The X Window System (commonly known as X11, based on its current major version being 11, or shorted to simply X) 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.
X originated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1984. The protocol version has been X11 since September 1987. The X.Org Foundation leads the X project, with the current reference implementation, X.Org Server, available as free and open source software under the MIT License and similar permissive licenses.
Read more about X Window System: Purpose and Abilities, Design, Principles, User Interfaces, Implementations, Limitations and Criticism, Competitors, Future Directions, Nomenclature, Release History
Famous quotes containing the words window and/or system:
“Most near, most dear, most loved and most far,
Under the window where I often found her
Sitting as huge as Asia, seismic with laughter,”
—George Barker (b. 1913)
“For us necessity is not as of old an image without us, with whom we can do warfare; it is a magic web woven through and through us, like that magnetic system of which modern science speaks, penetrating us with a network subtler than our subtlest nerves, yet bearing in it the central forces of the world.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)