X Window System
This section contains several X window offerings, each with it's own unique advantages. To understand their differences it will help to better understand what the X Window system is:
Many of the networking solutions available at that time allowed businesses to link computers from different vendors. This linking lowered costs, increases user connectivity, allowed resource sharing, and generally increases productivity. However, such networking solutions also introduced many communication and control problems. The X Window System solved these problems by transparently tying various machines and network architectures together.
The X Window System, or X for short, was developed as a network-based windowing system. Using X allows you to run an application program (the client) and have the results display on a local computer or over the network (the server).
The X Window System was developed by MIT with support from computer vendors such as Digital and IBM. X was a windowing system that could be implemented in a wide variety of hardware and software environments. MIT formed an industry consortium to support and further develop this standard graphics and windowing protocol.
X used two groups of software programs. One group, called client applications, drew graphics and/or text within a window. The other group, called the server, controlled the computer that displayed the client's output. Both of these software programs used the X protocol to communicate between each other. The X protocol defined the content of messages sent between the client and server.
These programs could reside on the same computer or be connected by a network. When using the X Window System over a network, the client and server communicated with each other by means of any reliable two-way data stream.
The relationship between the X client and the X server was based on the client/ server model of computing. In X, the client/server model consisted of an application program (the client) running on a host computer, displaying the results and receiving input from a user on an X workstation (the server).
The server provided two main functions: it processed and/or replied to requests (such as displaying a graphic) from its client applications, and it passed events (such as keystrokes and mouse clicks) from the user to the client applications.
This background should help as you read through the various offerings in this section.