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Re: Xwindow system



On Mon, Oct 29, 2001, Shai Bentin wrote about "Xwindow system":
> Can someone explain to me what are the differences between the x.org 
> X11R6 xwindow system, which seems to be open source and the xfree86 
> xwindow system? and why is it most common on linux to find the xfree86 
> window system and not the other one?

As long as I'm doing spring-cleaning (fall cleaning?) on my linux-il folder,
why don't I also recycle some old postings I wrote? :) Here's something I wrote
here 14 months ago (so watch out, some of the details are a bit out-of-date):

Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2000 17:46:58 +0300
From: "Nadav Har'El" <nyh@math.technion.ac.il>
Subject: Re: Stupid X Q.
Hebrew-Date: 8 Av 5760

On Wed, Aug 09, 2000, Y. Benado wrote about "Re: Stupid X Q.":
>> From: Ben-Nes Michael <miki@canaan.co.il>
>> What is the difference between X11R6 & XFree86 ?
>
> X11R6 is Xfree86 Release 6 AFAIK

Not quite...

Sic transit gloria mundi :)


And now for a short history lesson:

"The X Window System", the windowing system we all use on our Linux (and Unix)
machines, was originally designed and written by people at MIT. The first
version they released outside MIT was X10 (X version 10), and that was followed
by the version that would overtake the world, X11. Since then the version "11"
stuck, and newer versions were dubbed "releases". The first X11 release I
worked on (in 1991) was X11R3. Later came X11R4 (with a few major improvements),
X11R5 and X11R6 (with small improvements, as far as I'm concerned), and the
latest release is named X11R6.4patch3.

If you think the convergence of the version numbers is strange (much like
TeX's version 3.14159) you're right. What actually happened is that after
X11R4 MIT stopped working on X11. In the beginning of 1994 the rights of
X11 passed to a new organization "The X Consortium" and by the end of 1996
this organization was disolved and the rights were assigned to "the Open
Software foundation" (which currently also holds the Unix trademark and the
Motif source rights - don't confuse it with the "Free Software Foundation"!).
All these reassignments didn't do X Windows any good, and no major
improvements appeared on X-Windows appeared since 1994 (I'm talking about the
X server, not widget sets or applications, of course).

Anyway, around that time, Unix on PC became popular (first AT&T's various
System V Release 4, and Unixware, and then came Linux) and the X11R5 server was
ported for PC ("86") machines (previously, the most common implementation was
on Sun workstations). This started out as a straightforward port, but it got
more and more complicated: as opposed to Sun machines, for example, that
have a fixed and small number of video cards, PCs use numerous video cards
that need supporting, various kinds of mice, displays, and so on. Special
optimization for PCs were added, binary distributions were created, easy
configuration scripts, and so on. All this makes the "XFree86" project.

Nowadays, the original X Windows project is a zombie, and all new development
seems to be coming from the XFree86 people (correct me if I'm wrong), so
people start to get the impression that "X" is a shortcut of "XFree86". But
it isn't :) In fact, the latest releases also support non-"86" machines, so
the assumption XFree86=X will soon become true. I just hope they add anti-
aliased outline font support soon... Other things sorely missing from X Windows
currently is a sound server and a print server that work as normal X clients
(i.e., the X server should not be touched - the ICCCM should be updated to
support these notions and the work would be done by seperate processes). I
once started designing an X Print Server (not like the rather-useless XPrint
extension), and written a very-simplistic sound server, but, alas, I don't
have time to work on it any more :(

By the way, if you're curious, the latest XFree86 release is 4.0.1. So
XFree86 4.0.1 is based on X11R6... A lot of numbers and confusion :)


[I'm writing this from memory. For more authoritative information, take a look
 at www.x.org and www.xfree86.org, and 'man XFree86']




-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |     Monday, Oct 29 2001, 12 Heshvan 5762
nyh@math.technion.ac.il             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |Take my advice, I don't use it anyway.
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |

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