XWindows
XWindows
X-Windows
The X Window System is the windowing system first developed at
MIT and currently in use on the X-terms and many of the other terminals
here at PPPL. The term `window' refers to a defined working area that is
graphically displayed as a `window' on the screen, often terminals can
hold many windows at a time. However, X-Windows holds three primary
advantages over other windowing systems in that it's free (always an
advantage), it's supported by most major computer vendors (IBM, Sun,
DEC, Cray, etc.), and probably most importantly, it's a network window
system.
With the X Window System, each window displayed on the screen can be running a separate process---either all on the same computer or on different computers. For example, on one X-term, you could be typing a letter in an Emacs window while you wait for the output of a compiling program (being executed on Lyman) on another window, and yet a third window is monitoring the output on a program running on HAX. As you can see, this makes for a very versatile and efficient system. The windowing system used on Macs cannot run several processes at once, although it can display several windows at a time. Another nice feature is that text can be cut and pasted from one window to another (see Buttons).
XWindows
XWindows
X-Windows