<graphics, operating system> A process, in an X Window
System which controls a bitmap display device and usually
also a keyboard and mouse or other pointing device. The
X server performs operations on request from client
applications, which may be on the same computer or a
different computer connected via a network.
Note that typical client-server architectures do
input-output on the client and processing on the server
whereas in X the terms are reversed as the X server is serving
IO rather than processing resources to the application.
If the two computers are not both Unix machines (e.g. one is
a Windows machine running VNC) or if a more secure
connection is required (e.g. tunneling with ssh), the
clients may talk to a proxy X server that forwards the
requests to another machine where the real IO takes place.
(2006-08-29)
Nearby terms:
XScheme « x-scm « XSD « X server » XSI » XSL » XSLT
