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The implementation of Scheifler' X window system for IBM/Intel was called X386, which eventually was forked and freed. It was renamed XFree86, as a pun. Then wa

The implementation of Scheifler' X window system for IBM/Intel was called X386, which eventually was forked and freed. It was renamed XFree86, as a pun. Then was renamed Xorg. There were a few implementations of X for different unixes. Mostly closed source. It was very buggy, and patches were posted online, under the form a LD_PRELOAD-ed libraries. iirc, I had to preload a few libraries to work around the HPUX X implementation to be capable of running Mozilla Suite. Fun times :)

pengaru 5y ago
> It was renamed XFree86, as a pun. Then was renamed Xorg. It wasn't simply renamed Xorg, that's yet another fork after XFree86 development became stagnant and the license changed to something GPL-incompatible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFree86#2002:_Growing_dissent_within_the_project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFree86#2002:_Growing_dissent_...
p_l 5y ago
One issue is that while some vendors went out of their way to update and modernize the internals of their X11 implementations (most famously Xsgi, which afaik ripped out all graphic driver code due to being unsuitable), Xfree86 in many ways stuck to original code, even if certain advances were made (pluggability, loadable drivers, etc.). Which unfortunately led to more and more problems that were papered over with XShm and drawing on client side, finally leading to Wayland...
- TacticalCoder 5y ago
  > Which unfortunately led to more and more problems that were papered over with XShm and drawing on client side, finally leading to Wayland... But that ship hasn't totally sailed right? It's not as if Wayland was the amazing tech everybody hoped for and jumped to. Wayland is old by now, it's only half a success and many of us are still using Xorg. I'm not saying that in two decades Xorg may not be gone for good but at the moment Wayland and Xorg still coexist.
jhoechtl 5y ago
Thank you, that was entirely new history for me. From Wikipedia: > MGR featured overlapped [...] windows and [...]. Took a while to see the strength of tiling window managers.
- rwmj 5y ago
  MGR was an interesting non-X window system. I ran it for a while (on Minix IIRC) although unfortunately it wasn't free software. One thing about it was that you created windows, drew lines etc entirely by printing special escape sequences to stdout. It was possible to write small graphical C programs using basically printf. This also made it network independent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ManaGeR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ManaGeR
  - 20after4 5y ago
    Reminds me of rip graphics, a format which briefly existed as a way to add vector graphics to bulletin board systems. It was useable over a telnet or dialup modem connection if you had a terminal that supported the rip escape codes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_Imaging_Protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_Imaging_Protocol
    - swills 5y ago
      There was also NeWS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS which had the interesting idea of using PostScript to drive the display.
      - ck45 5y ago
        Which was then also used in another successor (name wise) , W => X, S => T: NeXT
  - kristov 5y ago
    Fascinating!! What an interesting idea!
gpderetta 5y ago
> XFree86, as a pun I have been using it (and its derivatives) for more than 20 years and only got the pun now!
- amatecha 5y ago
  Whooaaaaa, like replacing the "3" in X386 with "Free"? Uhh, today I learned! I can't believe I've gone this long without knowing this haha It is mentioned in the Wikipedia page[0], unfortunately no citation to validate the story. Though I found it talked about in Linux Magazine's "The History of XFree86" article[1] (under "The Rebirth" section) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFree86#Early_history_and_naming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFree86#Early_history_and_nami... [1] http://www.linux-mag.com/id/922/ http://www.linux-mag.com/id/922/
- kingcharles 5y ago
  Ha! It's fascinating when revelations like this happen. I used it for all those years with absolutely no idea of the pun in the title.
imglorp 5y ago
There was additional fun when XFree86 started showing up in that new Linux thing around 97, roughly around Bo in Debian. Around that time you needed to do some math to figure out the dot clock rate for your CRT. If you got it a little wrong, you'd need to Ctrl-Alt-F1 into a text terminal to try again; more wrong and the deflection coils would buzz louder; really wrong (allegedly) you could burn them out. https://wiki.debian.org/DebianBo https://wiki.debian.org/DebianBo
- dekhn 5y ago
  uh, xfree86 was in linux in '93 (yes I edited dot clocks to get 1024x768 x 16 bit color)
  - hulitu 5y ago
    Later xvidtune was added to easy the process of monitor destruction :)
  - znpy 5y ago
    I can't recall where, however I remember reading a super-interesting blog post of an old-time linux user complaining about his video card not being able to drive his displays. He "solved" the issue by lowering the video card refresh rate (60hz -> 30hz) -- iirc. Can't find that post anymore, but I always wondered if that approach would have allowed me to dive more displays with my integrated intel gpu. I was unable to go further than three 1920x1200 external displays (I had to sacrifice the fourth display, the laptop's built-in display)
    - hyperman1 5y ago
      You could do a lot with weird modelines in Xfree86. I had not enough VRAM in a computer to do 16 bit 1024x768 but the difference was tiny. I think it needed a few tiny buffers for the mouse cursor and dragdropped icon, which was advanced 2d hardware acceleration at the time (Onion, belt, ...),and whatever memory was left just did not make it by a hair. So I wrote a custom modeline to create an absolutely nonstandard videomode. I think the only requirement was that vert and horiz resolution were divisible by 4, so I did 1000 by 752 or something like that. You had to make sure the dot clock was acceptable, or you could physically damage the CRT. Scary. So I did the calculations and tripple checked everything, then started a custom config with my thumb on the power button. It worked.

pengaru 5y ago

> It was renamed XFree86, as a pun. Then was renamed Xorg. It wasn't simply renamed Xorg, that's yet another fork after XFree86 development became stagnant and the license changed to something GPL-incompatible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFree86#2002:_Growing_dissent_within_the_project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFree86#2002:_Growing_dissent_...

p_l 5y ago

One issue is that while some vendors went out of their way to update and modernize the internals of their X11 implementations (most famously Xsgi, which afaik ripped out all graphic driver code due to being unsuitable), Xfree86 in many ways stuck to original code, even if certain advances were made (pluggability, loadable drivers, etc.). Which unfortunately led to more and more problems that were papered over with XShm and drawing on client side, finally leading to Wayland...

TacticalCoder 5y ago
> Which unfortunately led to more and more problems that were papered over with XShm and drawing on client side, finally leading to Wayland... But that ship hasn't totally sailed right? It's not as if Wayland was the amazing tech everybody hoped for and jumped to. Wayland is old by now, it's only half a success and many of us are still using Xorg. I'm not saying that in two decades Xorg may not be gone for good but at the moment Wayland and Xorg still coexist.

jhoechtl 5y ago

Thank you, that was entirely new history for me. From Wikipedia: > MGR featured overlapped [...] windows and [...]. Took a while to see the strength of tiling window managers.

rwmj 5y ago
MGR was an interesting non-X window system. I ran it for a while (on Minix IIRC) although unfortunately it wasn't free software. One thing about it was that you created windows, drew lines etc entirely by printing special escape sequences to stdout. It was possible to write small graphical C programs using basically printf. This also made it network independent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ManaGeR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ManaGeR
- 20after4 5y ago
  Reminds me of rip graphics, a format which briefly existed as a way to add vector graphics to bulletin board systems. It was useable over a telnet or dialup modem connection if you had a terminal that supported the rip escape codes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_Imaging_Protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_Imaging_Protocol
  - swills 5y ago
    There was also NeWS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS which had the interesting idea of using PostScript to drive the display.
    - ck45 5y ago
      Which was then also used in another successor (name wise) , W => X, S => T: NeXT
- kristov 5y ago
  Fascinating!! What an interesting idea!

gpderetta 5y ago

> XFree86, as a pun I have been using it (and its derivatives) for more than 20 years and only got the pun now!

amatecha 5y ago
Whooaaaaa, like replacing the "3" in X386 with "Free"? Uhh, today I learned! I can't believe I've gone this long without knowing this haha It is mentioned in the Wikipedia page[0], unfortunately no citation to validate the story. Though I found it talked about in Linux Magazine's "The History of XFree86" article[1] (under "The Rebirth" section) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFree86#Early_history_and_naming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFree86#Early_history_and_nami... [1] http://www.linux-mag.com/id/922/ http://www.linux-mag.com/id/922/
kingcharles 5y ago
Ha! It's fascinating when revelations like this happen. I used it for all those years with absolutely no idea of the pun in the title.

imglorp 5y ago

There was additional fun when XFree86 started showing up in that new Linux thing around 97, roughly around Bo in Debian. Around that time you needed to do some math to figure out the dot clock rate for your CRT. If you got it a little wrong, you'd need to Ctrl-Alt-F1 into a text terminal to try again; more wrong and the deflection coils would buzz louder; really wrong (allegedly) you could burn them out. https://wiki.debian.org/DebianBo https://wiki.debian.org/DebianBo

dekhn 5y ago
uh, xfree86 was in linux in '93 (yes I edited dot clocks to get 1024x768 x 16 bit color)
- hulitu 5y ago
  Later xvidtune was added to easy the process of monitor destruction :)
- znpy 5y ago
  I can't recall where, however I remember reading a super-interesting blog post of an old-time linux user complaining about his video card not being able to drive his displays. He "solved" the issue by lowering the video card refresh rate (60hz -> 30hz) -- iirc. Can't find that post anymore, but I always wondered if that approach would have allowed me to dive more displays with my integrated intel gpu. I was unable to go further than three 1920x1200 external displays (I had to sacrifice the fourth display, the laptop's built-in display)
  - hyperman1 5y ago
    You could do a lot with weird modelines in Xfree86. I had not enough VRAM in a computer to do 16 bit 1024x768 but the difference was tiny. I think it needed a few tiny buffers for the mouse cursor and dragdropped icon, which was advanced 2d hardware acceleration at the time (Onion, belt, ...),and whatever memory was left just did not make it by a hair. So I wrote a custom modeline to create an absolutely nonstandard videomode. I think the only requirement was that vert and horiz resolution were divisible by 4, so I did 1000 by 752 or something like that. You had to make sure the dot clock was acceptable, or you could physically damage the CRT. Scary. So I did the calculations and tripple checked everything, then started a custom config with my thumb on the power button. It worked.