X Window System

From openSUSE

Introduction

The X Window System is a network transparent window system which runs on a wide range of computing and graphics machines. There are two open source implementations of X Window System:

• X.Org Foundation. More about them you can see on X.org wiki
• XFree86 Project

Remote graphics

Wouldn't it be cool if your graphics card was available as a service to applications running on another machine? The remote application could be a powerful render farm for the next block buster 3D animation movie half way across the globe. The application could use your graphics driver service and let you see the application as if it was installed on your laptop.

Lucky you, it's called the X Window System, or just X for short, and is at the heart of your desktop GNU/Linux experience!

Let's try this on two machines running openSuSE Linux, Brutus the powerful server and Whimpy the desktop machine.

1. open a console window on Whimpy
2. type

prompt> xhost +Brutus

to allow Brutus to connect to Whimpy's X service.

1. log on to Brutus
2. type export DISPLAY=Whimpy:0.0 to make Brutus send image data to Whimpy
3. start the application on Brutus, and it will be drawn on Whimpy.