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Old 26th May 2009
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Oko Oko is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TerryP View Post
And there in lies the point. X.Org / XFree86 have always had a focus on PC-based unix systems
With all due respect that is just grossly inaccurate statement. It could not be further from the truth.

X has been created at MIT as a part of Athena project when PCs barely existed for the type of machines popularly known as Unix workstations. What we call today PC is a grandchild of 1983 IBM attempt to get into micro computer market which was until then dominated by start ups and mish mash hardware. PCs (micro computers) have not been taken seriously by X, Unix, VMS and if you like computer community at large at least until late nineties and the demise of large proprietary Unix vendors as DEC, SGI, and if you like SUN. Please !!! we have not had any PC machines at the universities in U.S. probably until 2000. It was all SUN, SGI and aging DEC hardware.

PCs have never been created as multi-user machines. Why would PCs need network ready X server? They didn't have any graphical interface to speak of until mid 90s and Windows 1995. X traditionally required Unix or VMS as underlining OS. I am not aware that X was ever ported to DOS but I might be wrong about it.

Unix has been ported to PCs by Microsoft (Xenix) which ditch it in favor of much less hardware hungry DOS because
PCs could not run Unix shell let alone Unix+X.

BSDs have traditionally being hacked on HP risk stations and SUN hardware. Marriage of BSDs and if you like Unix
with PCs is marriage of convenience not love. Nothing could make me more happy than to see rise of another RISK
based hardware vendor targeting workstation market.

Whole idea of X being for PC is such Linuxism that it just makes me mad

Last edited by Oko; 26th May 2009 at 11:45 PM.
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