Project Athena was a joint project of MIT , Digital Equipment Corporation , and IBM to produce a campus-wide distributed computing environment for educational use. It was launched in 1983, and research and development ran until June 30, 1991. As of 2023, Athena is still in production use at MIT. It works as software (currently a set of Debian packages) that makes a machine a thin client , that will download educational applications from the MIT servers on demand.
84-482: Project Athena was important in the early history of desktop and distributed computing. It created the X Window System , Kerberos , and Zephyr Notification Service . It influenced the development of thin computing , LDAP , Active Directory , and instant messaging . Leaders of the $ 50 million, five-year project at MIT included Michael Dertouzos , director of the Laboratory for Computer Science ; Jerry Wilson, dean of
168-471: 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
252-483: A computer, usually networked. The software then scores each test transcript and outputs results for each student. Assessment software is available in various delivery methods, the most popular being self-hosted software, online software and hand-held voting systems. Proprietary software and open-source software systems are available. While technically falling into the Courseware category (see above), Skill evaluation lab
336-497: 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
420-717: 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
504-488: A learning module or test, fed over the internet one by one. The server software decides on what learning material to distribute, collects results and displays progress to teaching staff. Another way of expressing this change is to say that educational software morphed into an online educational service. US Governmental endorsements and approval systems ensured the rapid switch to the new way of managing and distributing learning material. McDonald's also experimented with this via
588-473: 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
672-595: 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
756-547: A new departure in educational reference software. Previously, encyclopedias and dictionaries had compiled their contents on the basis of invited and closed teams of specialists. The Wiki concept has allowed for the development of collaborative reference works through open cooperation incorporating experts and non-experts. Some manufacturers regarded normal personal computers as an inappropriate platform for learning software for younger children and produced custom child-friendly pieces of hardware instead. The hardware and software
840-438: A number of MIT classes in various departments. Athena was not a research project, and the development of new models of computing was not a primary objective of the project. Indeed, quite the opposite was true. MIT wanted a high-quality computing environment for education. The only apparent way to obtain one was to build it internally, using existing components where available, and augmenting those components with software to create
924-419: 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
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#17328559526511008-402: A problem to solve. Athena is an excellent example of advanced development undertaken to meet a need that was both immediate and important. The need to solve a "real" problem kept Athena on track to focus on important issues and solve them, and to avoid getting side-tracked into academically interesting but relatively unimportant problems. Consequently, Athena made very significant contributions to
1092-722: 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
1176-476: A range of titles for personal computers, with the bulk of the software initially developed for the Apple II. "Courseware" is a term that combines the words 'course' with 'software'. It was originally used to describe additional educational material intended as kits for teachers or trainers or as tutorials for students, usually packaged for use with a computer. The term's meaning and usage has expanded and can refer to
1260-784: 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
1344-533: 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
1428-560: 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
1512-457: 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
1596-448: A standup workstation with a timer to limit access to ten minutes. The dormitories have "one port per pillow" Internet access. Originally, the Athena release used Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) as the base operating system for all hardware platforms. As of April 1999 public clusters consisted of Sun SPARC and SGI Indy workstations. SGI hardware was dropped in anticipation of
1680-401: A teacher. Research was conducted to see if this type of software would be effective in improving students understanding of material. It concluded that there was a positive impact which decreased the amount of time students need to study for and relative gain of understanding. A study was conducted to see the effects of education software on children with mild disabilities. The results were that
1764-519: A variety of electronic books can be loaded. These products are more portable than laptop computers, but have a much more limited range of purposes, concentrating on literacy . While mainstream operating systems are designed for general usages, and are more or less customized for education only by the application sets added to them, a variety of software manufacturers, especially Linux distributions , have sought to provide integrated platforms for specifically education. Earlier educational software for
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#17328559526511848-468: 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
1932-528: Is Microsoft Solitaire , which was developed to familiarize users with the use of graphical user interfaces , especially the mouse and the drag-and-drop technique. Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing is a largely known program with built in mini-games to keep the user entertained while improving their typing skills. Gamification is the use of game design elements in nongame contexts and has been shown to be effective in motivating behavior change. By seeing game elements as "motivational affordances," and formalizing
2016-414: 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
2100-559: Is an example for Computer-based assessment software with PPA-2 (Plan, Prove, Assess) methodology to create and conduct computer based online examination. Moodle is an example of open-source software with an assessment component that is gaining popularity. QST Online a dedicated complete open source exam/assessment solution is also growing in adoption. Other popular international assessment systems include Google Classroom , Blackboard Learn , EvaluNet and XT . Many publishers of print dictionaries and encyclopedias have been involved in
2184-546: Is expected to be dropped almost entirely. "I felt that, we would know Athena was successful, if we were surprised by some of the applications, it turned out that our surprises were largely in the humanities" — Joel Moses The original concept of Project Athena was that there would be course-specific software developed to use in conjunction with teaching. Today, computers are most frequently used for "horizontal" applications such as e-mail, word processing, communications, and graphics. The big impact of Athena on education has been
2268-452: Is generally combined into a single product, such as a child laptop-lookalike. The laptop keyboard for younger children follows an alphabetic order and the QWERTY order for the older ones. The most well-known example are LeapFrog products. These include imaginatively designed hand-held consoles with a variety of pluggable educational game cartridges and book-like electronic devices into which
2352-407: 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
2436-441: Is graded on a point scale in four categories: the area of technical, technological and user attributes; area of criteria evaluating the information, content and operation of the software; the area of criteria evaluating the information in terms of educational use, learning and recognition; the area of criteria evaluating the psychological and pedagogical use of the software. In university level computer science course, learning logic
2520-521: 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
2604-492: 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
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2688-419: 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
2772-414: 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
2856-460: Is to make some part of education more effective and efficient. The use of computer hardware and software in education and training dates to the early 1940s, when American researchers developed flight simulators which used analog computers to generate simulated onboard instrument data. One such system was the type19 synthetic radar trainer, built in 1943. From these early attempts in the WWII era through
2940-469: The Hesiod name and directory service. As of November 1988 MIT had 722 workstations in 33 private and public clusters on and off campus, including student living groups and fraternities . A survey found that 92% of undergraduates had used the Athena workstations at least once, and 25% used them every day. The project received an extension of three years in January 1988. Developers who had focused on creating
3024-481: The Nintendo DS software eCrew Development Program . See also: There are highly specific niche markets for educational software, including: (remote control and monitoring software, filetransfer software, document camera and presenter, free tools,...) Video games can be used to teach a user technology literacy or more about a subject. Some operating systems and mobile phones have these features. A notable example
3108-520: The School of Engineering ; and Joel Moses , head of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department. DEC agreed to contribute more than 300 terminals, 1600 microcomputers, 63 minicomputers, and five employees. IBM agreed to contribute 500 microcomputers, 500 workstations, software, five employees, and grant funding. In 1979 Dertouzos proposed to university president Jerome Wiesner that
3192-576: 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
3276-485: The touchscreen . The arrival of the personal computer, with the Altair 8800 in 1975, changed the field of software in general, with specific implications for educational software. Whereas users prior to 1975 were dependent upon university or government owned mainframe computers with timesharing, users after this shift could create and use software for computers in homes and schools, computers available for less than $ 2000. By
3360-558: 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
3444-401: The Athena system has been greatly enlarged in the last several years. Whereas in 1991 much of the access was in public "clusters" ( computer labs ) in academic buildings, access has been extended to dormitories , fraternities and sororities , and independent living groups. All dormitories have officially supported Athena clusters. In addition, most dormitories have "quick login" kiosks, which is
Project Athena - Misplaced Pages Continue
3528-458: The Athena system were not available in any other system, its use extended beyond the MIT campus. In keeping with the established policy of MIT, the software was made available at no cost to all interested parties. Digital Equipment Corporation, having implemented Athena at various beta-test sites, "productized" the software as DECAthena to make it more portable, and offered it along with support services to
3612-542: 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
3696-615: The IBM and DEC grants, students did not have to own their own computer; MIT built computer labs for their users, although the goal was to put networked computers into each dormitory. Students were required to learn FORTRAN and Lisp , and would have access to 3M computers , capable of 1 million instructions per second and with 1 megabyte of RAM and a 1 megapixel display. Although IBM and DEC computers were hardware-incompatible, Athena's designers intended that software would run similarly on both. MIT did not want to be dependent on one vendor at
3780-698: 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
3864-460: The MIT campus had more than 1300 Athena workstations, and more than 6000 Athena users logged into the system daily. Athena is still used by many in the MIT community through the computer labs scattered around the campus. It is also now available for installation on personal computers, including laptops. Athena continues in use as of 2023, providing a ubiquitous computing platform for education at MIT; plans are to continue its use indefinitely. Athena
3948-596: The Windows NT network operating system from Microsoft incorporates Kerberos and several other basic architecture design features first implemented by Athena. X Window System 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
4032-496: The X project, with 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
4116-578: 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
4200-453: 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
4284-626: The board which allows the use of pens to digitally draw on the board. This type of software is often called classroom management software. While teachers often choose to use educational software from other categories in their IT suites (e.g. reference works, children's software), a whole category of educational software has grown up specifically intended to assist classroom teaching. Branding has been less strong in this category than in those oriented towards home users. Software titles are often very specialized and produced by various manufacturers, including many established educational book publishers. With
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#17328559526514368-547: 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
4452-426: 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
4536-439: The desired distributed system. However, the fact that this was a leading edge development in an area of intense interest to the computing industry worked strongly to the favor of MIT by attracting large amounts of funding from industrial sources. Long experience has shown that advanced development directed at solving important problems tends to be much more successful than advanced development promoting technology that must look for
4620-454: 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
4704-594: The early 1980s, the availability of personal computers including the Apple II (1977), Commodore PET (1977), VIC-20 (1980), and Commodore 64 (1982) allowed for the creation of companies and nonprofits which specialized in educational software. Broderbund and The Learning Company are key companies from this period, and MECC , the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium, a key non-profit software developer. These and other companies designed
4788-543: The end of Athena. Sixty-three DEC VAX-11/750 servers were the first timesharing clusters. "Phase II" began in September 1987, with hundreds of IBM RT PC workstations replacing the VAXes, which became fileservers for the workstations. The DEC-IBM division between departments no longer existed. Upon logging into a workstation, students would have immediate access to a universal set of files and programs via central services. Because
4872-468: The end of IRIX production in 2006. Linux-Athena was introduced in version 9, with the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system running on cheaper x86 or x86-64 hardware. Athena 9 also replaced the internally developed "DASH" menu system and Motif Window Manager (mwm) with a more modern GNOME desktop. Athena 10 is based on Ubuntu Linux (derived from Debian ) only. Support for Solaris
4956-527: The entire course and any additional material when used in reference an online or 'computer formatted' classroom. Many companies are using the term to describe the entire "package" consisting of one 'class' or 'course' bundled together with the various lessons, tests, and other material needed. The courseware itself can be in different formats: some are only available online, such as Web pages, while others can be downloaded as PDF files or other types of document. Many forms of educational technology are now covered by
5040-872: The first comprehensive CAI elementary school curriculum which was implemented on a large scale in schools in both California and Mississippi. In 1967 Computer Curriculum Corporation (CCC, now Pearson Education Technologies ) was formed to market to schools the materials developed through the IBM partnership. Early terminals that ran educational systems cost over $ 10,000, putting them out of reach of most institutions. Some programming languages from this period, p3), and LOGO (1967) can also be considered educational, as they were specifically targeted to students and novice computer users. The PLATO IV system, released in 1972, supported many features which later became standard in educational software running on home computers. Its features included bitmap graphics , primitive sound generation, and support for non-keyboard input devices , including
5124-456: The impact of environmental damage and the need for institutions to become " paperless ", more educational institutions are seeking alternative ways of assessment and testing, which has always traditionally been known to use up vasts amount of paper. Assessment software refers to software with a primary purpose of assessing and testing students in a virtual environment. Assessment software allows students to complete tests and examinations using
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#17328559526515208-446: The important corporate and tertiary education markets was designed to run on a single desktop computer (or an equivalent user device). In the years immediately following 2000, planners decided to switch to server -based applications with a high degree of standardization . This means that educational software runs primarily on servers which may be hundreds or thousands of miles from the actual user. The user only receives tiny pieces of
5292-821: The integration of third party applications into courses. Maple , and especially, MATLAB , are integrated into large numbers of science and engineering classes. Faculty expect that their students have access to, and know how to use, these applications for projects, and homework assignments, and some have used the MATLAB platform to rebuild the courseware that they had originally built using the X Window System . More specialized third-party software are used on Athena for more discipline-specific work. Rendering software, for architecture and computer graphics classes, molecular modeling software, for chemistry, chemical engineering, and material science courses, and professional software used by chemical engineers in industry, are important components of
5376-568: 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
5460-597: The market. A number of academic and industrial organizations installed the Athena software. As of early 1992, 20 universities worldwide were using DECathena, with a reported 30 commercial organisations evaluating the product. The architecture of the system also found use beyond MIT. The architecture of the Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) software from the Open Software Foundation was based on concepts pioneered by Athena. Subsequently,
5544-573: The mid-1970s, educational software was directly tied to the hardware, on which it ran. Pioneering educational computer systems in this era included the PLATO system (1960), developed at the University of Illinois, and TICCIT (1969). In 1963, IBM had established a partnership with Stanford University's Institute for Mathematical Studies in the Social Sciences (IMSSS), directed by Patrick Suppes , to develop
5628-425: The only windowing system likely to become available in time. DEC engineers ported X6 to DEC's QVSS display on MicroVAX . Educational software#Courseware Educational software is a term used for any computer software that is made for an educational purpose. It encompasses different ranges from language learning software to classroom management software to reference software. The purpose of all this software
5712-540: The operating system and courseware for various educational subjects now worked to improve Athena's stability and make it more user friendly . When Project Athena ended in June 1991, MIT's IT department took it over and extended it into the university's research and administrative divisions. In 1993, the IBM RT PC workstations were retired, being replaced by Sun SPARCclassic , IBM RS/6000 POWERstation 220, and Personal DECstation 5000 Model 25 systems. As of April 1999
5796-606: The production of educational reference software since the mid-1990s. They were joined in the reference software market by both startup companies and established software publishers, most notably Microsoft . The first commercial reference software products were reformulations of existing content into CD-ROM editions, often supplemented with new multimedia content, including compressed video and sound. More recent products made use of internet technologies, to supplement CD-ROM products, then, more recently, to replace them entirely. Misplaced Pages and its offspins (such as Wiktionary ) marked
5880-432: The relationship between these elements and motivational affordances. Classcraft is a software tool used by teachers that has gaming elements alongside an educational goal. Tovertafel is a games console designed for remedial education and counter-acting the effects of dementia . Tutor-based education software is defined as software that mimics the teacher student one on one dynamic of tutoring with software in place of
5964-498: The rest of the university, and IBM agreed to donate equipment to MIT except to the engineering school. Project Athena began in May 1983. Its initial goals were to: The project intended to extend computer power into fields of study outside computer science and engineering, such as foreign languages, economics, and political science. To implement these goals, MIT decided to build a Unix -based distributed computing system. Unlike those at Carnegie Mellon University , which also received
6048-745: 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
6132-468: 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
6216-476: 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),
6300-487: 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
6384-428: 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:
6468-620: The software was a positive impact assisting teaching these children social skills though team based learning and discussion, videos and games. There is a large market of educational software in use today. A team decided that they were to develop a system in which educational software should be evaluated as there is no current standard. It is called the Construction of the Comprehensive Evaluation of Electronic Learning Tools and Educational Software (CEELTES). The software to be evaluated
6552-399: The technology of distributed computing, but as a side-effect to solving an educational problem. The leading edge system architecture and design features pioneered by Athena, using current terminology, include: Many of the design concepts developed in the "on-line consultant" now appear in popular help desk software packages. Because the functional and system management benefits provided by
6636-431: The term courseware . Most leading educational companies solicit or include courseware with their training packages. Some educational software is designed for use in school classrooms. Typically such software may be projected onto a large whiteboard at the front of the class and/or run simultaneously on a network of desktop computers in a classroom. The most notable are SMART Boards that use SMART Notebook to interact with
6720-522: The university network mainframe computers for student use. At that time MIT used computers throughout its research, but undergraduates did not use computers except in Course VI (computer science) classes. With no interest from the rest of the university, the School of Engineering in 1982 approached DEC for equipment for itself. President Paul E. Gray and the MIT Corporation wanted the project to benefit
6804-471: 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
6888-499: 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
6972-490: The workstation used a thin client model, the user interface would be consistent despite the use of different hardware vendors for different workstations. A small staff could maintain hundreds of clients. The project spawned many technologies that are widely used today, such as the X Window System and Kerberos . Among the other technologies developed for Project Athena were the Zephyr Notification Service and
7056-434: Was designed to minimize the use of labor in its operation, in part through the use of (what is now called ) " thin client " architecture and standard desktop configurations. This not only reduces labor content in operations but also minimizes the amount of training for deployment, software upgrade, and trouble-shooting. These features continue to be of considerable benefit today. In keeping with its original intent, access to
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