FreeBSD6 Unleashed

Setting Up the X Window System (X11)

The X Window System, also known as X11 (or simply X), is the ubiquitous windowing system for UNIX and Linux. Originally developed at MIT in the early 1980s, X reached its eleventh major revision in 1987, and was subsequently released to the public as an open-source project, and was developed through several more releases by the X Consortium. Development stalled for several years during the 1990s, at which time X11’s rather arcane client-server architecture and lack of modern features did not daunt the geeks experimenting with FreeBSD and Linux—they, after all, loved a challenge. However, since 2004, a new organization called the X.org Foundation (founded by the X Consortium and sponsored by a number of deep-pocketed ...