That was X11. A minimal but extensible protocol which survived many decades and successfully adapted through generations of hardware. Over time people created a

That was X11. A minimal but extensible protocol which survived many decades and successfully adapted through generations of hardware. Over time people created abstractions over it (Gtk,Qt,etc) such that X11 was limited to update bitmaps over network to be responsive. Now X11 will be replaced by Wayland on Linux.