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107-413: OpenStep was principally developed by NeXT and Sun Microsystems , to allow advanced application development on Sun's operating systems, specifically Solaris . NeXT produced a version of OpenStep for its own Mach -based Unix OS, stylized in all capital letters as OPENSTEP . The software libraries that shipped with OPENSTEP are a superset of the original OpenStep specification, including many features from

214-511: A free software implementation of the NeXT libraries, began at the time of NeXTSTEP, predating OPENSTEP. While OPENSTEP and OSE were purchased by Apple, who effectively ended the commercial development of implementing OpenStep for other platforms, GNUstep is an ongoing open source project aiming to create a portable, free software implementation of the Cocoa/OPENSTEP libraries. GNUstep also features

321-553: A $ 10 million investment from Sun into NeXT. The deal was described as "the first unadulterated piece of good news in the NeXT community in the last four years". The basic concept was to take a cut-down version of the NeXTSTEP operating system 's object layers and adapt them to run on Sun's Solaris operating system, more specifically, Solaris on SPARC -based hardware. Most of the OpenStep effort

428-462: A 20% stake in Sun. UNIX System V Release 4 (SVR4) was jointly developed by AT&T and Sun. Sun used SVR4 as the foundation for Solaris 2.x, which became the successor to SunOS 4.1.x (later retroactively named Solaris 1.x). By the mid-1990s, the ensuing Unix wars had largely subsided, AT&T had sold off their Unix interests, and the relationship between the two companies was significantly reduced. In

535-471: A computer somewhere on a network (such as the Internet) can display its user interface on an X server running on some other computer on the network. The X server is typically the provider of graphics resources and keyboard/mouse events to X clients , meaning that the X server is usually running on the computer in front of a human user, while the X client applications run anywhere on the network and communicate with

642-416: A consistent design philosophy. Sun's first workstation shipped with UniSoft V7 Unix . Later in 1982 Sun began providing SunOS , a customized 4.2BSD Unix, as the operating system for its workstations. SunOS included suntools , an early GUI window system . In the late 1980s, AT&T tapped Sun to help them develop the next release of their branded UNIX, and in 1988 announced they would purchase up to

749-497: A desktop environment, which, aside from the window manager, includes various applications using a consistent user interface. Popular desktop environments include GNOME , KDE Plasma and Xfce . The UNIX 98 standard environment is the Common Desktop Environment (CDE). The freedesktop.org initiative addresses interoperability between desktops and the components needed for a competitive X desktop. The X.Org implementation

856-511: A fully functional development environment, reimplementations of some of the newer innovations from macOS's Cocoa framework, as well as its own extensions to the API. Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. ( Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers , computer components , software , and information technology services and created the Java programming language ,

963-717: A functional form of the "network transparency" feature of X, via network transmissibility of graphical services, include: Several bitmap display systems preceded X. From Xerox came the Alto (1973) and the Star (1981). From Apollo Computer came Display Manager (1981). From Apple came the Lisa (1983) and the Macintosh (1984). The Unix world had the Andrew Project (1982) and Rob Pike 's Blit terminal (1982). Carnegie Mellon University produced

1070-491: A line of x64 systems that support not only Solaris, but also Linux and Microsoft Windows . In January 2007 Sun announced a broad strategic alliance with Intel . Intel endorsed Solaris as a mainstream operating system and as its mission critical Unix for its Xeon processor–based systems, and contributed engineering resources to OpenSolaris . Sun began using the Intel Xeon processor in its x64 server line, starting with

1177-473: A native windowing system hosts X in addition, the X system can either use its own normal desktop in a separate host window or it can run rootless , meaning the X desktop is hidden and the host windowing environment manages the geometry and appearance of the hosted X windows within the host screen. An X terminal is a thin client that only runs an X server. This architecture became popular for building inexpensive terminal parks for many users to simultaneously use

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1284-708: A net GAAP profit of $ 126 million on revenue of $ 3.337 billion for its fiscal second quarter. Shortly following that news, it was announced that Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) would invest $ 700 million in the company. Sun had engineering groups in Bangalore , Beijing , Dublin , Grenoble , Hamburg , Prague , St. Petersburg , Tel Aviv , Tokyo , Canberra and Trondheim . In 2007–2008, Sun posted revenue of $ 13.8 billion and had $ 2 billion in cash. First-quarter 2008 losses were $ 1.68 billion; revenue fell 7% to $ 12.99 billion. Sun's stock lost 80% of its value November 2007 to November 2008, reducing

1391-595: A network protocol supporting terminal and graphics windows, the server maintaining display lists. The email in which X was introduced to the Project Athena community at MIT in June 1984 The original idea of X emerged at MIT in 1984 as a collaboration between Jim Gettys (of Project Athena ) and Bob Scheifler (of the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science ). Scheifler needed a usable display environment for debugging

1498-419: A port of X to 386-compatible PCs and, by the end of the 1990s, had become the greatest source of technical innovation in X and the de facto standard of X development. Since 2004, however, the X.Org Server, a fork of XFree86, has become predominant. While it is common to associate X with Unix, X servers also exist natively within other graphical environments. VMS Software Inc.'s OpenVMS operating system includes

1605-655: A primary developer of the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), joined soon after and is counted as one of the original founders. The company was the second, after rival Apollo Computer , to specialize in workstations. The name "Sun" is derived from the initials of the Stanford University Network (SUN). Sun was profitable from its first quarter in July 1982. By 1983, Sun was known for producing 68k-based systems with high-quality graphics that were

1712-722: A protocol that could both run local applications and call on remote resources. In mid-1983 an initial port of W to Unix ran at one-fifth of its speed under V; in May 1984, Scheifler replaced the synchronous protocol of W with an asynchronous protocol and the display lists with immediate mode graphics to make X version 1. X became the first windowing system environment to offer true hardware independence and vendor independence. Scheifler, Gettys and Ron Newman set to work and X progressed rapidly. They released Version 6 in January 1985. DEC, then preparing to release its first Ultrix workstation, judged X

1819-784: A remote machine, the user may do the following: The remote X client application will then make a connection to the user's local X server, providing display and input to the user. Alternatively, the local machine may run a small program that connects to the remote machine and starts the client application. Practical examples of remote clients include: X primarily defines protocol and graphics primitives – it deliberately contains no specification for application user-interface design, such as button, menu, or window title-bar styles. Instead, application software – such as window managers, GUI widget toolkits and desktop environments, or application-specific graphical user interfaces – define and provide such details. As

1926-533: A remote-access application called Alto Terminal, that displayed overlapping windows on the Xerox Alto, and made remote hosts (typically DEC VAX systems running Unix) responsible for handling window-exposure events and refreshing window contents as necessary. X derives its name as a successor to a pre-1983 window system called W (the letter preceding X in the English alphabet ). W ran under the V operating system . W used

2033-437: A reputation as one of Microsoft 's most vocal antagonists, Sun entered into a joint relationship with them, resolving various legal entanglements between the two companies and receiving US$ 1.95 billion in settlement payments from them. Sun supported Microsoft Windows on its x64 systems, and announced other collaborative agreements with Microsoft, including plans to support each other's virtualization environments. In 2005,

2140-560: A result, there is no typical X interface and several different desktop environments have become popular among users. A window manager controls the placement and appearance of application windows. This may result in desktop interfaces reminiscent of those of Microsoft Windows or of the Apple Macintosh (examples include GNOME 2, KDE Plasma, Xfce) or have radically different controls (such as a tiling window manager, like wmii or Ratpoison ). Some interfaces such as Sugar or ChromeOS eschew

2247-495: A reworked version of OPENSTEP for Mach for both the Mac and standard PCs. Rhapsody was OPENSTEP for Mach with a Copland appearance from Mac OS 8 and support for Java and Apple's own technologies, including ColorSync and QuickTime ; it could be regarded as OPENSTEP 5. Two developer versions of Rhapsody were released, known as Developer Preview 1 and 2; these ran on a limited subset of both Intel and PowerPC hardware. Mac OS X Server 1.0

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2354-532: A separate package called Workshop OpenStep. NeXT also delivered an implementation running on top of Windows NT 4.0 called OPENSTEP Enterprise (often abbreviated OSE). This was an unintentional demonstration on the true nature of the portability of programs created under the OpenStep specification. Programs for OPENSTEP for Mach could be ported to OSE with little difficulty. This allowed their existing customer base to continue using their tools and applications, but running them on Windows, to which many of them were in

2461-457: A specification for client interoperability, has a reputation for being difficult to implement correctly. Further standards efforts such as Motif and CDE did not alleviate problems. This has frustrated users and programmers. Graphics programmers now generally address consistency of application look and feel and communication by coding to a specific desktop environment or to a specific widget toolkit, which also avoids having to deal directly with

2568-686: A suite of software products, including the Solaris operating system , developer tools, Web infrastructure software, and identity management applications. Technologies included the Java platform and NFS . In general, Sun was a proponent of open systems, particularly Unix. It was also a major contributor to open-source software , as evidenced by its $ 1 billion purchase, in 2008, of MySQL , an open-source relational database management system . At various times, Sun had manufacturing facilities in several locations worldwide, including Newark, California ; Hillsboro, Oregon ; and Linlithgow, Scotland . However, by

2675-481: A variety of pricing bases, including per-employee and per-socket. A 2006 report prepared for the EU by UNU-MERIT stated that Sun was the largest corporate contributor to open source movements in the world. According to this report, Sun's open source contributions exceed the combined total of the next five largest commercial contributors. Sun is best known for its Unix systems, which have a reputation for system stability and

2782-468: A version of X with Common Desktop Environment (CDE), known as DECwindows, as its standard desktop environment. Apple originally ported X to macOS in the form of X11.app, but that has been deprecated in favor of the XQuartz implementation. Third-party servers under Apple's older operating systems in the 1990s, System 7, and Mac OS 8 and 9, included Apple's MacX and White Pine Software's eXodus. Microsoft Windows

2889-412: Is Solaris 10 1/13. X11 The X Window System ( X11 , or simply X ; stylized 𝕏 ) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X originated as part of Project Athena at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1984. The X protocol has been at version 11 (hence "X11") since September 1987. The X.Org Foundation leads the X project, with

2996-414: Is a complete, albeit simple, display and interface solution which delivers a standard toolkit and protocol stack for building graphical user interfaces on most Unix-like operating systems and OpenVMS , and has been ported to many other contemporary general purpose operating systems . X provides the basic framework , or primitives, for building such GUI environments: drawing and moving windows on

3103-518: Is an SMP capable version of UltraSPARC T2, available in 2 or 4 processor configurations. It was the first CoolThreads CPU with multi-processor capability and it made possible to build standard rack-mounted servers that could simultaneously process up to massive 256 CPU threads in hardware (Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440), which is considered a record in the industry. Since 2010, all further development of Sun machines based on SPARC architecture (including new SPARC T-Series servers, SPARC T3 and T4 chips)

3210-589: Is an increasing need to reduce power and air conditioning demands, much of which comes from the heat generated by CPUs. The T1 was followed in 2007 by the UltraSPARC T2 , which extended the number of threads per core from 4 to 8. Sun has open sourced the design specifications of both the T1 and T2 processors via the OpenSPARC project. In 2006, Sun ventured into the blade server (high density rack-mounted systems) market with

3317-504: Is done as a part of Oracle Corporation hardware division. In the late 1980s, Sun also marketed an Intel 80386 –based machine, the Sun386i ; this was designed to be a hybrid system, running SunOS but at the same time supporting DOS applications. This only remained on the market for a brief time. A follow-up "486i" upgrade was announced but only a few prototype units were ever manufactured. Sun's brief first foray into x86 systems ended in

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3424-407: Is generally not possible. However, approaches like Virtual Network Computing (VNC), NX and Xpra allow a virtual session to be reached from different X servers (in a manner similar to GNU Screen in relation to terminals), and other applications and toolkits provide related facilities. Workarounds like x11vnc ( VNC :0 viewers ), Xpra's shadow mode and NX's nxagent shadow mode also exist to make

3531-521: Is no accessibility standard or accessibility guidelines for X11. Within the X11 standards process there is no working group on accessibility; however, accessibility needs are being addressed by software projects to provide these features on top of X. The Orca project adds accessibility support to the X Window System, including implementing an API ( AT-SPI ). This is coupled with GNOME's ATK to allow for accessibility features to be implemented in X programs using

3638-492: Is not shipped with support for X, but many third-party implementations exist, as free and open source software such as Cygwin/X , and proprietary products such as Exceed, MKS X/Server, Reflection X, X-Win32 and Xming . There are also Java implementations of X servers. WeirdX runs on any platform supporting Swing 1.1, and will run as an applet within most browsers. The Android X Server is an open source Java implementation that runs on Android devices. When an operating system with

3745-432: Is now named macOS. macOS's primary programming environment is essentially OpenStep (with certain additions such as XML property lists and URL classes for Internet connections) with macOS ports of the development libraries and tools, now called Cocoa . macOS has since become the single most popular desktop Unix-like operating system in the world, although macOS is no longer an OpenStep compliant operating system. GNUstep,

3852-419: Is that they are not capable of any input or output other than the keyboard, mouse, and display. All relevant data is assumed to exist solely on the remote server, and the X terminal user has no methods available to save or load data from a local peripheral device. Dedicated (hardware) X terminals have fallen out of use; a PC or modern thin client with an X server typically provides the same functionality at

3959-414: Is the canonical implementation of X. Owing to liberal licensing, a number of variations, both free and open source and proprietary, have appeared. Commercial Unix vendors have tended to take the reference implementation and adapt it for their hardware, usually customizing it and adding proprietary extensions. Until 2004, XFree86 provided the most common X variant on free Unix-like systems. XFree86 started as

4066-499: The Dock and Shelf , and so on), and retained the classic NeXTSTEP user interface and styles. OPENSTEP for Mach was further improved, in comparison to NeXTSTEP 3.3, with vastly improved driver support – however the environment to actually write drivers was changed with the introduction of the object-oriented DriverKit. OPENSTEP for Mach supported Intel x86-based PC's, Sun's SPARC workstations, and NeXT's own 68k-based architectures, while

4173-801: The SUN workstation for the Stanford University Network communications project as a personal CAD workstation . It was designed around the Motorola 68000 processor with an advanced memory management unit (MMU) to support the Unix operating system with virtual memory support. He built the first examples from spare parts obtained from Stanford's Department of Computer Science and Silicon Valley supply houses. On February 24, 1982, Scott McNealy , Andy Bechtolsheim , and Vinod Khosla , all Stanford graduate students, founded Sun Microsystems . Bill Joy of Berkeley,

4280-473: The Solaris operating system , ZFS , the Network File System (NFS), and SPARC microprocessors . Sun contributed significantly to the evolution of several key computing technologies, among them Unix , RISC processors , thin client computing, and virtualized computing . Notable Sun acquisitions include Cray Business Systems Division , Storagetek , and Innotek GmbH , creators of VirtualBox . Sun

4387-628: The Sun Blade (distinct from the Sun Blade workstation). In April 2007, Sun released the SPARC Enterprise server products, jointly designed by Sun and Fujitsu and based on Fujitsu SPARC64 VI and later processors. The M-class SPARC Enterprise systems include high-end reliability and availability features. Later T-series servers have also been badged SPARC Enterprise rather than Sun Fire. In April 2008, Sun released servers with UltraSPARC T2 Plus, which

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4494-544: The Sun-1 through Sun-3 computer series. The Sun-1 employed a 68000 CPU, the Sun-2 series, a 68010 . The Sun-3 series was based on the 68020 , with the later Sun-3x using the 68030 . In 1987, the company began using SPARC , a RISC processor architecture of its own design, in its computer systems, starting with the Sun-4 line. SPARC was initially a 32-bit architecture (SPARC V7) until

4601-576: The display and interacting with a mouse, keyboard or touchscreen. X does not mandate the user interface ; individual client programs handle this. Programs may use X's graphical abilities with no user interface. As such, the visual styling of X-based environments varies greatly; different programs may present radically different interfaces. Unlike most earlier display protocols, X was specifically designed to be used over network connections rather than on an integral or attached display device. X features network transparency , which means an X program running on

4708-582: The dot-com bubble , Sun began making more money, with its stock rising as high as $ 250 per share. It also began spending much more, hiring workers and building itself out. Some of this was because of genuine demand, but much was from web start-up companies anticipating business that would never happen. In 2000, the bubble burst. Sales in Sun's important hardware division went into free-fall as customers closed shop and auctioned high-end servers. Several quarters of steep losses led to executive departures, rounds of layoffs, and other cost cutting. In December 2001,

4815-558: The Argus system. Project Athena (a joint project between DEC , MIT and IBM to provide easy access to computing resources for all students) needed a platform-independent graphics system to link together its heterogeneous multiple-vendor systems; the window system then under development in Carnegie Mellon University 's Andrew Project did not make licenses available, and no alternatives existed. The project solved this by creating

4922-498: The Foundation Kit technologies, combined with new libraries to provide remote invocation with very little code. Unlike OpenStep, which defined an operating system that applications would run in, under PDO the libraries were compiled into the application itself, creating a stand-alone "native" application for a particular platform. PDO was small enough to be easily portable, and versions were released for all major server vendors. In

5029-542: The GNOME/GTK APIs. KDE provides a different set of accessibility software, including a text-to-speech converter and a screen magnifier. The other major desktops (LXDE, Xfce and Enlightenment) attempt to be compatible with ATK. An X client cannot generally be detached from one server and reattached to another unless its code specifically provides for it ( Emacs is one of the few common programs with this ability). As such, moving an entire session from one X server to another

5136-607: The HP PA-RISC version was dropped. These versions continued to run on the underlying Mach-based OS used in NeXTSTEP. OPENSTEP for Mach became NeXT's primary OS from 1995 on, and was used mainly on the Intel platform. In addition to being a complete OpenStep implementation, the system was delivered with a complete set of NeXTSTEP libraries for backward compatibility. This was an easy thing to do in OpenStep due to library versioning, and OPENSTEP did not suffer in bloat because of it. In addition to

5243-698: The ICCCM. X also lacks native support for user-defined stored procedures on the X server, in the manner of NeWS  – there is no Turing-complete scripting facility. Various desktop environments may thus offer their own (usually mutually incompatible) facilities. Systems built upon X may have accessibility issues that make utilization of a computer difficult for disabled users, including right click , double click , middle click , mouse-over , and focus stealing . Some X11 clients deal with accessibility issues better than others, so persons with accessibility problems are not locked out of using X11. However, there

5350-774: The Japanese company's processor chips in mid-range and high-end Sun servers. These servers were announced on April 17, 2007, as the M-Series, part of the SPARC Enterprise series. In February 2005, Sun announced the Sun Grid , a grid computing deployment on which it offered utility computing services priced at US$ 1 per CPU/hour for processing and per GB/month for storage. This offering built upon an existing 3,000-CPU server farm used for internal R&D for over 10 years, which Sun marketed as being able to achieve 97% utilization. In August 2005,

5457-528: The LX50, based in part on previous Cobalt system expertise. This was also Sun's first system announced to support Linux as well as Solaris. In 2003, Sun announced a strategic alliance with AMD to produce x86/x64 servers based on AMD's Opteron processor; this was followed shortly by Sun's acquisition of Kealia, a startup founded by original Sun founder Andy Bechtolsheim , which had been focusing on high-performance AMD-based servers. The following year, Sun launched

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5564-507: The NeXTSTEP look and feel as much as possible, and integrating the NeXT development tools, such as Project Builder and Interface Builder, with the SunPro compiler. In order to provide a complete end-user environment, Sun also ported the NeXTSTEP-3.3 versions of several end-user applications, including Mail.app, Preview.app, Edit.app, Workspace Manager, and the Dock . The OpenStep and CORBA parts of

5671-514: The Newark campus was put on the market. In 2004, Sun canceled two major processor projects which emphasized high instruction-level parallelism and operating frequency. Instead, the company chose to concentrate on processors optimized for multi-threading and multiprocessing , such as the UltraSPARC T1 processor (codenamed "Niagara"). The company also announced a collaboration with Fujitsu to use

5778-483: The OPENSTEP for Mach port for SPARC, Sun and NeXT developed an OpenStep compliant set of frameworks to run on Sun's Solaris operating system. After developing Solaris OpenStep, Sun lost interest in OpenStep and shifted its attention toward Java. As a virtual machine development environment, Java served as a direct competitor to OpenStep. Unlike other versions, Solaris OpenStep had Interface Builder and Project Builder sold in

5885-468: The OPENSTEP platform. Unlike the operating system as a whole, these packages were designed to run stand-alone on practically any operating system. The idea was to use OpenStep code as a basis for network-wide applications running across different platforms, as opposed to using CORBA or some other system. Primary among these packages was Portable Distributed Objects (PDO). PDO was essentially an even more "stripped down" version of OpenStep containing only

5992-560: The OpenStep specification to the industry's object standards bodies. The official OpenStep API, published in September 1994, was the first to split the API between Foundation and Application Kit and the first to use the "NS" prefix. Early versions of NeXTSTEP use an "NX" prefix and contain only the Application Kit, relying on standard Unix libc types for low-level data structures. OPENSTEP remained NeXT's primary operating system product until

6099-702: The Opteron-based Sun Fire V20z and V40z servers, and the Sun Java Workstation W1100z and W2100z workstations. In September 2005 Sun unveiled a new range of Opteron-based servers: the Sun Fire X2100, X4100 and X4200 servers. These were designed from scratch by a team led by Bechtolsheim to address heat and power consumption issues commonly faced in data centers. In July 2006, the Sun Fire X4500 and X4600 systems were introduced, extending

6206-546: The SPARC architecture. OpenStep differs from NeXTSTEP in various ways: The OpenStep API specification defines three major components: Foundation Kit, the software framework ; Application Kit , the GUI and graphics front-end; and Display PostScript, a 2D graphics system (for drawing windows and other graphics on the screen). The standardization on OpenStep also allowed for the creation of several new library packages that were delivered on

6313-486: The Sun Blade X6250 server module introduced in June 2007. In May 2008 AMD announced its Operating System Research Center (OSRC) was expanding its focus to include optimization to Sun's OpenSolaris and xVM virtualization products for AMD processors. Although Sun was initially known as a hardware company, its software history began with its founding in 1982; co-founder Bill Joy was one of the leading Unix developers of

6420-578: The X server by a remote X client program, and each then rendered by sending a single glCallList(which) across the network. X provides no native support for audio; several projects exist to fill this niche, some also providing transparent network support. X uses a client–server model: an X server communicates with various client programs. The server accepts requests for graphical output (windows) and sends back user input (from keyboard, mouse, or touchscreen). The server may function as: This client–server terminology – the user's terminal being

6527-586: The aim of building network appliances (single function computers meant for consumers). Sun also marketed a Network Computer (a term popularized and eventually trademarked by Oracle ); the JavaStation was a diskless system designed to run Java applications. Although none of these business initiatives were particularly successful, the Cobalt purchase gave Sun a toehold for its return to the x86 hardware market. In 2002, Sun introduced its first general purpose x86 system,

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6634-568: The amounts indicated when the acquisition closed. For the first decade of Sun's history, the company positioned its products as technical workstations , competing successfully as a low-cost vendor during the Workstation Wars of the 1980s. It then shifted its hardware product line to emphasize servers and storage. High-level telecom control systems such as Operational Support Systems service predominantly used Sun equipment. Sun originally used Motorola 68000 family central processing units for

6741-453: The bandwidth of a 100 Mbit/s network for a single client. In contrast, modern versions of X generally have extensions such as Mesa allowing local display of a local program's graphics to be optimized to bypass the network model and directly control the video card, for use of full-screen video, rendered 3D applications, and other such applications. X's design requires the clients and server to operate separately, and device independence and

6848-547: The client and server may run on the same machine or on different ones, possibly with different architectures and operating systems. A client and server can even communicate securely over the Internet by tunneling the connection over an encrypted network session. An X client itself may emulate an X server by providing display services to other clients. This is known as "X nesting". Open-source clients such as Xnest and Xephyr support such X nesting. To run an X client application on

6955-483: The company merged with Apple Computer in 1997. OPENSTEP was then combined with technologies from the existing classic Mac OS to produce Mac OS X . iPhone and iPad 's iOS is also a descendant of OPENSTEP, but targeted at touch devices. Sun originally adopted the OpenStep environment with the intent of complementing Sun's CORBA -compliant object system, Solaris NEO (formerly known as Project DOE), by providing an object-oriented user interface toolkit to complement

7062-403: The company released Solaris 10. The new version included a large number of enhancements to the operating system, as well as very novel features, previously unseen in the industry. Solaris 10 update releases continued through the next 8 years, the last release from Sun Microsystems being Solaris 10 10/09. The following updates were released by Oracle under the new license agreement; the final release

7169-418: The company's current strategy. Sun's logo, which features four interleaved copies of the word sun in the form of a rotationally symmetric ambigram , was designed by professor Vaughan Pratt , also of Stanford. The initial version of the logo was orange and had the sides oriented horizontally and vertically, but it was subsequently rotated to stand on one corner and re-colored purple, and later blue. During

7276-472: The company's market value to $ 3 billion. With falling sales to large corporate clients, Sun announced plans to lay off 5,000 to 6,000 workers, or 15–18% of its work force. It expected to save $ 700 million to $ 800 million a year as a result of the moves, while also taking up to $ 600 million in charges. As of May 11, 2009, the following shareholders held over 100,000 common shares of Sun and at $ 9.50 per share offered by Oracle, they received

7383-426: The current X-server screen available. This ability allows the user interface (mouse, keyboard, monitor) of a running application to be switched from one location to another without stopping and restarting the application. Network traffic between an X server and remote X clients is not encrypted by default. An attacker with a packet sniffer can intercept it, making it possible to view anything displayed to or sent from

7490-476: The current reference implementation, X.Org Server , available as free and open-source software under the MIT License and similar permissive licenses. X is an architecture-independent system for remote graphical user interfaces and input device capabilities. Each person using a networked terminal has the ability to interact with the display with any type of user input device. In its standard distribution it

7597-454: The desktop metaphor altogether, simplifying their interfaces for specialized applications. Window managers range in sophistication and complexity from the bare-bones ( e.g. , twm, the basic window manager supplied with X, or evilwm, an extremely light window manager) to the more comprehensive desktop environments such as Enlightenment and even to application-specific window managers for vertical markets such as point-of-sale. Many users use X with

7704-725: The early 1990s, Brian P. Dougherty , founder of Berkeley Softworks (which would go on to be re-incorporated as the GeoWorks Corporation ) accused the Java development team at Sun for studying GeoWorks's PC/GEOS operating system and incorporating features of PC/GEOS into their Unix-based operating system. Brian claimed that the object-oriented and flexible UI of PC/GEOS was "to this day the most sophisticated UI technology ever built into an OS". From 1992 Sun also sold Interactive Unix , an operating system it acquired when it bought Interactive Systems Corporation from Eastman Kodak Company. This

7811-402: The early 1990s, as it decided to concentrate on SPARC and retire the last Motorola systems and 386i products, a move dubbed by McNealy as "all the wood behind one arrowhead". Even so, Sun kept its hand in the x86 world, as a release of Solaris for PC compatibles began shipping in 1993. In 1997, Sun acquired Diba, Inc., followed later by the acquisition of Cobalt Networks in 2000, with

7918-441: The first commercial use of this grid was announced for financial risk simulations which were later launched as its first software as a service product. In January 2005, Sun reported a net profit of $ 19 million for fiscal 2005 second quarter, for the first time in three years. This was followed by net loss of $ 9 million on GAAP basis for the third quarter 2005, as reported on April 14, 2005. In January 2007, Sun reported

8025-431: The four-processor SPARCserver 600MP. This was followed by the 8-processor SPARCserver 1000 and 20-processor SPARCcenter 2000, which were based on work done in conjunction with Xerox PARC . In 1995 the company introduced Sun Ultra series machines that were equipped with the first 64-bit implementation of SPARC processors ( UltraSPARC ). In the late 1990s the transformation of product line in favor of large 64-bit SMP systems

8132-610: The introduction of the SPARC V9 architecture in 1995, which added 64-bit extensions. Sun developed several generations of SPARC-based computer systems, including the SPARCstation , Ultra , and Sun Blade series of workstations, and the SPARCserver, Netra , Enterprise , and Sun Fire line of servers. In the early 1990s the company began to extend its product line to include large-scale symmetric multiprocessing servers, starting with

8239-568: The local X server to both local and remotely hosted X client programs who need to share the user's graphics and input devices to communicate with the user. X's network protocol is based on X command primitives. This approach allows both 2D and (through extensions like GLX) 3D operations by an X client application which might be running on a different computer to still be fully accelerated on the X server's display. For example, in classic OpenGL (before version 3.0), display lists containing large numbers of objects could be constructed and stored entirely in

8346-492: The mid-1980s with Sun's NeWS windowing system , but the combination of a complex application programming interface (API) and generally poor performance led to little real-world use and the system was eventually abandoned. Sun then began looking for other options. Taligent was considered to be a competitor in the operating system and object markets, and Microsoft's Cairo was at least a consideration, even without any product releases from either. Taligent's theoretical newness

8453-417: The mid-1990s, NeXT staff took to writing in solutions to various CORBA magazine articles in a few lines of code, whereas the original article would fill several pages. Even though using PDO required the installation of a considerable amount of supporting code (Objective-C and the libraries), PDO applications were nevertheless considerably smaller than similar CORBA solutions, typically about one-half to one-third

8560-512: The most powerful, enterprise class high-end CC-NUMA servers developed by Sun, such as the Sun Fire E15K and the Sun Fire E25K . In November 2005, Sun launched the UltraSPARC T1 , notable for its ability to concurrently run 32 threads of execution on 8 processor cores. Its intent was to drive more efficient use of CPU resources, which is of particular importance in data centers , where there

8667-632: The new UltraSPARC CPUs based on the SPARC V9 architecture. Within the next four years, the successors Solaris 8 and Solaris 9 were released in 2000 and 2002 respectively. Following several years of difficult competition and loss of server market share to competitors' Linux-based systems, Sun began to include Linux as part of its strategy in 2002. Sun supported both Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server on its x64 systems; companies such as Canonical Ltd. , Wind River Systems and MontaVista also supported their versions of Linux on Sun's SPARC-based systems. In 2004, after having cultivated

8774-720: The object-oriented CORBA plumbing. The port involved integrating the OpenStep AppKit with the Display PostScript layer of the Sun X11 server, making the AppKit tolerant of multi-threaded code (as Project DOE was inherently heavily multi-threaded), implementing a Solaris daemon to simulate the behavior of Mach ports, extending the SunPro C++ compiler to support Objective-C using NeXT's ObjC runtime, writing an X11 window manager to implement

8881-464: The only computers other than DEC 's VAX to run 4.2BSD . It licensed the computer design to other manufacturers, which typically used it to build Multibus -based systems running Unix from UniSoft . Sun's initial public offering was in 1986 under the stock symbol SUNW , for Sun Workstations (later Sun Worldwide ). The symbol was changed in 2007 to JAVA ; Sun stated that the brand awareness associated with its Java platform better represented

8988-457: The original NeXTSTEP. Workstations from Sun Microsystems were originally programmed at a relatively low-level making calls directly to the underlying Unix operating system and the SunView window system toolkit, and to libraries built atop those interfaces. This led to complex programming even for simple projects. An attempt to address this with an object oriented programming model was made in

9095-589: The process of switching. Never a clean match from the UI perspective, probably due to OPENSTEP's routing of window graphics through the Display Postscript server—which was also ported to Windows—OSE nevertheless managed to work fairly well and extended OpenStep's commercial lifespan. OPENSTEP and OSE had two revisions (and one major one that was never released) before NeXT was purchased by Apple in 1997. After acquiring NeXT, Apple intended to ship Rhapsody as

9202-457: The products were later split, and NEO was released in late 1995 without the OpenStep environment. In March 1996, Sun announced Joe, a product to integrate NEO with Java . Sun shipped a beta release of the OpenStep environment for Solaris on July 22, 1996, and made it freely available for download in August 1996 for non-commercial use, and for sale in September 1996. OpenStep/Solaris was shipped only for

9309-530: The race is far from over. ... [In 1996,] Cairo will be very close behind, and Taligent will be very far behind." Sun's CEO Scott McNealy said, "We have no insurance policy. We have made a firm one-company, one-architecture decision, not like Taligent getting a trophy spouse by signing up HP." The first draft of the API was published by NeXT in mid 1994. Later that year they released an OpenStep compliant version of NeXTSTEP as OPENSTEP, supported on several of their platforms as well as Sun SPARC systems. NeXT submitted

9416-745: The same host. Additionally shared memory (via the MIT-SHM extension) can be employed for faster client–server communication. However, the programmer must still explicitly activate and use the shared memory extension. It is also necessary to provide fallback paths in order to stay compatible with older implementations, and in order to communicate with non-local X servers. Some people have attempted writing alternatives to and replacements for X. Historical alternatives include Sun 's NeWS and NeXT 's Display PostScript , both PostScript -based systems supporting user-definable display-side procedures, which X lacked. Current alternatives include: Additional ways to achieve

9523-514: The same large computer server to execute application programs as clients of each user's X terminal. This use is very much aligned with the original intention of the MIT project. X terminals explore the network (the local broadcast domain ) using the X Display Manager Control Protocol to generate a list of available hosts that are allowed as clients. One of the client hosts should run an X display manager . A limitation of X terminals and most thin clients

9630-476: The same, or lower, cost. The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) devoted a full chapter to the problems of X. Why X Is Not Our Ideal Window System (1990) by Gajewska, Manasse and McCormack detailed problems in the protocol with recommendations for improvement. The lack of design guidelines in X has resulted in several vastly different interfaces, and in applications that have not always worked well together. The Inter-Client Communication Conventions Manual (ICCCM),

9737-487: The separation of client and server incur overhead. Most of the overhead comes from network round-trip delay time between client and server ( latency ) rather than from the protocol itself: the best solutions to performance issues depend on efficient application design. A common criticism of X is that its network features result in excessive complexity and decreased performance if only used locally. Modern X implementations use Unix domain sockets for efficient connections on

9844-428: The server and the applications being the clients – often confuses new X users, because the terms appear reversed. But X takes the perspective of the application, rather than that of the end-user: X provides display and I/O services to applications, so it is a server; applications use these services, thus they are clients. The communication protocol between server and client operates network-transparently:

9951-479: The size. The similar D'OLE provided the same types of services, but presented the resulting objects as COM objects, with the goal of allowing programmers to create COM services running on high-powered platforms, called from Microsoft Windows applications. For instance one could develop a high-powered financial modeling application using D'OLE, and then call it directly from within Microsoft Excel . When D'OLE

10058-402: The stock fell to the 1998, pre-bubble level of about $ 100. It continued to fall, faster than many other technology companies. A year later, it had reached below $ 10 (a tenth of what it was in 1990), but it eventually bounced back to $ 20. In mid-2004, Sun closed their Newark, California , factory and consolidated all manufacturing to Hillsboro, Oregon and Linlithgow, Scotland. In 2006, the rest of

10165-542: The time the company was acquired by Oracle Corporation , it had outsourced most manufacturing responsibilities. On April 20, 2009, it was announced that Oracle would acquire Sun for US$ 7.4 billion. The deal was completed on January 27, 2010. The initial design for what became Sun's first Unix workstation , the Sun-1 , was conceived by Andy Bechtolsheim when he was a graduate student at Stanford University in Palo Alto , California. Bechtolsheim originally designed

10272-730: The time, having contributed the vi editor, the C shell , and significant work developing TCP/IP and the BSD Unix OS. Sun later developed software such as the Java programming language and acquired software such as StarOffice , VirtualBox and MySQL . In February 1991, the company established SunSoft, Inc., a wholly owned division of Sun dedicated to the development of operating systems and application software. Sun used community-based and open-source licensing of its major technologies, and for its support of its products with other open source technologies. GNOME -based desktop software called Java Desktop System (originally code-named "Madhatter")

10379-471: The user's computer to request the rendering of graphics content and receive events from input devices including keyboards and mice. The fact that the term "server" is applied to the software in front of the user is often surprising to users accustomed to their programs being clients to services on remote computers. Here, rather than a remote database being the resource for a local app, the user's graphic display and input devices become resources made available by

10486-499: The user's screen. The most common way to encrypt X traffic is to establish a Secure Shell (SSH) tunnel for communication. Like all thin clients , when using X across a network, bandwidth limitations can impede the use of bitmap -intensive applications that require rapidly updating large portions of the screen with low latency, such as 3D animation or photo editing. Even a relatively small uncompressed 640×480×24 bit 30 fps video stream (~211 Mbit/s) can easily outstrip

10593-680: Was NeXTSTEP , a sophisticated Mach-UNIX based operating system that originally ran only on NeXT's Motorola 68k -based workstations and that was then ported to run on 32-bit Intel x86 -based "IBM-compatible" personal computers , PA-RISC -based workstations from Hewlett-Packard , and SPARC -based workstations from Sun Microsystems . NeXT completed an implementation of OpenStep on their existing Mach-based OS and called it OPENSTEP for Mach 4.0 (July, 1996), 4.1 (December, 1996), and 4.2 (January, 1997). It was, for all intents, NeXTSTEP 4.0, and still retained flagship NeXTSTEP technologies (such as DPS , UNIX underpinnings, user interface characteristics like

10700-511: Was a popular Unix variant for the PC platform and a major competitor to market leader SCO UNIX . Sun's focus on Interactive Unix diminished in favor of Solaris on both SPARC and x86 systems; it was dropped as a product in 2001. Sun dropped the Solaris 2.x version numbering scheme after the Solaris 2.6 release (1997); the following version was branded Solaris 7. This was the first 64-bit release, intended for

10807-572: Was accelerated by the acquisition of Cray Business Systems Division from Silicon Graphics. Their 32-bit, 64-processor Cray Superserver 6400 , related to the SPARCcenter, led to the 64-bit Sun Enterprise 10000 high-end server (otherwise known as Starfire or E10K). In September 2004, Sun made available systems with UltraSPARC IV which was the first multi-core SPARC processor. It was followed by UltraSPARC IV+ in September 2005 and its revisions with higher clock speeds in 2007. These CPUs were used in

10914-517: Was distributed for the Solaris operating system, and at one point for Linux. Sun supported its Java Enterprise System (a middleware stack) on Linux. It released the source code for Solaris under the open-source Common Development and Distribution License , via the OpenSolaris community. Sun's positioning includes a commitment to indemnify users of some software from intellectual property disputes concerning that software. It offers support services on

11021-427: Was first released, OLE by itself only communicated between applications running on a single machine. PDO enabled NeXT to demonstrate Excel talking to other Microsoft applications across a network before Microsoft themselves were able to implement this functionality (DCOM). Another package developed on OpenStep was Enterprise Objects Framework (EOF), a object-relational mapping product. NeXT's first operating system

11128-564: Was founded on February 24, 1982. At its height, the Sun headquarters were in Santa Clara, California (part of Silicon Valley ), on the former west campus of the Agnews Developmental Center . Sun products included computer servers and workstations built on its own RISC -based SPARC processor architecture , as well as on x86 -based AMD Opteron and Intel Xeon processors. Sun also developed its own storage systems and

11235-458: Was often compared to NeXT's older but mature and commercially established platform. Sun held exploratory meetings with Taligent before deciding upon building out its object application framework OpenStep in partnership with NeXT as a "preemptive move against Taligent and Cairo". Bud Tribble , a founding designer of the Macintosh and of NeXTStep, was now SunSoft's Vice President of Object Products to lead this decision. The 1993 partnership included

11342-479: Was the first commercial release of this operating system, and was delivered exclusively for PowerPC Mac hardware. After replacing the Display Postscript WindowServer with Quartz , and responding to developers by including better backward compatibility for classic Mac OS applications through the addition of Carbon , Apple released Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server , starting at version 10.0; Mac OS X

11449-527: Was to strip away those portions of NeXTSTEP that depended on Mach or NeXT-specific hardware being present. This resulted in a smaller system that consisted primarily of Display PostScript , the Objective-C runtime and compilers, and the majority of the NeXTSTEP Objective-C libraries. Not included was the basic operating system, or the lower-level display system. Steve Jobs said "We are ahead today, but

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