notes on x11

x was originally developed in mit in '84 on system v, with the goal of not having much hardware dependence; the version 11, x11, appeared in sep '87

x386: the first x windows system based on intel 386 cpu, '91, based on x11r4, later became proprietary

'92: xfree86 (cf x-three-86): open source successor to x386; maintained x11r6

x.org: took over from xfree86; x11r6.7 onwards; '05: x11r7

xdarwin: apple's implementation of x server in os 10.3 and before, based on bsd

x11.app = xquartz: apple's implementation of x server for os 10.4 and later

in 10.4: x11r6.6, based on xfree86 4.4

in 10.5: x11r7.2, based on x.org




x server: for local user, handles local machine (monitor, mouse, keyboard, etc)

x client: remote server; creates data for plotting

window manager (e.g., gnome, kde): contains software for x client

startx: a shell script to set up x server, get parameters from x client; then xinit

xinit [client option]--[server/display option]
(eg xterm)