasonable view that the list of names in the man page is meant to be exhaustive. —Psychonaut (talk) 15:44, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

I think who it's from makes it reliable enough for these purposes. Nice one! - David Gerard (talk) 18:16, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Section updated. How's that? Someone official saying it's a "misuse", but the main newsgroup FAQ using it in its title - David Gerard (talk) 18:30, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Fine, but I converted the citation to a standard {{cite newsgroup}} one so that readers have the option of using their preferred news client rather than only Google Groups. —Psychonaut (talk) 19:02, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

XWindowS is not a mistake and is not plural (and must be never writen as xwindowS or XWindows), it is a short for X-Window-System (tha is why, capital letters are so important).--Guilloip (talk) 19:26, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

---

Sorry to kick off a hot topic and vanish, but things got very hectic shortly thereafter. A few thoughts with two basic themes, the intention of the original comment, and what's actually correct.

Though I did use the word "incorrect" in the original comment, the gist of the whole comment was really more about how the term "X-WindowS" is likely to be heard by others, incorrect or not. At times that term has been used as a rib, as pejorative, and it has at times been a yellow flag for incompetence. I suspect many folks who would hear it that way are now retired or getting close, but there are also probably plenty around who have made it to senior positions by now. So I'd be careful about using it in the same way I'd be careful about using a phrase that could be taken as an ethnic slur. You don't wanna walk into an interview for a freelance gig or a promotion and find yourself sitting across the desk from someone who was standing next you in the elevator when you said something s/he found offensive. So yeah, the "fart on a crowded elevator" was deliberate hyperbole to get your attention, but "informal" is a bit weak.

Personally, I suspect that the use of the trailing "s" is a bit like the mis-use of "literally", "beg the question", etc. They're all strictly speaking wrong, but they've entered common usage and we're probably stuck with them for a while. However, for many folks the misuse of those terms has the same visceral effect as nails scraping across a chalkboard, and the "X" thing can be worse. That may be the listener's problem, but if the listener is someone you want to keep happy then it's your problem too. Think of it as humoring your elders if you must.

As far as I've been able to tell "X-Window System" is the correct name of the windowing system and "X-Windows" is not. The use I've seen of citations purporting to illustrate that X-Windows is correct seem to involve misinterpretation of context. In some cases the use has been erroneous and later corrected. In others the term has been used as rib. For example Rob Pike used it in a talk in which his basic theme was that the UNIX community was failing to innovate in areas where Microsoft was. I have a feeling he was deliberately being provocative, but today's reader may not get it. (That's supposition on my part, subject to correction.) Newsgroups have hierarchial names. "comp.lang.c" is not the name of a programming language. "c" is a language in category "comp.lang". "comp.windows" is a category pertaining to windowing systems. Sure there is a "comp.windows.x". There is also a "comp.windows.news", a "comp.windows.ms", a "comp.windows.misc", and others. "windows.x" is not the name of a windowing system any more than "windows.news" is. "x" and "news" are windowing systems in category "windows". (In the case of MS the name of the system is also the name of the category which may invite unwarranted but understandable extrapolation.)

There are contexts in which the term "X windows" can be correct. That is when referring to particular windows rather than the system. If you're using an X-Server on a Mac you may have four windows open at once, two "Aqua windows", and two "X windows". That might seem to imply that it's also the name of the windowing system but it doesn't any more than the Mac's native windowing system is called "Aqua Windows".

In any event, I suggest that in mixed company, and especially in job interviews you do not use the "N" word or more subtle slurs, that you do not say "literally" when you mean "figuratively" or "emphatically", that you do not say "beg the question" when you mean "raise the question", and you do not use "X-Windows" to refer to the the X-Window System.

I think that "informal" is too weak for now. In another decade maybe not.

Ericfluger (talk) 19:26, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Linux graphics stack (sic)

The illustrations appear to be WP:OR, lacking any WP:RS. Some improvement would be helpful. TEDickey (talk) 15:10, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Can you please leave the diagram? And try to resolve the original research and references issues? Maybe I'll have a go at finding sources for it myself. I have been looking for ages for such a diagram, I've immediately saved it on my harddrive. I would highly appreciate it if it can be kept for some time. :-) Paulus/laudaka Laudaka's talk page 07:06, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Most of that editor's changes are WP:OR (essentially promotional). Judging by the amount, there may be a source from which it has been transplanted - that source might bear some discussion. TEDickey (talk) 10:11, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

diagram

Can some experienced user have a look at here? It's about one of the diagrams that used in this article. I'll be thankful. Bkouhi (talk) 17:08, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

I prefer the ancient version, at least it relates to reality slightly (possibly could do with updating, who uses up2date any more). @Tedickey: Which do you think is better? - David Gerard (talk) 18:21, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

The old one is preferable: the new one has multiple issues, e.g., (a) cluttered with non-topical items, (b) specific to one not-yet-available configuration, (c) some unsourced opinion thrown in for subjective weighting. TEDickey (talk) 18:29, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Mm. I drew the original (way back when), I'll do a redrawn version this evening (checking each use across a zillion wikis first, of course) - David Gerard (talk) 18:50, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Simple version back. I've also removed the other two impenetrable multicoloured blobs as unhelpful - David Gerard (talk) 20:12, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Intro rewrite, prose fixes

There's something that happens to Wikipedia articles: people add subclauses and qualifiers all over the prose, typically with terrible grammar, let alone prose flow.

So I've just gone axe-crazy on the utterly impenetrable intro and am cleaning up the rest of the text, pruning carbuncles and encrustations. Any deep objections? - David Gerard (talk) 15:59, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

The joys of the unnoteworthy

So I just filed a {{PROD}} on Fresco (windowing system). Because there is little evidence anyone actually cared. I looked through the history to find the original author to notify, and it was ... me, nine years ago. I figure this talk page is the best place to find anyone who would actually care enough to add references - David Gerard (talk) 22:13, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Doesn't seem to be much (aside from newsgroup-style comments) TEDickey (talk) 00:39, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

History of the core protocol

Hi guys, where can I find a history of the core protocol with changes between releases? Thanks. 2.179.229.11 (talk) 03:30, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

https://www.x.org/wiki/Releases/History/ plus ChangeLog in source. GangofOne (talk) 20:18, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

What's a "bitmap display systems"?

(First sentence of the "History" section) Does it have a technical meaning or does it just mean what it sounds like: a system for displaying (raster) images instead of just text? AngusCA (talk) 13:41, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

Consulting a dictionary would help (rasters refer to parallel lines, while bitmaps are not limited in that fashion). TEDickey (talk) 20:18, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

Interesting... perhaps I've not seen enough bitmaps, but I think they'd be poorly suited for vector displays. AngusCA (talk) 19:04, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

An LCD display might be a suitable example. TEDickey (talk) 20:45, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Free/Cross Platform in Title

Hello,

I had this edit, in which I added the words free (because X being free software is one of its defining aspects), and Cross Platform (another key topic) reverted. I think it's a worthwhile thing to add, as these are differentiating factors from other window systems. What do we think about this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jakesyl

The suggested source isn't a reliable source, because (being authored anonymously) it falls short of the guideline:

Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy.

Rather, it was equivalent to linking to Wikipedia. The link to cross-platform was to the "wrong" topic (though even if it had been accurate, that is overused, effectively vacuous even for Wikipedia). So there was no improvement suggested. TEDickey (talk) 23:51, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Alright understood. Still, X being FOSS is a pretty big part of its philosophy... Jakesyl (talk) 20:01, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

There might be a useful source (neutral, knowledgeable, third-party), but the linfo one has many problems. TEDickey (talk) 23:59, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

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Xterms, rise and fall.

I recall all this from memory. Xterms (thin clients) became widespread during the late 80s in research organizations. They were typically in restricted areas of universities or labs, and not accessible for the entire student population because of their cost. (Wall Street exchanges were also large users of Sun unix/X systems because of speed and security.) The large, often 20", RGB monitors were particularly attractive to thieves. Workstations that booted these xterms cost $30k (USD, e.g. Sun) and upwards, while the xterms were in the vicinity of $5k. Many xterms, such as IBMs, utilized cheaper x86 hardware 2/3/486 CPUs and FPM memory, rather than their own faster hardware. While the xterm CPU was intended to take the 3D computational load, the CPUs were too slow and networks too slow to give the same graphical performance as full workstations. By the late 90s much cheaper PCs running full X systems had completely killed off even the cheapest proprietary hardware. The x86 hardware released at this time had overtaken nearly all other workstation hardware in terms of performance. Sub $1k PCs out-computed $100k deskside monsters.27.33.247.210 (talk) 02:53, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

"Sub $1k PCs out-computed $100k deskside monsters." Revisionism is nice but c'mon, this is going too far. In the late 90's desktop pc's were running P-IV's, while the $100,000 monsters were running 128 Itanics in a single system image, and so on. PC's did eventually take over where workstations left off but let's not slap ourselves on the back too hard ... 116.231.76.144 (talk) 10:57, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

"A modern example..."

I think the image showing "a modern example" could do more justice to how far the KDE project has come and display the gorgeous design that is visible to users now. KDE 4 leaves the impression as if open-source GUI-s are still behind those of proprietary OS-s. Karland90 (talk) 09:01, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Feel free to drop in a 2016 screenshot :-) - David Gerard (talk) 11:47, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

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Competitors section needs an update

Mir sits on top of Wayland now so I'm not even sure it still is a competitor to X. The current state of Wayland and its adoption should be noted, it's no longer just a "prospective replacement". 192.198.151.44 (talk) 08:48, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Trivial: Why are two Nomenclature definitions shown in bold font?

In the Nomenclature section, the two different meanings for "virtual screen" are shown in bold font... all other definitions aren't. Those two defs already have bullets to visually distinguish them, so I almost removed the boldface (i.e., seems "extra", and for consistency on the page). But maybe there was a reason for it.. any objection to changing it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.185.39.220 (talk) 14:25, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

original developers

Project Athena is the easy answer, but the linked topic ignores the copyright notices on the original work which also include Brown University (the "IBM" content), University of Utah (Apollo graphics), Sun Microsystems and Integrated Solutions.

Wayland

Tedickey please explain why discussing Wayland in this article is "not an improvement" and therefore should be reverted. X is deprecated legacy technology. Omitting its successor from the article makes it IMO incomplete. —a thing 21:39, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

Wayland is already discussed in the topic. There's no need to add a purely promotional edit to amplify it. TEDickey (talk) 22:09, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

By the way, Wikipedia's not the place to predict the future. It can only report what's already happened. TEDickey (talk) 22:17, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

What? Wayland is the present. Actively maintained projects that used X which haven't completely switched to Wayland yet (like KDE Plasma) are in the process of doing so. Even Mir's website now says "Wayland is the de facto successor to X11". I didn't see Wayland when I looked at the article initially. After doing Ctrl + F in my browser, I found it. I don't understand why the Competitors section is even there? Why are systems which have never used X nor had any relationship with its development relevant to the article? I think that whole section should be removed and the brief mention of Wayland in the History section restored. Mir could be mentioned briefly in the History section too if someone wants to write a little about that. —a thing 02:13, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

I second AThing's request. Wayland is becoming the de facto standard. Not sure where that strawman of "purely promotional edit" comes from, but Wayland is not that insignificant anymore to be ignored by the Linux world, especially since many devs are actively working to support it in their environments. If there is no objection, I'll add a text into the top that at least mentions Wayland and its significant role it has received in the Linux world. Times have changed. --AloisIrlmaier (talk) 15:59, 14 March 2022 (UTC)