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Software architecture

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This section does not cite any sources . Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources:  "X Window System" – news  · newspapers  · books  · scholar  · JSTOR ( October 2020 ) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) 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 being the server and the applications being the clients – often confuses new X users, because the terms appear reversed. But X takes the perspective of the application, rather than that of the end-user: X provides displ...
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Competitors

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Some people have attempted writing alternatives to and replacements for X. Historical alternatives include Sun's NeWS and NeXT's Display PostScript, both PostScript-based systems supporting user-definable display-side procedures, which X lacked. Current alternatives include: macOS (and its mobile counterpart, iOS) implements its windowing system, which is known as Quartz. When Apple Inc. bought NeXT, and used NeXTSTEP to construct Mac OS X, it replaced Display PostScript with Quartz. Mike Paquette, one of the authors of Quartz, explained that if Apple had added support for all the features it wanted to include into X11, it would not bear much resemblance to X11 nor be compatible with other servers anyway. Android, which runs on the Linux kernel, uses its own system for drawing the user interface known as SurfaceFlinger. 3D rendering is handled by EGL. Wayland is being developed by several X.Org developers as a prospective replacement for X. It works directly with the GPU hard...
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Limitations and criticism

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This article's Criticism or Controversy section may compromise the article's neutral point of view of the subject . Please integrate the section's contents into the article as a whole, or rewrite the material. ( July 2014 ) The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) devoted a full chapter 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. User interface issues edit The lack of design guidelines in X has resulted in several vastly different interfaces, and in applications that have not always worked well together. The Inter-Client Communication Conventions Manual (ICCCM), a specification for client interoperability, has a reputation for being difficult to implement correctly. Further standards efforts such as Motif and CDE did not alleviate problems. This has frustrated users and programmers. Graphics programmers now generally address consistency of applicatio...
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