What it says on the tin. Anyone else puts this stuff in the articles in question, please strike it out and give a link to the edit. - David Gerard

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Contents

1 X Window System 1.1 History 1.2 Ongoing dev 1.3 Technical details

X Window System

http://cbbrowne.com/ looks like an excellent technical reference for all sorts of computing (and other) subjects.

History

http://www.rahul.net/kenton/faqs/Motif-FAQ.html - Motif FAQ, with a fair bit of X and Open Group history

http://lwn.net/Articles/79316/ - " So what is the history of all this, where does Keith Packards early split fit with xouvert fit with X.org etc? Anyway I found this funny: 'Also, please do let me know if something is horribly wrong; I haven't done an X release in about 12 years.' (from the posting by the finally? vindicated Keith Packard)" - some informative responses

X included large donations of software from vendors, including the original X11 server reference implementation from DEC (Jim Gettys email, 28 Jul 2000) (http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2000-July/msg00410.html).

"(and X did originally provided a framework ("X Intrinsics" aka libXt) for widget sets to build on (and interoperate to a certain extent). gtk and qt are the first widget sets (i believe) to *not* be built on Xt -- to their detriment, imo.)" (Angus Lees email, 27 Aug 2000) (http://lists.slug.org.au/archives/slug-chat/2002/08/msg00122.html)

- this email also mentions a talk from Jim Gettys blaming the proprietary vendors for the "dark ages" of X. Hmmm.

As the standard graphical system (reword?) for Unix, X was adopted by the open-source Unix-like systems. With the rise of Linux in the 1990s, XFree86 came to the fore and became the most widely-deployed implementation of X, to such an extent that several manufacturers sponsored its membership in the X Consortium (date, reference link - check Slashdot, there was a story).

While open source development in the late 1990s proceeded at a blistering pace in other areas (operating systems, desktop environments, applications), development of X11 notably did not. XFree86 added support for new video cards in a timely manner, but notable advances in X11 itself were absent. (reference link would be nice here)

http://lwn.net/Articles/79808/ - comments in this tree

http://lwn.net/Articles/79389/ - current and future x.org plans

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=5180 - book on X116R4, codename "Broadway"

http://www.linux-mag.com/2001-12/xfree86_06.html - Linux Magazine Dec 2001 - The History of XFree86

http://list.wylug.org.uk/pipermail/wylug-discuss/2003-February/002999.html http://list.wylug.org.uk/pipermail/wylug-discuss/2003-February/003001.html http://list.wylug.org.uk/pipermail/wylug-discuss/2003-February/003006.html http://list.wylug.org.uk/pipermail/wylug-discuss/2003-February/003003.html http://list.wylug.org.uk/pipermail/wylug-discuss/2003-February/003008.html http://list.wylug.org.uk/pipermail/wylug-discuss/2003-February/003010.html http://list.wylug.org.uk/pipermail/wylug-discuss/2003-February/003009.html

http://www.blu.org/cgi-bin/calendar/2004-oct - The State Of X11 (Jim Gettys talk coming soon)

http://lwn.net/Articles/72971/

http://williambader.com/museum/dell/xenixhistory.html - sco history

http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/usenix2000/invitedtalks/gettys_html/ - this is the history according to Gettys. Use!

SmallX FAQ (http://www.superant.com/cgi-bin/smalllinux.pl?SmallXFAQ) (which will be very useful as a reference for greatly improving the technical details).

"The Joy of X: An Overview of the X Window System", by Nial Mansfield (pub. Addison-Wesley; ISBN 0-201-56512-9) - Stross recommends this book to Linux users starting out with X. [ttp://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0201565129/ Amazon page].

COMDEX/Fall 2000 - Linux Business Expo - Garry M. Paxinos with Stuart Anderson - 'We do windows. A history of X' (mentioned at [1] (http://www.siggraph.org/~pax/) - a copy available?). Garry Paxinos was also X.Org / X Consortium 1999 Vice Chair and 1991 - 1996 Advisory Board Member.

http://park.org/Guests/Trace/pavilion/history1.htm - history of DACX (Disability Action Committee for X - working on X accessibility)

[2] (http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/9912.2/0858.html) - Jim Gettys (20 Dec 1999) on what the Linux kernel can do to optimise X responsiveness

"XFree86 itself was started on the basis of the reference server for PC-based X11, done by Thomas Roell (founder of Xi Graphics). The initial server was known as X386 back then. Thomas did some contract work with Dell after that, then worked with a fellow named Mark Snitily for a company called SGCS. Thomas donated the X386 server, either to the XFree86 project or to MIT (I'm not sure which). From there, the XFree86 project changed the name of the donated server so it wouldn't conflict with the Snitily server and XFree86 was born."

- list versions of XFree86 in XFree86

cbbrowne's personal view (http://cbbrowne.com/info/xpersonal.html).

GGI (http://cbbrowne.com/info/ggi.html) - LibGGI - competitor.

Ongoing dev

Packard:

• Getting X Off The Hardware (http://keithp.com/~keithp/talks/xserver_ols2004/)
• The (Re)Architecture of the X Window System (http://keithp.com/~keithp/talks/xarch_ols2004/) (Gettys/Packard) - what they really plan for Xorg.
• X Window System Network Performance (http://keithp.com/%7Ekeithp/talks/usenix2003/html/net.html)

(The first article has very good section titles. ;) )

Technical details

• Distinguish window managers from desktop environments
• ICCCM - history - does anyone care now? if so why, if not why not?