X Windows

Also called X and X Window, X Windows is a windowing system developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which runs under Unix and all major operating systems. It lets users run applications on other computers in the network and view the output on their own screen.

X Windows generates a rudimentary window that can be enhanced with GUIs, such as Open Look and Motif, but does not require applications to conform to a GUI standard. The window manager component of the GUI allows multiple resizable, relocatable X windows to be viewed on screen at the same time.

X client software resides in the computer that performs the processing and X server software resides in the computer that displays it. Both components can also be in the same machine. This seems opposite to todayÆs client/server terminology, but the concept is that the server is ôserving upö the image.