X Windows System 1: What is the value of X?

As I type this article in one window, I can read a web page in another window, which is showing me Netscape. I don't actually have Netscape on my PC, so this sounds like major black magic to the average Windows user, but it is just me taking advantage of Linux's flexibility. Microsoft Windows will happily let you use files which are on another PC in the network, even reading and running some types of programs if they are on the hard disk of another PC in the network. What it cannot do as standard is allow you to start the program running on your neighbors PC, using their processing power and ram, and put that program's window on your screen, so you can control it with your mouse and keyboard. If the other PCs in your office are more or less like yours, this may just seem like a silly little trick. On the other hand if you are in a net with computers which are to some extent different, it can be very helpful. Say one PC has a scanner, you would be able to put a page in it and walk back to your own PC and do the scanning, without asking the colleague who uses the PC with the scanner to take a break. Suddenly this looks a much better idea

The windows system I am using is called the X Window System, or simply X for short, the decision to go for flexibility is very deep in what makes it different. The idea to allow the program to run on one computer, but be displayed on another, comes from the fact that at the time when X was being developed UNIX ran on large computers which worked for several people, each sat at a workstation in another room, or even another building. The workstations were often made by a different company from the computer, so it was necessary for them to agree on a standard way for the computer to tell the workstation that graphics should appear on the screen, and for the workstation to send back the keystrokes and mouse movements made by the user. This standard and the software which works with it is X. If you think of Microsoft's Windows as being like a television channel, then X is simply like the television. If you see someone using X and you don't like the way things are laid out, don't assume that X is not for you. I normally work with a version of X windows which shows me just a light blue screen when it starts. To start a program I click with the right hand mouse button and a menu appears with programs. This blank screen tends to make Microsoft Windows users panic, so if I install for someone new to X I configure X to start with a button marked "Start", with a Linux penguin logo at the bottom left. The penguin is the only clue that this is X. This is not a different version of X, in the way that Microsoft Windows only changes when you update from 3.11 to Windows 95, 98, 2000 etc. This is the same X, but with a different windows manager, what we see on the screen is different, just as a television screen changes if we change channel. There are windows managers which make X look like Microsoft, or Apple or something quite different.

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