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Upgrading To A VPS From Shared Hosting Environment

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Upgrading To A VPS From Shared Hosting Environment

November 26, 2007 at 6:51 am · Filed under Virtual Private Server

Upgrading from a shared hosting services to a VPS or a Semi-Dedicated server is sometimes a little intriguing. Its not difficult, if one knows the difference between the two environments. Here is an explanation of the hosting environments.

Shared Hosting:-
As the name itself suggests, shared hosting is an environment where several websites are all hosted on one webserver. Each website account gets its own limited share of disk-space, bandwidth, email accounts, FTP accounts, databases et.al. No server administration, security administration & other system tasks to be performed. Its “plug-and-play” .i.e. buy an account & start using it. This only caters to small websites or individual users.

VPS Hosting:-
VPS or Virtual Private Servers is the technology that separates one physical server into several independent virtual servers parts, each isolated from the other. That is why these are called “Virtual Private Servers”. Each VPS has its own set of processes and resource management, and behaves exactly like a stand-alone server. It allows you a larger amount of resources available for use. You also get full administrator level root access & RDP rights for your linux / windows vps respectively. With a VPS, you are under control of all operations & processes running on your server. Thats also the reason why you are responsible for the overall day-to-day administration of the VPS.

Its a perfect balance of a shared environment (on an average about 12 to 15 VPS are hosted on one server node) & a completely independent hosting environment (dedicated servers). Technical Support is still there to help you with critical issues & problems.

Do not cancel your existing account till the time all the websites start resolving from the VPS.

The Actual Difference:-
The data would already be there for you, unless you specifically asked not to move the files. Once you have verified that everything is correct, then you start off using your vps. First-up, ensure that you have the nameservers in place. Depending on your VPS plan, you are allotted a specific number of dedicated IP’s. You would have to change the nameservers for your domain name in your registrar account. Have the same DNS for all your domains hosted. You may now go ahead & set the hostname for the VPS. Once all the sites have the correct nameservers, you just have to go on adding more websites, everything would be done.

The step-up is when you have to take care of administration tasks. System processes (management), repairing the VPS, backing up data & storing it, vps reinstallation, reboot & overall management. Basic knowledge of linux / windows OS would be a plus point. SSH access & Remote desktop connectivity helps you to actually login to the virtual server & perform tweaks, operations or installations. You may install any application or software which is compatible with the VPS OS. It is always a good idea to ask the technical support staff about the compatibility if you are not sure about it. They would advise you accordingly. One has to remember though that since the applications & softwares would be externally sourced, the technical staff wont support issues arising out of them. This is true for most hosting providers.

A plain VPS works just as good as a VPS with a control panel software. The hitch comes when you want to add more websites or create mail accounts & other related activites. Linux / Windows know-how is essential if you have a plain VPS. Often clients complain when they learn that control panel is not default with the VPS. Each VPS comes with its own control panel license & OS.

There is also a difference between “Guaranteed RAM” & “Burstable RAM”. Guaranteed RAM is what you will always have available for use on your vps. However, you might have occassions where your VPS would require more than the available quota of RAM for the system processes & other applications to be functioning. That is when you use the “burstable RAM”. This is not a resource which is guaranteed. It is something which would be available on the server node to be used whenever there is a short time requirement. However, this is subject to the usage of other vps’ hosted on the node. Abundant amount of resources are almost always available on each server node. But the burstable RAM is not something which would always be available. If your VPS happens to use up the additional RAM available on the main node, it would start hampering the performance of other vps’ hosted on the same server.

That’s when you are asked to either move up to a package which has more amount of guaranteed available resources or a dedicated hosting solution.

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Creating your first Website

November 25, 2007 at 7:58 pm · Filed under Web Site Promotion

Article Title: Creating your first Website…

Creating your first Website is really exciting and this article will help you to create your first Website that will lead its way to success. First I will give you some rough key ideas to what your Website should deliver and then go through them in more detail.

• Your Website should have a domain name that is attractive, and will want people to find out more about.
• Your Website should be unique content-wise and updated regularly.
• Your Website should provide something for the visitor, maybe a service or a bargain - for them to want to visit your site again.
• Your Website should have an appealing design, staying as clean as possible and being easy to navigate around.

1.) The first part of starting a Website is having a nice domain name (or site name), a name that tells the visitor in a basic fashion what the site will offer - or what they should expect. A domain name that has just “123.com” doesn’t really explain what the site is about. You need to think of a name that is unique to your Website, a name that isn’t too obvious - but a name that is, a) appealing and gets the person want to visit the website, b) not too long, otherwise the visitors won’t remember the domain name to come back to it, c) explains what the Website is in a nutshell and d) isn’t too obvious - for example a domain name “freesharedresellervpswebhosting.com” is too long, too obvious, too hard to remember - and not appealing at all. Some Websites have short domains like “aaa.com” rather short domains are nice - and rememberable, but unless it’s for AAA batteries - or a company called AAA - it’s not much point. Now, maybe your site or company is called Keyboard Designs, Ltd? How about a domain name called www.keyboarddesigns.com. Although it’s a really long domain name - it’s your company name - and your clients will remember your company name as it’s important to them.

2.) Having content updated regularly is incredibly important if you want your visitors to come back to your Website - and another reason is if you want search engines to keep indexing your Website. Having unique content is important because if you copy other peoples content - or do content similar to others - doesn’t give you a good impression, does it? Provide content that is interesting and will want the visitor to visit your site again. Getting profits out of your site is essential, but adding advertisements everywhere around your site isn’t recommended - because it hides all the interesting content that a visitor wants to see. Another point is adding popups to your site distracts people, especially popups that force visitors to go to another Website - most visitors will press the ‘close browser button immediately after they get popups - and besides, most popup blockers are getting more efficient now.

3.) Having Websites like a blog all about you is very nice - but to be honest, the visitors will eventually get bored and never return. A personal Website is fine, however you want to offer the visitor something - like a service or possibly a competition. These way visitors will want to keep returning. Making a Website aimed at the visitors - maybe an advice column where visitors can get advice and ask questions - is another way of interacting with your visitors. In the long run it’s best to have a Website that keeps updating - like a games Website with more games - which will get your visitors keep returning.

4.) Lets face it, having a Website with an unappealing design is, well… unappealing - and your visitors won’t want to come back. Just imagine, you visited a Website that just has a few links and some content. If there was 2 websites identically the same - one with design, the other without - which one would you prefer to visit? - Exactly. Sticking to designs that has colors that can join each-other easily is best. What I mean by this is having colors that don’t “hurt the eyes” when it’s looked at. Keeping the design as clean as possible is really essential, you need to make sure your designs look the same or similar in most major browsers. Some browsers will render code differently so your designs may look “weird” in one browser, while looking fine in another. Check in many browsers to make sure your design and site looks fine in all major browsers. The browsers that are used the most are Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer 6 and 7, Opera, Netscape Browser and Safari Browser.

Thank you for reading the article and I hope you have learnt something new out of it, and put these suggestions into action. Remember, if you need super fast Web hosting please feel free to call us on 0808 262 0455 or contact us from http://support.eukhost.com

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Security Tip: Finding working directory of Process

November 20, 2007 at 4:48 am · Filed under Web Hosting, Server Security

Find PID of process
$ps aux | grep
Find out current working directory of the process 1213
$pwdx 1213 >> Output : 1213: /tmp/.abc

This seems to be someone try to hide process directory. You can then try to find out using..
$ls -l /proc/1213/cwd

Output :
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Nov 20 04:35 /proc/1213/cwd -> /var/spool/mqueue

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Importance of On-going Search Engine Optimization-Part I

November 12, 2007 at 3:10 pm · Filed under Web Hosting, SEO Tutorials

SEO campaign on-going basis is inherently important likewise you do often maintenance of your site; it will help you to improve your PR and surpass your position in SERPs. On-site SEO needs level headed work since there are possible reasons for surge and fluctuations in search results due to change in algorithm. Tracking traffic and analyzing the link structure is extremely important since the backlinks degrades overtime, you need to feel the gap with more quality backlinks regularly. Organic search engine listings are most important since there are always sites are competing with you to take leverage and your great position and gain exposure. It is essential that you should more focus on listing in local search engines, local directories, yellow pages to gain popularity to get good results in local search that give you lot of exposure for international search results as well. You should attempt to get more new pages, new inbound links and fresh content, if you are doing PPC leave the keywords that don’t give you results and choose keywords that are less competitive but have worth to target, targeting little narrowly specific keywords for specific niche & demography can bring some significant results.

Also different datacenter get altogether different set of information from your website so the output will be different, however if you focus more on relevancy and uniqueness in content it will give you good output in search results altogether. As discussed earlier the search engine devalue the links or can remove the pages of some site from getting index that have not improved and updated. Since search engines update their indexes and algorithms fairly often, they reduce the value of pages like which have not relevant content, ugly theme, bad linking structure, page error, broken links etc. Always remember the search engine principle are based on to provide the most relevant results to their users the relevancy is to be top up. Ongoing SEO also include link analysis, traffic volume, keyword analysis, quality content, site stats, site referrals, link development, page indexation, competitive analysis, benchmarking, these all factors require regular work to improve search results on-going basis.

To be continued in next post..

-Paul

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Load Balancing Servers

November 1, 2007 at 7:10 pm · Filed under Web Hosting, Web Hosting Articles, Server Security, dedicated linux hosting, Computer Technical Support, Computer Networking

One server responding to all the incoming HTTP requests for a website might not able to handle all the incoming traffic of a website. This would become more difficult if the website becomes more popular. As a result pages will load slowly and users will have to wait for a long time to view web pages. Due to increase in traffic and connections to website there will be need to upgrade the server and it would be no more cost effective.

To improve the server scalability, more servers are needed to add more scalability and distribute load among the servers which is also called as clustering and load distribution among these servers is called as Load balancing. Load balancing applies to all types of servers including application and database servers.

Load Balancing Mechanism

The load balancing mechanism used for spreading HTTP requests is known as IP Spraying. HTTP traffic needs to be evenly distributed when there are multiple servers in the group. It acts as one server to clients for example an internet browser. “Load dispatcher” and “network dispatcher” are the equipments used for IP spraying. You can simply call them as “Load Balancer”.IP Sprayer redirects HTTP requests to a server in a server cluster. It all depend on the type of IP sprayer involved so that the architecture can provide more scalability, load balancing and overcome all the fail-over requirements.

You can have a look at Load Balancing Servers offered by eUKhost.com for a complete load balancing solution.

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Redeployment Questions for Sales Department

October 29, 2007 at 11:35 am · Filed under UK Web Hosting

EUKHOST LIMITED

Sales Department Question Paper

Please Read before you start answering questions:-
1) Each question carries 2 Marks
2) 1 Mark will be deducted incase of wrong answer
3) You have 1 Hours time to answer all 50 questions
4) Multiple answers for a specific question should be chosen only if specified.

SEO Questions:-

1) Name the three most important elements in the head section of an HTML document that are employed by search engines. Check all that apply.
a. Title
b. Meta Description
c. Meta Robots
d. Alternate text

2) Which tag is given the highest priority on a page by search engines?
a) Alt Tag
b) Meta Tags
c) Title Tag
d) No follow tag

3) Which of the following techniques is unethical and can be a reason for banning?
a) Building backlinks.
b) Rewriting the titles to include the target keywords.
c) Creating a doorway page instead a home page.
d) Rewriting dynamic URLs into static.

4) Which of the following techniques are white hat seo techniques? Check all that apply.
a) Hidden Content
b) Quality Inbound Links
c) Link Farming
d) Quality Content

5) For which of the following file types a SEO expert needs to provide an alternative textual description? Check all that apply.
a) html.
b) swf.
c) pdf.
d) gif.

6) What does “organic search results” mean? Check all that apply.
a) It is the same as “natural search results”.
b) These are the results from .org domains only.
c) This is the opposite to paid listings.
d) Organic are the sites that are most recently added to the index.

7) How important are metatags today?
a) Not important at all.
b) They have only minor importance, but it can be neglected.
c) Somehow important.
d) Very important, almost as much as keyword density.

8) You have just launched a new site. Unfortunately, nobody visits it, even search engines’ spiders don’t notice it. What can you do for its SEO success? Check all that apply.
a) Get some fancy fonts for the titles and headings.
b) Add gorgeous Flash movies to the site.
c) Submit the URL of the site to search engines and search directories.
d) Get some free links from the greatest hacker sites because backlinks always boost rankings.

9) You have been doing perfectly in Google but all of a sudden you drop low. What will you do? Check all that apply.
a) Sue Google for the damage they are inflicting me.
b) I will immediately revamp my site to get higher keyword density.
c) I will monitor my site for a month and then I will decide what to do.
d) Since I am so much dependent on Google, I will consider buying paid listings.

10) What is necessary to do for optimizing Flash sites? Check all that apply.
a) Put the most important items in a Flash presentation on the home page
b) Add descriptive metatada to the Flash presentation.
c) Provide alternative pages that describe the contents of the Flash presentation.
d) Have a good keyword density in the Flash presentation.

11) Which of the following techniques is best for dealing with duplicate content?
a) Rewriting the title and the headings.
b) Rearranging the placement of paragraphs.
c) Changing the directory in which a file resides or renaming it in order to make the URL different.
d) Re-wording the text.

12) Which of the options below is the best way to select the keywords to optimize for:
a) See which keywords have the highest density at the sites of your competitors.
b) See in Overture which of the keywords that are related to your site had most searches recently and optimize for them.
c) Write a list of the keywords that come to your mind and optimize for at least 3 of them.
d) Use a tool to determine the theme of your site.


13) What aspects of a hyperlink are important for SEO? Check all that apply.
a) The visibility of the link text.
b) The anchor text, especially the keywords in it.
c) The place from which the link originates.
d) The image that is used as an anchor for the hyperlink.

14) If you have a site that is targeted at a particular country only, which of the following are recommendable to do in order to rank well in country specific search results? Check all that apply.
a) Add the name of the country in all page properties
b) The site should be hosted in the same country, so that its IP falls in the range of IPs that are specific for this country.
c) Submit the site to local search engines and directories.
d) Use geotargeting.

15) What is meant by “Google bombing”?
a) Submitting the site again and again in order to include it in Google’s index.
b) Multiple sites linking to the same site, with the same anchor text in order to get high ranking for the keyword in the anchor text.
c) Extensively using the word “Google” on your pages in order to get high rankings with Google.

16) What does the term “Sandbox” mean in SEO?
a) The box with paid ads that appear when you perform a search.
b) The first 10 search results for a particular keyword.
c) This is where sites are kept till they get mature enough to be included in the top rankings for a particular keyword.
d) A special category of sites that are listed in kid-safe searches.

17) How long is the period of keeping sites sandboxed?
a) 4 weeks.
b) 3 months.
c) 1 year.
d) Not defined.

18) What are “supplemental results”?
a) Paid listings that appear for a particular keyword.
b) Listings that do not have all the keywords in them.
c) Filtered results that are similar to the ones already shown.
d) Additional search results that will be served on your request.

19) When do you apply for re-inclusion in a search engine’s index?
a) When you have made changes to your site.
b) When you have changed your hosting provider and the IP address of your site.
c) After you have been banned from the search engine for black hat practices and you have corrected your wrongdoings.
d) When you are not happy with your current ratings.

20) What are the advantages of submitting sites to web directories? Check all that apply.
a) Submitting to directories increases your rating with search engines.
b) By submitting to a directory, you get a backlink to your site.
c) By submitting to a directory your site gets certified.
d) When your site is listed in search directories, this increases the chances that search engines will index it sooner, compared to when it is not listed.

Web Hosting Questions:-

1) Where is eUKhost Datacenter located in UK?
a) Durham
b) London
c) Maidenhead
d) Edinburgh

2) What is the name of our Datacenter where we have setup our new high configuration Q6600 Servers ?
a) GNAX
b) Bluesquare
c) Fastservers
d) Rackspace

3) Which of these control panels is not offered with our Dedicated Servers?
a) cPanel
b) Plesk
c) LXAdmin
d) Hosting Controller

4) Each Server in our datacenter is setup on ________ Mbps, fully-switched port on an edge switch. (Fill in the blank)
a) 1
b) 10
c) 100
d) 1000

5) What is the percentage of commission we offer to our affiliates (eUKhost)?
a) 5 %
b) 10 %
c) 15%
d) 20%

6) What Brand of servers do we use for our servers?
a) HP
b) Dell
c) Compaq
d) Sun Microsystems

7) How many MySQL or MSSQL databases can a client create on any of our hosting plans?
a) 10
b) 50
c) 100
d) Unlimited

8) If a client wishes to host multiple website on our shared hosting plan what would you suggest him? Check all that apply.
a) Suggest him to use separate package for each domain
b) Use Add-on domain function
c) Suggest him a reseller or a vps
d) Multiple website hosting is restricted on shared hosting

9) In the case of ______ domains transfer, you will have to change the IPS TAG to ENOM to get the domains transferred to our hosting.
a) All UK TLDs
b) .com, .net, .info, .org, .biz
c) .us
d) .in

10) Which of these is not a VPS platform?
a) OpenVZ
b) Virtuozzo
c) Xen
d) Zen

11) Which of the following shopping carts can be installed through Fantastico ? Check all that apply
a) Zen Cart
b) osCommerce
c) RealCart
d) StaticCart

12) What is Drupal ?
a) HTML Editor
b) Content Management System
c) Community Forum Software
d) Operating System

13) Is it possible to create sub reseller account under main reseller account ?
a) Yes
b) No

14) Do we provide SSH / RDP access with our semi-dedicated plans ?
a) Yes
b) No
c) Optional

15) This locates a specific page on the World Wide Web.
a) IP address
b) Domain Name
c) URL
d) Path

16) This term means dividing the amount of work that a computer has to do between two or more computers so that more work gets done in the same amount of time and, in general, all users get served faster.
a) Routing
b) Shared hosting
c) Load Balancing
d) Colocation

17) In the Web hosting business, this refers to the rental and exclusive use of a computer that includes a Web server, related software, and connection
to the Internet, housed in the Web hosting company’s Datacenter.
a) Reseller hosting
b) VPS Hosting
c) Co-location
d) Dedicated hosting

18) Which of the following databases is supported on both Linux and Windows Hosting?
a) MSSQL
b) MySQL
c) MS ACCESS
d) ODBC

19) How many gigabytes are there in a terabyte?
a) 100 GB
b) 1000 GB
c) 10000 GB
d) 100000 GB

20) What is MySQL?
a) MySQL is a popular database tool that developers use.
b) MySQL is another name for SQLServer, since they were both created at the same type by competing companies.
c) MySQL is the sequel to a romance novel written by a survivor of the Titanic disaster, whose genius was not realized until after she died a few years ago.

21) Using which login credential do customers login in their client area of our modernbill
a) username & password
b) email address & password
c) domain & password
e) none of the above

22) Fantastico is a product of ?
a) cPanel.net
b) swsoft.com
d) p-soft.net
d) netenberg.com

22) what is the approx GBP to USD currency conversion rate right now ?
a) £1 = $2
b) £1 = $1.5
c) £1 = $2.5
d) £1 = $3

23) .ch domain TLD belongs to which country ?
a. China
b. Switzerland
c. Czhecoslovakia
d. Chile

24). .mod.uk domains are reserved for ?
a. Ministry of Defence and HM Forces public sites
b. government (central and local)
c. network moderators use only
d. UK Registered companies.

25). .me.uk domains are for ?
a. Ministry of Defense and HM Forces public sites
b. government (central and local)
c. personal domains
d. Aeronautics.

26). .eu domain registry is managed by ?
a. European Union
b. Nominet
c. ICANN
d. ARIN

27). .com and other gTLD domains registry is managed by ?
a. ENOM
b. ICANN
c. ARIN
d. Networksolutions

28) Which of the following is mandatory to run a website?
a) Domain Name
b) IP Address
c) Web Hosting Company
d) Browser

29) A Domain name can have maximum how many characters?
a) 64
b) 48
c) 32
d) 128

30) Biggest number that an IP address can have in any of its octet is ?
a) 256
b) 255
c) 264
d) 254

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Apache HTTP Server

Apache HTTP Server, commonly referred to simply as Apache, is a web server notable for playing a key role in the initial growth of the World Wide Web. Apache was the first viable alternative to the Netscape Communications Corporation web server (currently known as Sun Java System Web Server), and has since evolved to rival other Unix-based web servers in terms of functionality and performance. Since April 1996 Apache has been the most popular HTTP server on the World Wide Web; since March 2006 however it has experienced a steady decline of its market share,[1] lost mostly against Microsoft Internet Information Services and the .NET platform. As of October 2007 Apache served 47.73% of all websites.[2]

The project's name was chosen for two reasons:[3] out of respect for the Native American Indian tribe of Apache (Indé), well-known for their endurance and their skills in warfare,[4] and due to the project's roots as a set of patches to the codebase of NCSA HTTPd 1.3 - making it "a patchy" server.[5]

Apache is developed and maintained by an open community of developers under the auspices of the Apache Software Foundation. The application is available for a wide variety of operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Novell NetWare and Unix and Unix-like operating systems such as FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris and Mac OS X. Released under the Apache License, Apache is free software / open source software.
Contents
[hide]

* 1 History
* 2 Features
* 3 Usage
* 4 License
* 5 See also
* 6 References
* 7 External links

[edit] History

The first version of the Apache web server was created by Robert McCool, who was heavily involved with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications web server, known simply as NCSA HTTPd. When Rob left NCSA in mid-1994, the development of httpd stalled, leaving a variety of patches for improvements circulating through e-mails.

Rob McCool was not alone in his efforts. Several other developers helped form the original "Apache Group": Brian Behlendorf, Roy T. Fielding, Rob Hartill, David Robinson, Cliff Skolnick, Randy Terbush, Robert S. Thau, Andrew Wilson, Eric Hagberg, Frank Peters, and Nicolas Pioch.

Version 2 of the Apache server was a substantial re-write of much of the Apache 1.x code, with a strong focus on further modularization and the development of a portability layer, the Apache Portable Runtime. The Apache 2.x core has several major enhancements over Apache 1.x. These include UNIX threading, better support for non-Unix platforms (such as Microsoft Windows), a new Apache API, and IPv6 support.[6] The first alpha release of Apache 2 was in March 2000, with the first general availability release on 6 April 2002.[7]

Version 2.2 introduced a new authorization API that allows for more flexibility. It also features improved cache modules and proxy modules.[8]

[edit] Features

Apache supports a variety of features, many implemented as compiled modules which extend the core functionality. These can range from server-side programming language support to authentication schemes. Some common language interfaces support mod_perl, mod_python, Tcl, and PHP. Popular authentication modules include mod_access, mod_auth, and mod_digest. A sample of other features include SSL and TLS support (mod_ssl), a proxy module, a useful URL rewriter (also known as a rewrite engine, implemented under mod_rewrite), custom log files (mod_log_config), and filtering support (mod_include and mod_ext_filter). Apache logs can be analyzed through a web browser using free scripts such as AWStats/W3Perl or Visitors.

Virtual hosting allows one Apache installation to serve many different actual websites. For example, one machine, with one Apache installation could simultaneously serve www.example.com, www.test.com, test47.test-server.test.com, etc.

Apache features configurable error messages, DBMS-based authentication databases, and content negotiation. It is also supported by several graphical user interfaces (GUIs) which permit easier, more intuitive configuration of the server.

[edit] Usage

Apache is primarily used to serve both static content and dynamic Web pages on the World Wide Web. Many web applications are designed expecting the environment and features that Apache provides.

Apache is the web server component of the popular LAMP web server application stack, alongside MySQL, and the PHP/Perl/Python programming languages.

Apache is redistributed as part of various proprietary software packages including the Oracle Database or the IBM WebSphere application server. Mac OS X integrates Apache as its built-in web server and as support for its WebObjects application server. It is also supported in some way by Borland in the Kylix and Delphi development tools. Apache is included with Novell NetWare 6.5, where it is the default web server.

Apache is used for many other tasks where content needs to be made available in a secure and reliable way. One example is sharing files from a personal computer over the Internet. A user who has Apache installed on their desktop can put arbitrary files in the Apache's document root which can then be shared.

Programmers developing web applications often use a locally installed version of Apache in order to preview and test code as it is being developed.

Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) is the main competitor to Apache, trailed by Sun Microsystems' Sun Java System Web Server and a host of other applications such as Zeus Web Server.

[edit] License

Main article: Apache License

The software license under which software from the Apache Foundation is distributed is a distinctive part of the Apache HTTP Server's history and presence in the open source software community. The Apache License allows for the distribution of both open and closed source derivations of the source code.

The Free Software Foundation does not consider the Apache License to be compatible with version 2 of the GNU General Public License (GPL) in that software licensed under the Apache License cannot be integrated with software that is distributed under the GPL:

This is a free software license but it is incompatible with the GPL. The Apache Software License is incompatible with the GPL because it has a specific requirement that is not in the GPL: it has certain patent termination cases that the GPL does not require. We don't think those patent termination cases are inherently a bad idea, but nonetheless they are incompatible with the GNU GPL.
—http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html

However, version 3 of the GPL includes a provision (Section 7e) which allows it to be compatible with licenses that have patent retaliation clauses, including the Apache License.

The name Apache is a registered trademark and may only be used with the trademark holder's express permission.[9]

[edit] See also
Free software Portal

* Comparison of web servers
* .htaccess
* Stronghold (software)
* ApacheBench
* POSSE project

[edit] References

1. ^ Webservers' Market Shares. Netcraft. Retrieved on 2007-09-20.
2. ^ October 2007. Netcraft. Retrieved on 2007-10-13.
3. ^ http://www.mailarchives.org/list/apache-httpd-docs/msg/2001/00476
4. ^ http://www.apache.org/foundation/faq.html#name
5. ^ http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196900465
6. ^ http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/new_features_2_0.html
7. ^ http://www.apacheweek.com/features/ap2
8. ^ http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/new_features_2_2.html
9. ^ http://www.apache.org/foundation/licence-FAQ.html#Marks

[edit] External links

* Apache HTTP Server official website
* Apache News
* Apache Wiki
* Apache Lounge: Apache2 on Windows
* Debugging Apache web server problems
* URL rewriting guide

[hide]
This box: v • d • e
Apache Software Foundation
Top level projects ActiveMQ · Ant · Apache HTTP Server · APR · Beehive · Camel · Cayenne · Cocoon · Commons · Directory · Excalibur · Felix · Forrest · Geronimo · Gump · Harmony · HiveMind · iBATIS · Jackrabbit · James · Lenya · Maven · mod_perl · MyFaces · OFBiz · OpenEJB · OpenJPA · POI · Roller · Shale · SpamAssassin · Struts · Tapestry · Tomcat · Velocity · WebWork 2 · Wicket · XMLBeans
Other projects Jakarta Project · Apache Lucene · Apache XML · Apache Incubator
Notable sub-projects BCEL · BSF · Cactus · JMeter · Slide · Xerces · Batik · FOP · Log4j · XAP · River · ServiceMix · Log4Net · Abdera · Ivy · CXF
License: Apache License · Website: http://apache.org/

Web server

The term web server can mean one of two things:

1. A computer program that is responsible for accepting HTTP requests from clients, which are known as web browsers, and serving them HTTP responses along with optional data contents, which usually are web pages such as HTML documents and linked objects (images, etc.).
2. A computer that runs a computer program which provides the functionality described in the first sense of the term.

Contents
[hide]

* 1 Common features
* 2 Origin of returned content
* 3 Path translation
* 4 Performances
* 5 Load limits
o 5.1 Overload causes
o 5.2 Overload symptoms
o 5.3 Anti-overload techniques
* 6 Historical notes
* 7 Market structure
* 8 See also
* 9 External links

[edit] Common features
The rack of web servers hosting the My Opera Community site on the Internet. The Opera Community rack, as seen to the left. From the top, user file storage (content of files.myopera.com), "bigma" (the master MySQL database server), and two IBM blade centers containing multi-purpose machines (Apache front ends, Apache back ends, slave MySQL database servers, load balancers, file servers, cache servers and sync masters.
The rack of web servers hosting the My Opera Community site on the Internet. The Opera Community rack, as seen to the left. From the top, user file storage (content of files.myopera.com), "bigma" (the master MySQL database server), and two IBM blade centers containing multi-purpose machines (Apache front ends, Apache back ends, slave MySQL database servers, load balancers, file servers, cache servers and sync masters.

Although web server programs differ in detail, they all share some basic common features.

1. HTTP: every web server program operates by accepting HTTP requests from the client, and providing an HTTP response to the client. The HTTP response usually consists of an HTML document, but can also be a raw file, an image, or some other type of document (defined by MIME-types); if some error is found in client request or while trying to serve the request, a web server has to send an error response which may include some custom HTML or text messages to better explain the problem to end users.
2. Logging: usually web servers have also the capability of logging some detailed information, about client requests and server responses, to log files; this allows the webmaster to collect statistics by running log analyzers on log files.

In practice many web servers implement the following features also:

1. Authentication, optional authorization request (request of user name and password) before allowing access to some or all kind of resources.
2. Handling of not only static content (file content recorded in server's filesystem(s)) but of dynamic content too by supporting one or more related interfaces (SSI, CGI, SCGI, FastCGI, JSP, PHP, ASP, ASP .NET, Server API such as NSAPI, ISAPI, etc.).
3. HTTPS support (by SSL or TLS) to allow secure (encrypted) connections to the server on the standard port 443 instead of usual port 80.
4. Content compression (i.e. by gzip encoding) to reduce the size of the responses (to lower bandwidth usage, etc.).
5. Virtual hosting to serve many web sites using one IP address.
6. Large file support to be able to serve files whose size is greater than 2 GB on 32 bit OS.
7. Bandwidth throttling to limit the speed of responses in order to not saturate the network and to be able to serve more clients.

[edit] Origin of returned content

The origin of the content sent by server is called:

* static if it comes from an existing file lying on a filesystem;
* dynamic if it is dynamically generated by some other program or script or Application Programming Interface called by the web server.

Serving static content is usually much faster (from 2 to 100 times) than serving dynamic content, especially if the latter involves data pulled from a database.

[edit] Path translation

Web servers are able to map the path component of a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) into:

* a local file system resource (for static requests);
* an internal or external program name (for dynamic requests).

For a static request the URL path specified by the client is relative to the Web server's root directory.

Consider the following URL as it would be requested by a client:

http://www.example.com/path/file.html

The client's web browser will translate it into a connection to www.example.com with the following HTTP 1.1 request:

GET /path/file.html HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.com

The web server on www.example.com will append the given path to the path of its root directory. On Unix machines, this is commonly /var/www/htdocs. The result is the local file system resource:

/var/www/htdocs/path/file.html

The web server will then read the file, if it exists, and send a response to the client's web browser. The response will describe the content of the file and contain the file itself.

[edit] Performances

Web servers (programs) are supposed to serve requests quickly from more than one TCP/IP connection at a time.

Main key performance parameters (measured under a varying load of clients and requests per client), are:

* number of requests per second (depending on the type of request, etc.);
* latency response time in milliseconds for each new connection or request;
* throughput in bytes per second (depending on file size, cached or not cached content, available network bandwidth, etc.).

Above three parameters vary noticeably depending on the number of active connections, so a fourth parameter is the concurrency level supported by a web server under a specific configuration.

Last but not least, the specific server model used to implement a web server program can bias the performance and scalability level that can be reached under heavy load or when using high end hardware (many CPUs, disks, etc.).

Performance of a web server is typically measured using one of automated load testing tools.

[edit] Load limits

A web server (program) has defined load limits, because it can handle only a limited number of concurrent client connections (usually between 2 and 60,000, by default between 500 and 1,000) per IP address (and IP port) and it can serve only a certain maximum number of requests per second depending on:

* its own settings;
* the HTTP request type;
* content origin (static or dynamic);
* the fact that the served content is or is not cached;
* the hardware and software limits of the OS where it is working.

When a web server is near to or over its limits, it becomes overloaded and thus unresponsive.

[edit] Overload causes
A daily graph of a web server's load, indicating a spike in the load early in the day.
A daily graph of a web server's load, indicating a spike in the load early in the day.

At any time web servers can be overloaded because of:

* Too much legitimate web traffic (i.e. thousands or even millions of clients hitting the web site in a short interval of time. e.g. Slashdot effect);
* DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks;
* Computer worms that sometimes cause abnormal traffic because of millions of infected computers (not coordinated among them);
* XSS viruses can cause high traffic because of millions of infected browsers and/or web servers;
* Internet web robots traffic not filtered / limited on large web sites with very few resources (bandwidth, etc.);
* Internet (network) slowdowns, so that client requests are served more slowly and the number of connections increases so much that server limits are reached;
* Web servers (computers) partial unavailability, this can happen because of required / urgent maintenance or upgrade, HW or SW failures, back-end (i.e. DB) failures, etc.; in these cases the remaining web servers get too much traffic and become overloaded.

[edit] Overload symptoms

The symptoms of an overloaded web server are:

* requests are served with (possibly long) delays (from 1 second to a few hundred seconds);
* 500, 502, 503, 504 HTTP errors are returned to clients (sometimes also unrelated 404 error or even 408 error may be returned);
* TCP connections are refused or reset (interrupted) before any content is sent to clients;
* in very rare cases, only partial contents are sent (but this behavior may well be considered a bug, even if it usually depends on unavailable system resources).

[edit] Anti-overload techniques

To partially overcome above load limits and to prevent overload, most popular web sites use common techniques like:

* managing network traffic, by using:
o Firewalls to block unwanted traffic coming from bad IP sources or having bad patterns;
o HTTP traffic managers to drop, redirect or rewrite requests having bad HTTP patterns;
o Bandwidth management and traffic shaping, in order to smooth down peaks in network usage;
* deploying web cache techniques;
* using different domain names to serve different (static and dynamic) content by separate Web servers, i.e.:
o

http://images.example.com

o

http://www.example.com

* using different domain names and/or computers to separate big files from small and medium sized files; the idea is to be able to fully cache small and medium sized files and to efficiently serve big or huge (over 10 - 1000 MB) files by using different settings;
* using many Web servers (programs) per computer, each one bound to its own network card and IP address;
* using many Web servers (computers) that are grouped together so that they act or are seen as one big Web server, see also: Load balancer;
* adding more hardware resources (i.e. RAM, disks) to each computer;
* tuning OS parameters for hardware capabilities and usage;
* using more efficient computer programs for web servers, etc.;
* using other workarounds, especially if dynamic content is involved.

[edit] Historical notes
The world's first web server.
The world's first web server.

In 1989 Tim Berners-Lee proposed to his employer CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) a new project, which had the goal of easing the exchange of information between scientists by using a hypertext system. As a result of the implementation of this project, in 1990 Berners-Lee wrote two programs:

* a browser called WorldWideWeb;
* the world's first web server, which ran on NeXTSTEP.

Between 1991 and 1994 the simplicity and effectiveness of early technologies used to surf and exchange data through the World Wide Web helped to port them to many different operating systems and spread their use among lots of different social groups of people, first in scientific organizations, then in universities and finally in industry.

In 1994 Tim Berners-Lee decided to constitute the World Wide Web Consortium to regulate the further development of the many technologies involved (HTTP, HTML, etc.) through a standardization process.

The following years are recent history which has seen an exponential growth of the number of web sites and servers.

[edit] Market structure

Given below is a list of top Web server software vendors published in a Netcraft survey in September 2007. x xxxx
Vendor Product Web Sites Hosted
Apache Apache 67,898,632
Microsoft IIS 47,226,195
Google GWS 6,616,713
Sun Microsystems Sun-ONE-Web-Server 1,997,150
Oversee Oversee 1,601,209
lighttpd lighttpd 1,515,963
Others - 8,296,292
Total - 135,152,154

There are hundreds of different web server programs available, many of which are specialized for very specific purposes, so the fact that a web server is not very popular does not necessarily mean that it has a lot of bugs or poor performance.

See Category:Web server software for a longer list of HTTP server programs.

[edit] See also

* Comparison of web servers
* Tiny web servers
* SSI, CGI, SCGI, FastCGI, PHP, Java Servlet, JavaServer Pages, ASP, ASP .NET, Server API
* Virtual hosting
* LAMP (software bundle)
* Web log analysis software
* Web hosting service
* Application server
* Mac OS X Server
* HTTP compression

[edit] External links

* RFC 2616, the Request for Comments document that defines the HTTP 1.1 protocol.
* HTTP Blog Fully devoted resource to web servers.

[hide]
v • d • e
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File server

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In telecommunication, the term file server has the following meanings:


* In the client/server model, a file server is a computer responsible for the central storage and management of data files so that other computers on the same network can access the files. A file server allows users to share information over a network without having to physically transfer files by floppy diskette or some other external storage device. Any computer can be configured to be a host and act as a file server. In its simplest form, a file server may be an ordinary PC that handles requests for files and sends them over the network. In a more sophisticated network, a file server might be a dedicated network-attached storage (NAS) device that also serves as a remote hard disk drive for other computers, allowing anyone on the network to store files on it as if to their own hard drive.

* A form of disk storage that hosts files within a network; file servers do not need to be high-end but must have enough disk space to incorporate a large amount of data. Many people mistake file servers for a high-end storage system, but in reality, file servers do not need to possess great power or super fast computer specifications.

* A computer program that allows different programs, running on other computers, to access the files of that computer

* In common parlance, the term file server refers specifically to a computer on which a user can map or mount a disk drive or directory so that the directory appears to be on the machine at which the user is sitting. Additionally, on this type of file server, the user can read or write a file as though it were part of the file system of the user's computer.

Files and directories on the remote computer are usually accessed using a particular protocol, such as WebDAV, SMB, CIFS, NFS, Appletalk or their mutations.

* Although files can be sent to and received from most other computers unless their primary function is access by the above means, they are generally not considered file servers as such.

[edit] File and print

Traditionally, file and print services have been combined on the same computers due to similar computing requirements for both functions.[dubious – discuss] Usually, such computers are distinct from application and database servers, which have different, usually more processor-intensive, requirements. However, as computing power increases and file serving requirements remain relatively constant, it is more common to see these functions combined on the same machine.

[edit] Security

File servers generally offer some form of system security to limit access to files to specific users or groups. In large organizations, this is a task usually delegated to what is known as directory services such as Novell's eDirectory or Microsoft's Active Directory.

These servers work within the hierarchical computing environment which treat users, directories, computers, applications and files as distinct but related entities on the network and grant access based on user or group credentials. In many cases, the directory service spans many file servers, potentially hundreds for large organizations. In the past, and in smaller organizations, authentication can take place directly to the server itself.

Communications server

For Microsoft's enterprise real-time communications server product, see Microsoft Office Communications Server.

Communications servers are open, standards-based computing systems that operate as a carrier-grade common platform for a wide range of communications applications and allow equipment providers to add value at many levels of the system architecture.

Based on industry-managed standards such as AdvancedTCA®, MicroTCATM, Carrier Grade Linux and Service AvailabilityTM Forum specifications, communications servers are the foundational platform upon which equipment providers build network infrastructure elements for deployments such as IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), IPTV and wireless broadband (e.g. WiMAX).

By driving down infrastructure costs, improving time to market, and shifting user resources toward the development of new applications and services, communications servers will help accelerate the cost effective deployment of converged services.

Support for communications servers as a category of server is developing rapidly throughout the communications industry. Standards bodies, industry associations, vendor alliance programs, hardware and software manufacturers, communications server vendors and users are all part of an increasingly robust communications server ecosystem.

Regardless of their specific, differentiated features, communications servers have the following attributes: open, flexible, carrier-grade, and communications-focused.
Contents
[hide]

* 1 Attributes
o 1.1 Open
o 1.2 Flexible
o 1.3 Carrier Grade
o 1.4 Communications Focus
* 2 Industry-managed standards
o 2.1 AdvancedTCA
o 2.2 AdvancedMC®
o 2.3 MicroTCA
o 2.4 Carrier Grade Linux
o 2.5 HPI and AIS
* 3 Industry associations
o 3.1 SCOPE Alliance
o 3.2 Communications Platforms Trade Association
* 4 Vendor alliance programs
o 4.1 Intel® Communications Alliance
o 4.2 Motorola Communications Server Alliance

[edit] Attributes

[edit] Open

* Based on industry-managed open standards
* Broad, multi-vendor ecosystem
* Industry certified interoperability
* Availability of tools that facilitate development and integration of applications at the standardized interfaces
* Multiple competitive options for standards-based modules


[edit] Flexible

* Architected and designed to easily incorporate application-specific added value at all levels of the solution
* Can be rapidly repurposed as needs change to protect customer investment
* Multi-level, scalable, bladed architecture
* Meets needs of multiple industries beyond telecommunications, such as medical imaging, defense and aerospace

[edit] Carrier Grade

* Designed for
o Longevity of supply
o Extended lifecycle (>10 years) support
o High availability (>5NINES)
* “Non-disruptively” upgradeable and updateable
* Hard real time capability to ensure quality of service for critical traffic
* Meets network building regulations

[edit] Communications Focus

* Architected as common platform for a wide range of communications applications
* Optimized configurations for:
o Control plane processing
+ E.g. radio network controller (RNC), IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) CSCF
o Applications Servers and network embedded databases
+ Including HSS, HLR/VLR
o Packet termination and routing
+ Including signaling gateways, session border controllers
o Multimedia servers and translators
+ Including media servers, media gateways, video encoders, video on demand servers
* Extensive range of telecom I/O options
* Including ATM, Ethernet, SONET, T1/E1, T3
* Sourced as integrated and pre-validated systems to streamline supply chain and simplify integration and testing

[edit] Industry-managed standards

Several industry-managed standards are critical to the success of communications servers, including:

[edit] AdvancedTCA

The Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture (ATCA) is a series of PCI Industrial Computers Manufacturers Group (PICMG) specifications, targeted to meet the requirements for carrier grade communications equipment. This series of specifications incorporates the latest trends in high speed interconnect technologies, next generation processors and improved reliability, manageability and serviceability.

[edit] AdvancedMC®

The PICMG Advanced Mezzanine Card specification defines the base-level requirements for a wide-range of high-speed mezzanine cards optimized for, but not limited to, AdvancedTCA Carriers. AdvancedMC enhances AdvancedTCA’s flexibility by extending its high-bandwidth, multi-protocol interface to individual hot-swappable modules.

[edit] MicroTCA

This PICMG specification provides a framework for combining AdvancedMC modules directly, without the need for an AdvancedTCA or custom carrier. MicroTCA is aimed at smaller equipment – such as wireless base stations, Wi-Fi and WiMAX radios, and VoIP access gateways where small physical size low entry cost, and scalability are key requirements.

[edit] Carrier Grade Linux

An enhanced version of Linux for use in a highly available, secure, scalable, and maintainable carrier grade system. The specification is managed by the CGL Working Group of the Open Source Development Labs.

[edit] HPI and AIS

These Service Availability Forum (SA Forum) specifications define standard interfaces for telecom platform management and high-availability software.

The Hardware Platform Interface (HPI) specification defines the interface between high availability middleware and the underlying hardware and operating system.

At a higher layer than HPI, the Application Interface Specification (AIS) defines the application programming interface between the high availability middleware and the application. AIS allows an application to run on multiple computing modules, and applications that support AIS can migrate more easily between computing platforms from different manufacturers that support the standard.

In addition to the standards development organizations mentioned above, four industry associations / vendor alliance programs are playing key roles in the development of the communications server ecosystem.

[edit] Industry associations

[edit] SCOPE Alliance

SCOPE Alliance is an industry alliance committed to accelerating the deployment of carrier grade base platforms for service provider applications. Its mission is to help, enable and promote the availability of open carrier grade base platforms based on Commercial-Off-The-Shelf hardware / software and Free Open Source Software building blocks, and to promote interoperability to better serve Service Providers and consumers.

[edit] Communications Platforms Trade Association

The Communications Platforms Trade Association (CP-TA) is an association of communications platforms and building block providers dedicated to accelerating the adoption of SIG-governed, open specification-based communications platforms through interoperability certification. With industry collaboration, the CP-TA plans to drive a mainstream market for open industry standards-based communications platforms by certifying interoperable products.

[edit] Vendor alliance programs

[edit] Intel® Communications Alliance

The Intel® Communications Alliance is a community of communications and embedded developers and solutions providers committed to the development of modular, standards-based solutions on Intel technologies.

[edit] Motorola Communications Server Alliance

The Motorola Communications Server Alliance is an ecosystem of technology, service and solution providers aligned to provide standards-based solution elements validated with Motorola’s communications servers. Alliance participants receive access to Motorola embedded communications computing product roadmaps, development systems, and participate in marketing activities with Motorola.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_server"

Categories: Telecommunications equipment | Servers

X Window System

X11" redirects here. For the Mac OS X application, see X11.app.
GNOME 2.20
GNOME 2.20
KDE 3.5
KDE 3.5
Xfce 4.4
Xfce 4.4

In computing, the X Window System (commonly X11 or X) is a display protocol which provides windowing on bitmap displays. It provides the standard toolkit and protocol with which to build graphical user interfaces (GUIs) on most Unix-like operating systems and OpenVMS, and has been ported to all other contemporary general purpose operating systems.

X provides the basic framework, or primitives, for building GUI environments: drawing and moving windows on the screen and interacting with a mouse and/or keyboard. X does not mandate the user interface — individual client programs handle this. As such, the visual styling of X-based environments varies greatly; different programs may present radically different interfaces. X is not an integral part of the operating system; instead, it is built as an additional application layer on top of the operating system kernel.

Unlike previous display protocols, X was specifically designed to be used over network connections rather than on an integral or attached display device. X features network transparency: the machine where an application program (the client application) runs can differ from the user's local machine (the display server).

X originated at MIT in 1984. The current protocol version, X11, appeared in September 1987. The X.Org Foundation leads the X project, with the current reference implementation, version 11 release 7.3 (September 6 2007), available as free software under the MIT License and similar permissive licenses.[1]
Contents
[hide]

* 1 Design
* 2 Principles
* 3 User interfaces
* 4 Implementations
o 4.1 X terminals
* 5 Limitations and criticisms of X
o 5.1 User interface features
o 5.2 Network
o 5.3 Client-server separation
* 6 Competitors to X
* 7 History
o 7.1 Predecessors
o 7.2 Origin and early development
o 7.3 The MIT X Consortium and the X Consortium, Inc.
o 7.4 The Open Group
o 7.5 X.Org and XFree86
o 7.6 The X.Org Foundation
* 8 Future directions
* 9 Nomenclature
* 10 Release history
o 10.1 Proposed releases
* 11 See also
* 12 Notes
* 13 References
* 14 External links

[edit] Design

For more details on this topic, see X Window System protocols and architecture.
For more details on this topic, see X Window System core protocol.

X uses a client-server model: an X server communicates with various client programs. The server accepts requests for graphical output (windows) and sends back user input (from keyboard, mouse, or touchscreen). The server may function as:

* an application displaying to a window of another display system
* a system program controlling the video output of a PC
* a dedicated piece of hardware.

This client-server terminology — the user's terminal as the "server", the remote or local applications as the "clients" — often confuses new X users, because the terms appear reversed. But X takes the perspective of the program, rather than that of the end-user or of the hardware: the local X display provides display services to programs, so it acts as a server; any remote program uses these services, thus it acts as a client.
In this example, the X server takes input from a keyboard and mouse and displays to a screen. A web browser and a terminal emulator run on the user's workstation, and a system updater runs on a remote server but is controlled from the user's machine. Note that the remote application runs just as it would locally.
In this example, the X server takes input from a keyboard and mouse and displays to a screen. A web browser and a terminal emulator run on the user's workstation, and a system updater runs on a remote server but is controlled from the user's machine. Note that the remote application runs just as it would locally.

The communication protocol between server and client operates network-transparently: the client and server may run on the same machine or on different ones, possibly with different architectures and operating systems, but they run the same in either case. A client and server can even communicate securely over the Internet by tunneling the connection over an encrypted network session.

An X client itself may contain an X server having display of multiple clients. This is known as "X nesting". Open-source clients such as Xnest and Xephyr support such X nesting.

To start a remote client program displaying to a local server, the user will typically open a terminal window and telnet or ssh to the remote client application or shell and request local display/input service (e.g. export DISPLAY=[user's machine]:0 on a remote machine running bash). The client application or shell then connects to the local server, servicing a display and input session to the local user. Alternatively, the local machine may run a small helper program to connect to a remote machine and start the desired client application there.

Practical examples of remote clients include:

* administering a remote machine graphically
* running a computationally intensive simulation on a remote Unix machine and displaying the results on a local Windows desktop machine
* running graphical software on several machines at once, controlled by a single display, keyboard and mouse.

[edit] Principles

In 1984, Bob Scheifler and Jim Gettys set out the early principles of X:

* Do not add new functionality unless an implementor cannot complete a real application without it.
* It is as important to decide what a system is not as to decide what it is. Do not serve all the world's needs; rather, make the system extensible so that additional needs can be met in an upwardly compatible fashion.
* The only thing worse than generalizing from one example is generalizing from no examples at all.
* If a problem is not completely understood, it is probably best to provide no solution at all.
* If you can get 90 percent of the desired effect for 10 percent of the work, use the simpler solution. (See also Worse is better.)
* Isolate complexity as much as possible.
* Provide mechanism rather than policy. In particular, place user interface policy in the clients' hands.

The first principle was modified during the design of X11 to: "Do not add new functionality unless you know of some real application that will require it."

X has largely kept to these principles since. The reference implementation is developed with a view to extension and improvement of the implementation, whilst remaining almost entirely compatible with the original 1987 protocol.

[edit] User interfaces

X deliberately contains no specification as to application user interface, such as buttons, menus, window title bars and so on. Instead, user software – such as window managers, GUI widget toolkits and desktop environments, or application-specific graphical user interfaces – provide/define all such details. As such, it isn't possible to point to a "typical" X interface as at most times several interfaces have been popular among users.

A window manager controls the placement and appearance of application windows. This may have an interface akin to that of Microsoft Windows or of the Macintosh (examples include Metacity in GNOME, KWin in KDE or Xfwm in Xfce) or have radically different controls (such as a tiling window manager). The window manager may be bare-bones (e.g. twm, the basic window manager supplied with X, or evilwm, an extremely light window manager) or offer functionality verging on that of a full desktop environment (e.g. Enlightenment).

Many users use X with a full desktop environment, which includes a window manager, various applications and a consistent interface. GNOME, KDE and Xfce are the most popular desktop environments. The Unix standard environment is the Common Desktop Environment (CDE). The freedesktop.org initiative addresses interoperability between desktops and the components needed for a competitive X desktop.

As X is responsible for keyboard and mouse interaction with graphical desktops, certain keyboard shortcuts have become associated with X. Control-Alt-Backspace typically terminates the currently running X session, while Control-Alt in conjunction with a function key switches to the associated virtual console. Note, however, that this is an implementation detail left to an individual X server and is by no means universal; for example, X server implementations for Windows and Macintosh typically do not provide these shortcuts.

[edit] Implementations

The X.Org reference implementation serves as the canonical implementation of X. Due to the liberal licensing, a number of variations, both free and proprietary, have appeared. Commercial UNIX vendors have tended to take the reference implementation and adapt it for their hardware, usually customising it heavily and adding proprietary extensions.
Cygwin/X running rootless on Microsoft Windows XP. The screen shows X applications (xeyes, xclock, xterm) sharing the screen with native Windows applications (Date and Time, Calculator).
Cygwin/X running rootless on Microsoft Windows XP. The screen shows X applications (xeyes, xclock, xterm) sharing the screen with native Windows applications (Date and Time, Calculator).

Up to 2004, XFree86 provided the most common X variant on free Unix-like systems. XFree86 started as a port of X for 386-compatible PCs and, by the end of the 1990s, had become the greatest source of technical innovation in X and the de facto standard of X development.[2] Since 2004, however, the X.Org reference implementation, a fork of XFree86, has become predominant.

While computer aficionados most often associate X with Unix, X servers also exist natively within other graphical environments. Hewlett-Packard's OpenVMS operating system includes a version of X with CDE, known as DECwindows, as its standard desktop environment. Apple's Mac OS X v10.3 (Panther) and up includes X11.app, based on XFree86 4.3 and X11R6.6, with better Mac OS X integration. Third-party servers under Mac OS 7, 8 and 9 included MacX.

Microsoft Windows does not come with support for X, but many third-party implementations exist, both free software such as Cygwin/X, Xming, WeirdMind and WeirdX; and proprietary products such as MKS X/Server, Reflection X, Xmanager, X-Deep/32, WiredX, Exceed and X-Win32. They normally serve to control remote X clients.

When another windowing system (such as those of Microsoft Windows or Mac OS) hosts X, the X system generally runs "rootless", meaning the host windowing environment looks after the root window (the background and associated menus) and manages the geometry of the hosted X windows — although some servers (Xmanager, and Exceed, for example) can also create the root window for the remote clients to display to as a separate window in the host system.

[edit] X terminals
A Network Computing Devices NCD-88k X terminal.
A Network Computing Devices NCD-88k X terminal.

Main article: X terminal

An X terminal is a thin client that runs an X server. This architecture became popular for building inexpensive terminal parks for many users to simultaneously use the same large server. This use very much aligns with the original intention of the MIT project.

X terminals explore the network (the local broadcast domain) using the X Display Manager Control Protocol to generate a list of available hosts that they can run clients from. The initial host needs to run an X display manager.

Dedicated (hardware) X terminals have become less common; a PC or modern thin client with an X server typically provides the same functionality at the same, or lower, cost.

[edit] Limitations and criticisms of X

The UNIX-HATERS Handbook (1994) devoted an entire chapter[3], to the problems of X. Why X Is Not Our Ideal Window System (1990) by Gajewska, Manasse and McCormack detailed problems in the protocol with recommendations for improvement.

[edit] User interface features

X deliberately contains no specification as to user interface or most inter-application communication. This has resulted in several vastly different interfaces, and in applications that have not always worked well together. The ICCCM, a specification for client interoperability, has a reputation as difficult to implement correctly. Further standards efforts such as Motif and CDE did not remedy matters. This has frustrated users and programmers for a long time.[4] Graphics programmers now generally address consistency of application look and feel and communication by coding to a specific desktop environment or to a specific widget toolkit, which also avoids having to deal directly with the ICCCM.

The X protocol provides no facilities for handling audio, leaving it to the operating system or audio systems like OSS or ALSA to provide support for audio hardware and sound playback. Most programmers simply use local, OS-specific sound APIs. The first generation of client-server sound systems included rplay and Network Audio System. More recent efforts have produced EsounD (GNOME), aRts (KDE), and PulseAudio to name a few. In 2001, the X.org foundation announced the development of the Media Application Server (MAS) to remedy this problem. However, none of these are generally used as a solution to the problem.

[edit] Network
Example of tunnelling an X11 application over SSH.
Example of tunnelling an X11 application over SSH.

An X client cannot generally be detached from one server and reattached to another, as with Virtual Network Computing (VNC), though certain specific applications and toolkits are able to provide this facility.[5] Workarounds (VNC :0 viewers) also exist to make the current X-server screen available via VNC.

Network traffic between an X server and remote X clients is not encrypted by default. An attacker with a packet sniffer can intercept it, making it possible to view anything displayed to or sent from the user's screen. The most common way to encrypt X traffic is to tunnel it over SSH.

[edit] Client-server separation

X's design requires the clients and server to operate separately, and device independence and the separation of client and server incur overhead compared to an operating system where the graphics are integrated into the OS, such as early versions of Microsoft Windows or Mac OS. X advocates recommended 4 to 8 MB of RAM for reasonable performance; until the mid-1990s, this seemed bloated compared to Windows or Mac OS.

Current versions of Windows and Mac OS X Quartz have internal subsystem separation similar to the client/server divide in X and comparable performance and higher resource usage to X with KDE or GNOME[citation needed]. Most of the overhead comes from network round-trip delay time between client and server (latency rather than from the protocol itself): the best solutions to performance issues involve paying attention to application design.[6] A common misconception is that X's network features result in excessive complexity if only used locally, and that X's network capabilities cause an undesirable performance hit; modern X implementations use local sockets and shared memory, requiring very little overhead.

[edit] Competitors to X

For graphics, Unix-like systems use X almost universally. However, some people have attempted writing alternatives to and replacements for X. Historical alternatives include Sun's NeWS, which failed in the market, and NeXT's Display PostScript, which was discarded in favor of Apple's entirely new Quartz in Mac OS X.

Mike Paquette, one of the authors of Quartz, explained why Apple did not move from Display PostScript to X, and chose instead to develop its own window server, by saying that once Apple added support for all the features it wanted to include in to X11, it would not bear much resemblance to X11 nor be compatible with other servers anyway.[7]

Other attempts to address criticisms of X by replacing it completely include Berlin/Fresco and the Y Window System. These alternatives have seen negligible take-up, however, and commentators widely doubt the viability of any replacement that does not preserve backward compatibility with X.

Other competitors attempt to avoid the overhead of X by working directly with the hardware. Such projects include DirectFB and the very small FBUI. The Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI), which aims to provide a reliable kernel-level interface to the framebuffer, may make these efforts redundant. However, in Linux embedded systems requiring real-time capabilities (e.g. using RTAI), the use of hardware acceleration via DRI is discouraged; X may be unsuitable for such applications.

Other ways to achieve network transparency for graphical services include:

* the SVG Terminal, a protocol to update Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) content in a browser in near-real-time
* Virtual Network Computing (VNC), a very low-level system which sends compressed bitmaps across the network; the Unix implementation includes an X server
* Citrix Presentation Server, an X-like product for Microsoft Windows
* Tarantella, which provides a Java client for use in web browsers
* RAWT, IBM's Java-only Remote AWT, which implements a Java "server" and simple hooks for any remote Java client

[edit] History

[edit] Predecessors

Several bitmap display systems preceded X. From Xerox came the Alto (1973) and the Star (1981). From Apple came the Lisa (1983) and the Macintosh (1984). The Unix world had the Andrew Project (1982) and Rob Pike's Blit terminal (1984).

X derives its name as a successor to a pre-1983 window system called W (the letter X directly following W in the Latin alphabet). W Window System ran under the V operating system. W used a network protocol supporting terminal and graphics windows, the server maintaining display lists.
An early-1990s style Unix desktop running the X Window System graphical user interface shows many client applications common to the MIT X Consortium's distribution, including the twm window manager, an X Terminal, Xbiff, xload and a graphical manual page browser.
An early-1990s style Unix desktop running the X Window System graphical user interface shows many client applications common to the MIT X Consortium's distribution, including the twm window manager, an X Terminal, Xbiff, xload and a graphical manual page browser.

[edit] Origin and early development

The original idea of X emerged at MIT in 1984 as a collaboration between Jim Gettys (of Project Athena) and Bob Scheifler (of the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science). Scheifler needed a usable display environment for debugging the Argus system. Project Athena (a joint project between Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), MIT and IBM to provide easy access to computing resources for all students) needed a platform-independent graphics system to link together its heterogeneous multiple-vendor systems; the window system then under development in Carnegie Mellon University's Andrew Project did not make licences available, and no alternatives existed.

The project solved this by creating a protocol that could both run local applications and call on remote resources. In mid-1983 an initial port of W to Unix ran at one-fifth of its speed under V; in May 1984, Scheifler replaced the synchronous protocol of W with an asynchronous protocol and the display lists with immediate mode graphics to make X version 1. X became the first windowing system environment to offer true hardware-independence and vendor-independence.

Scheifler, Gettys and Ron Newman set to work and X progressed rapidly. They released Version 6 in January 1985. DEC, then preparing to release its first Ultrix workstation, judged X the only windowing system likely to become available in time. DEC engineers ported X6 to DEC's QVSS display on MicroVAX.

In the second quarter of 1985 X acquired color support to function in the DEC VAXstation-II/GPX, forming what became version 9. Although MIT had licensed X6 to some outside groups for a fee, it decided at this time to license X9 and future versions under what became known as the MIT License. X9 appeared in September 1985.

A group at Brown University ported version 9 to the IBM RT/PC, but problems with reading unaligned data on the RT forced an incompatible protocol change, leading to version 10 in late 1985. By 1986, outside organizations had started asking for X. The release of X10R2 took place in January 1986; that of X10R3 in February 1986. X10R3 became the first version to achieve wide deployment, with both DEC and Hewlett-Packard releasing products based on it. Other groups ported X10 to Apollo and to Sun workstations and even to the IBM PC/AT. Demonstrations of the first commercial application for X (a mechanical computer-aided engineering system from Cognition Inc. that ran on VAXes and displayed on PCs running an X server) took place at the Autofact trade show at that time. The last version of X10, X10R4, appeared in December 1986.

Attempts were made to enable X servers as real-time collaboration devices, much as Virtual Network Computing (VNC) would later allow a desktop to be shared. One such early effort was Philip J. Gust's SharedX tool.

Although X10 offered interesting and powerful functionality, it had become obvious that the X protocol could use a more hardware-neutral redesign before it became too widely deployed; but MIT alone would not have the resources available for such a complete redesign. As it happened, DEC's Western Software Laboratory found itself between projects. Smokey Wallace of DEC WSL and Jim Gettys proposed that DEC WSL build X11 and make it freely available under the same terms as X9 and X10. This process started in May 1986, with the protocol finalised in August. Alpha-testing of the software started in February 1987, beta-testing in May; the release of X11 finally occurred on September 15, 1987.

The X11 protocol design, led by Scheifler, got extensively discussed on open mailing lists on the nascent Internet that were bridged to USENET newsgroups. X therefore represents one of the first very large-scale free software projects.

[edit] The MIT X Consortium and the X Consortium, Inc.

In 1987, with the success of X11 becoming apparent, MIT wished to relinquish the stewardship of X, but at a June 1987 meeting with nine vendors, the vendors told MIT that they believed in the need for a neutral party to keep X from fragmenting in the marketplace. In January 1988, the MIT X Consortium formed as a non-profit vendor group, with Scheifler as director, to direct the future development of X in a neutral atmosphere inclusive of commercial and educational interests. Jim Fulton joined in January 1988 and Keith Packard in March 1988 as senior developers, with Jim focusing on Xlib, fonts, window managers, and utilities; and Keith re-implementing the server. Donna Converse and Chris D. Peterson joined later that year, focusing on toolkits and widget sets, working closely with Ralph Swick of MIT Project Athena. The MIT X Consortium produced several significant revisions to X11, the first (Release 2 - X11R2) in February 1988.
CDE on UNIX (Solaris 8)
CDE on UNIX (Solaris 8)
DECwindows CDE on OpenVMS 7.3-1
DECwindows CDE on OpenVMS 7.3-1

In 1993, the X Consortium, Inc. (a non-profit corporation) formed as the successor to the MIT X Consortium. It released X11R6 on May 16, 1994. In 1995 it took over stewardship of the Motif toolkit and of the Common Desktop Environment for Unix systems. The X Consortium dissolved at the end of 1996, producing a final revision, X11R6.3, and a legacy of increasing commercial influence in the development.[8][9]

[edit] The Open Group

In mid-1997 the X Consortium passed stewardship of X to The Open Group, a vendor group formed in early 1996 by the merger of the Open Software Foundation and X/Open.

The Open Group released X11R6.4 in early 1998. Controversially, X11R6.4 departed from the traditional liberal licensing terms, as the Open Group sought to assure funding for X's development.[10] The new terms would have prevented its adoption by many projects (such as XFree86) and even by some commercial vendors. After XFree86 seemed poised to fork, the Open Group relicensed X11R6.4 under the traditional license in September 1998.[11] The Open Group's last release came as X11R6.4 patch 3.

[edit] X.Org and XFree86

XFree86 originated in 1992 from the X386 server for IBM PC compatibles included with X11R5 in 1991, written by Thomas Roell and Mark W. Snitily and donated to the MIT X Consortium by Snitily Graphics Consulting Services (SGCS). XFree86 evolved over time from just one port of X to the leading and most popular implementation and the de facto steward of X's development.[12]

In May 1999, the Open Group formed X.Org. X.Org supervised the release of versions X11R6.5.1 onward. X development at this time had become moribund[13]; most technical innovation since the X Consortium had dissolved had taken place in the XFree86 project.[14] In 1999, the XFree86 team joined X.Org as an honorary (non-paying) member[15], encouraged by various hardware companies[16] interested in using XFree86 with Linux and in its status as the most popular version of X.

By 2003, while the popularity of Linux (and hence the installed base of X) surged, X.Org remained inactive[17], and active development took place largely within XFree86. However, considerable dissent developed within XFree86. The XFree86 project suffered from a perception of a far too cathedral-like development model; developers could not get CVS commit access[18][19] and vendors had to maintain extensive patch sets.[20] In March 2003 the XFree86 organization expelled Keith Packard, who had joined XFree86 after the end of the original MIT X Consortium, with considerable ill-feeling.[21][22][23]

X.Org and XFree86 began discussing a reorganisation suited to properly nurturing the development of X.[24][25][26] Jim Gettys had been pushing strongly for an open development model since at least 2000.[27] Gettys, Packard and several others began discussing in detail the requirements for the effective governance of X with open development.

Finally, in an echo of the X11R6.4 licensing dispute, XFree86 released version 4.4 in February 2004 under a more restricted license which many projects relying on X found unacceptable.[28] The added clause to the license was based upon the original BSD license's advertising clause, which was viewed by the Free Software Foundation and Debian as incompatible with the GNU General Public License.[29] Other groups saw further restrictions as being against the spirit of the original X (OpenBSD threatening a fork, for example). The license issue, combined with the difficulties in getting changes in, left many feeling the time was ripe for a fork.[30]

[edit] The X.Org Foundation

In early 2004 various people from X.Org and freedesktop.org formed the X.Org Foundation, and the Open Group gave it control of the x.org domain name. This marked a radical change in the governance of X. Whereas the stewards of X since 1988 (including the previous X.Org) had been vendor organizations, the Foundation was led by software developers and used community development based on the bazaar model, which relies on outside involvement. Membership was opened to individuals, with corporate membership being in the form of sponsorship. Several major corporations such as Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems currently support the X.Org Foundation.

The Foundation takes an oversight role over X development: technical decisions are made on their merits by achieving rough consensus among community members. Technical decisions are not made by the board of directors; in this sense, it is strongly modelled on the technically non-interventionist GNOME Foundation. The Foundation does not employ any developers.

The Foundation released X11R6.7, the X.Org Server, in April 2004, based on XFree86 4.4RC2 with X11R6.6 changes merged. Gettys and Packard had taken the last version of XFree86 under the old license and, by making a point of an open development model and retaining GPL compatibility, brought many of the old XFree86 developers on board.[31]

X11R6.8 came out in September 2004. It added significant new features, including preliminary support for translucent windows and other sophisticated visual effects, screen magnifiers and thumbnailers, and facilities to integrate with 3D immersive display systems such as Sun's Project Looking Glass and the Croquet project. External applications called compositing window managers provide policy for the visual appearance.

On December 21, 2005[32] , X.Org released X11R6.9, the monolithic source tree for legacy users, and X11R7.0, the same source code separated into independent modules, each maintainable in separate projects.[33] The Foundation released X11R7.1 on May 22, 2006, about four months after 7.0, with considerable feature improvements.[34]

[edit] Future directions

With the X.Org Foundation and freedesktop.org, the main line of X development has started to progress rapidly once more. The developers intend to release present and future versions as usable finished products, not merely as bases for vendors to build a product upon.

For sufficiently capable combinations of hardware and operating systems, X.Org plans to access the video hardware only via OpenGL and the Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI). The DRI first appeared in XFree86 version 4.0 and became standard in X11R6.7 and later.[35] Many operating systems have started to add kernel support for hardware manipulation. This work proceeds incrementally.

[edit] Nomenclature

People in the computer trade commonly shorten the phrase "X Window System" to "X11" or simply to "X". The term "X Windows" (in the manner of "Microsoft Windows") is not officially endorsed, though it has been in common use since early in the history of X and has been used deliberately for literary effect, for example in the UNIX-HATERS Handbook.[36]

[edit] Release history

See also: XFree86#Release history

Version Release date Most important changes
X1 June 1984 First use of the name "X"; fundamental changes distinguishing the product from W.
X6 January 1985 First version licensed to a handful of outside companies.
X9 September 1985 Color. First release under MIT License.
X10 late 1985 IBM RT/PC, AT (running DOS), and others
X10R2 January 1986
X10R3 February 1986 First release outside MIT. uwm made standard window manager.
X10R4 December 1986 Last version of X10.
X11 September 15, 1987 First release of the current protocol.
X11R2 February 1988 First X Consortium release.[37]
X11R3 October 25, 1988 XDM
X11R4 December 22, 1989 XDMCP, twm brought in as standard window manager, application improvements, Shape extension, new fonts.
X11R5 September 5, 1991 PEX, Xcms (color management), font server, X386, X video extension
X11R6 May 16, 1994 ICCCM v2.0; Inter-Client Exchange; X Session Management; X Synchronization extension; X Image extension; XTEST extension; X Input; X Big Requests; XC-MISC; XFree86 changes.
X11R6.1 March 14, 1996 X Double Buffer extension; X keyboard extension; X Record extension.
X11R6.2
X11R6.3 (Broadway) December 23, 1996 Web functionality, LBX. Last X Consortium release. X11R6.2 is the tag for a subset of X11R6.3 with the only new features over R6.1 being XPrint and the Xlib implementation of vertical writing and user-defined character support.[38]
X11R6.4 March 31, 1998 Xinerama.[39]
X11R6.5 Internal X.org release; not made publicly available.
X11R6.5.1 August 20, 2000
X11R6.6 April 4, 2001 Bug fixes, XFree86 changes.
X11R6.7.0 April 6, 2004 First X.Org Foundation release, incorporating XFree86 4.4rc2. Full end-user distribution. Removal of XIE, PEX and libxml2.[40]
X11R6.8.0 September 8, 2004 Window translucency, XDamage, Distributed Multihead X, XFixes, Composite, XEvIE.
X11R6.8.1 September 17, 2004 Security fix in libxpm.
X11R6.8.2 February 10, 2005 Bug fixes, driver updates.
X11R6.9
X11R7.0 December 21, 2005 EXA, major source code refactoring.[41] From the same source-code base, the modular autotooled version became 7.0 and the monolithic imake version was frozen at 6.9.
X11R7.1 May 22, 2006 EXA enhancements, KDrive integrated, AIGLX, OS and platform support enhancements.[42]
X11R7.2 February 15, 2007 Removal of LBX and the built-in keyboard driver, X-ACE, XCB, autoconfig improvements, cleanups.[43]
X11R7.3 September 6, 2007 Input hotplug, output hotplug (RandR 1.2), DTrace probes, PCI domain support, SELinux security module, Solaris Trusted Extensions security module, UnixWare support, projects completed during Google Summer of Code 2006.[44]

[edit] Proposed releases
Version Release date Most important changes
X11R7.4 March, 2008[45] XGE, XACE, RandR 1.3 (GPU object), input transformation, pci-rework, XKB 2, _X_EXPORT, DRI memory manager, GLX 1.4, Glucose. [46]

[edit] See also
Free software Portal

* History of the graphical user interface
* X11 color names
* Xgl
* General Graphics Interface
* VirtualGL
* rio (program)
* List of Unix programs
* DESQview/X
* Cairo (graphics)
* Y Window System
* XFree86

[edit] Notes

Date of retrieval, or, where available, of original posting, listed after the link

1. ^ Licenses. X.org (19 December 2005). Retrieved on 2007-10-23.
2. ^ Announcement: Modification to the base XFree86(TM) license. 02 Feb 2004
3. ^ "The X-Windows Disaster"
4. ^ Re: X is painful 15 Nov 1996
5. ^ SNAP Computing and the X Window System 2005
6. ^ An LBX Postmortem 2001-1-24
7. ^ Why Apple didn't use X for the window system August 19, 2007
8. ^ Financing Volunteer Free Software Projects 10 Jun 2005
9. ^ Lessons Learned about Open Source 2000
10. ^ X statement 02 Apr 1998
11. ^ X11R6.4 Sample Implementation Changes and Concerns
12. ^ Announcement: Modification to the base XFree86(TM) license. 02 Feb 2004
13. ^ Q&A: The X Factor February 04, 2002
14. ^ The Evolution of the X Server Architecture 1999
15. ^ A Call For Open Governance Of X Development 23 Mar 2003
16. ^ XFree86 joins X.Org as Honorary Member Dec 01, 1999
17. ^ Another teleconference partial edited transcript 13 Apr 2003
18. ^ Keith Packard issue 20 Mar 2003
19. ^ Cygwin/XFree86 - No longer associated with XFree86.org 27 Oct 2003
20. ^ On XFree86 development 9 Jan 2003
21. ^ Invitation for public discussion about the future of X 20 Mar 2003
22. ^ A Call For Open Governance Of X Development 21 Mar 2003
23. ^ Notes from a teleconference held 2003-3-27 03 Apr 2003
24. ^ A Call For Open Governance Of X Development 24 Mar 2003
25. ^ A Call For Open Governance Of X Development 23 Mar 2003
26. ^ Discussing issues 14 Apr 2003
27. ^ Lessons Learned about Open Source 2000
28. ^ XFree86 4.4: List of Rejecting Distributors Grows Feb 18, 2004
29. ^ Appendix A: The Cautionary Tale of XFree86 June 5, 2002
30. ^ X Marks the Spot: Looking back at X11 Developments of Past Year Feb 25, 2004
31. ^ Appendix A: The Cautionary Tale of XFree86 June 5, 2002
32. ^ X11R6.9 and X11R7.0 Officially Released December 21 2005
33. ^ Modularization Proposal 2005-03-31
34. ^ Proposed Changes for X11R7.1 2006-04-21
35. ^ Getting X Off The Hardware July, 2004
36. ^ X - a portable, network-transparent window system February 2005
37. ^ The X Window System: History and Architecture 1 September 1999
38. ^ XFree86 and X11R6.3 December 1999
39. ^ The Open Group Announces Internet-Ready X Window System X11R6.4 March 31, 1998
40. ^ X.Org Foundation releases X Window System X11R6.7 April 7, 2004
41. ^ Changes Since R6.8 2005-10-21
42. ^ Release Notes for X11R7.1 22 May 2006
43. ^ The X.Org Foundation released 7.2.0 (aka X11R7.2) February 15th, 2007
44. ^ X server version 1.4 release plans, accessed 2007-08-25
45. ^ Debian X.org notes - X.org 7.4 plans - What we expect for Lenny (Brice Goglin, 11 September 2007)
46. ^ XDS 2007 notes

[edit] References

* Hania Gajewska, Mark S. Manasse and Joel McCormack, Why X Is Not Our Ideal Window System (PDF), Software — Practice & Experience vol 20, issue S2 (October 1990)
* Linda Mui and Eric Pearce, X Window System Volume 8: X Window System Administrator's Guide for X11 Release 4 and Release 5, 3rd edition (O'Reilly and Associates, July 1993; softcover ISBN 0-937175-83-8)
* The X-Windows Disaster (UNIX-HATERS Handbook)
* Robert W. Scheifler and James Gettys: X Window System: Core and extension protocols: X version 11, releases 6 and 6.1, Digital Press 1996, ISBN 1-55558-148-X
* The Evolution of the X Server Architecture (Keith Packard, 1999)
* The means to an X for Linux: an interview with David Dawes from XFree86.org (Matthew Arnison, CAT TV, June 1999)
* Lessons Learned about Open Source (Jim Gettys, USENIX 2000 talk on the history of X)
* On the Thesis that X is Big/Bloated/Obsolete and Should Be Replaced (Christopher B. Browne)
* Open Source Desktop Technology Road Map (Jim Gettys, 09 December 2003)
* X Marks the Spot: Looking back at X11 Developments of Past Year (Oscar Boykin, OSNews, 25 February 2004)
* Getting X Off The Hardware (Keith Packard, July 2004 Ottawa Linux Symposium talk)
* Why Apple didn't use X for the window system (Mike Paquette, Apple Computer)
* The Cautionary Tale of XFree86 (from Make Your Open Source Software GPL-Compatible. Or Else. by David A. Wheeler, 16 February 2005)
* X Man Page (Retrieved on 2 February 2007)
* SNAP Computing and the X Window System (Jim Gettys, 2005)

[edit] External links
Wikibooks
Wikibooks has a book on the topic of
Guide to X11

* X.Org Foundation Official website
* The X Window System: A Brief Introduction
* Window managers for X
* The State of Linux Graphics (Jon Smirl, 30 August 2005)
* Writing a Graphics Device Driver and DDX for the DIGITAL UNIX X Server
* Kenton Lee: Technical X Window System and Motif WWW Sites
* RFC 1198 - FYI on the X Window System

[hide]
v • d • e
X Window System
Architecture Core Protocol · Xlib · X Window selection · X window manager · X session manager · X display manager · X Toolkit · X Window authorization · Intrinsics · X11 color names
Window managers Compositing · Re-parenting · Tiling
Extensions X Image Extension · X keyboard extension · X video extension · Shape extension · Shared memory extension · GLX · XRender · MPX
Notable Implementations X11.app · X.Org Server · X-Win32 · XFree86 · XDarwin · Xming · Xsun
Standards ICCCM · EWMH · XDS
Applications xterm · Desktop environments

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System"

Categories: All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with unsourced statements since May 2007 | Application programming interfaces | Free windowing systems | X Window System | Freedesktop.org | Application layer protocols | Free graphics software
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