The X Window System is used to provide a GUI interface for most Linux and UNIX
systems. The X Window System was created in 1984 by the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology’s Laboratory for Computer Science in cooperation with the Digital
Equipment Corporation as part of Project Athena. The origins of the X Window
System are based in the work of the Xerox Corporation’s Palo Alto Research Center
(PARC) and in the W windowing package, which was created by Paul Asente. In
1987, MIT released the X Window System as X11; it is very similar to the versions of
X11 in use today. MIT developed the X Window System, but it was turned over to
the X Consortium for further development. More information on the history of X
Windows is available at
www.x.org.
The X Server is the software that provides the direct hardware support for the
entire X Window System. The most common version of X Servers used in Linux is
XFree86. These XF86 servers are provided by two methods:
✦ Pre-4.0 versions of XFree86 contain individual servers for over 15 types of
hardware; the major units of this hardware are Mach64, S3, and SVGA video
card chipsets.
✦ Version 4 of XFree86 contains modules that provide service for a single XF86
server.
These improvements enable more standard support across all types of hardware.
With this X Server support, Linux has the ability to support most hardware for the
entire X Window System.