What Is X Terminal?
When you think of an X terminal, what do you see? A room full of high-tech computers with flashing lights, each with a mouse and keyboard attached? A line of people waiting to use the machine? Maybe it's all in black and white. Perhaps it looks like something out of Star Trek. Whatever your imagination conjures up, we can tell you that an X terminal is none of those things. X is a client/server architecture developed in the 1980s at MIT. The term “client” refers to an application, while “server” refers to an entire computer system that can support multiple clients. X is an acronym for eXtensible Window System, which is apt because X provides a graphical user interface (GUI) that third-party applications can extend. X uses a client/server architecture, meaning that X clients usually run inside servers but also can run inside client machines. X clients and the X server communicate via the X Protocol. In short: X was developed at MIT in the 1980s and is used to develop graphical user interfaces (GUIs). If you were to walk into one today, no one would notice that it was there - except for the person who has to dust around it once a week. An X terminal is an input terminal with a display, keyboard and mouse - but no touchpad or processing power. Instead, it uses X server software to render images from applications running on a network server. It does not perform application processing - the network server handles this. X allows applications to run on a network server but is displayed on the X terminal or desktop. During the 1980s-1990s, this industry stride was significant because servers were much more powerful than personal computers. Therefore, x and the X terminal were the forerunners of modern thin clients (network computers) and network server operating systems.
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