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The version of the X Window System most commonly used on GNU/[Linux] operating systems, including [GNOME] and [KDE] desktop environments.

The current version is 11, and the current release of this version is 6, so you might see things like X11R6.

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From the X(1) manual page:
       The X Consortium requests that the following names be used
       when referring to this software:

                                   X
                            X Window System
                              X Version 11
                      X Window System, Version 11
                                  X11

However, many people still refer to the system anyway as "XWindows".

X is responsible for drawing graphics (including text). Without X, you would only have the text mode that is build in to most display adapters (eg what you see when linux is booting up).
XFree86 is a FreeSoftware implementation of the X protocol originally designed for the free [x86] unix operating systems but now supports non-x86 hardware.
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XFree86 version 4.3 (released Feb/Mar 2003) has lots of cool features. Some of the notable ones are:
* ability to configure which keys are used for changing virtual terminals (used to be hard-coded to ctrl+alt+ (F1 - F6) and which keys are used for changing screen resolutions (used to be hard-coded to ctrl+alt+ (KP_+ and KP_-).
* The [Cygwin] port can now run "rootless". This means that you can use Microsoft Windows as your window manager, whereas previously cygwin needed one window and ran all x applications within that single window. This was the biggest advantage that commercial win32 xservers had over the free ones, until now :)
* AddToMe


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!History
;From the bottom of the X (7) manpage -: The X Window System standard was originally  developed  at the Laboratory for Computer Science at the Massachusetts        Institute of Technology,  and all rights  thereto  were assigned to the X Consortium on January 1, 1994. X Consortium, Inc. closed its doors on December 31, 1996. All rights to the X Window System have been assigned to the Open Software Foundation.

;From the bottom of the XFree86 (7) manpage -: XFree86 was originally based on X386 1.2 by Thomas  Roell, which  was  contributed  to  the then X Consortium's X11R5 distribution by SGCS.

When the Open Group changed the licence of their X11R6.4 release to be non-[Free] in 1998, the XFree86 project kept their own fork under the more liberal license, and had much more active developer support.
(See this [debian-devel post|http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/1998/debian-devel-199804/msg00080.html]).
Also, [RMS] talks about this in his essay on CopyLeft vs non-CopyLeft (but still free) licenses at http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/x.html.
The XFree86 implementation of the [X11] protocol is the one that survived.

In 2004, the XFree86 leadership [announced a change|http://www.xfree86.org/pipermail/forum/2004-January/001892.html] to their license, introducing the documentation/advertising clause of the old-style [BSDLicense] (now removed from [BSD] software) to their upcoming XFree86 4.4 release. Because this is interpreted to be incompatible with [GPL]'d software, this release will not be included in major Linux distributions:
* Mandrake are sticking with v 4.3 (http://archives.mandrakelinux.com/cooker/2004-02/msg04596.php)
* Debian are looking towards the FreeDesktop fork of XFree86 by Keith Packard (http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/debian-legal-200402/msg00116.html).

It is probable that in the near/mid-term future, the FreeDesktop [XServer] will become the de-facto software used on Linux distributions.
Version 6, saved on Tuesday, February 17, 2004 1:00:18 pm by JohnMcPherson
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