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40 years later, X Window System is far more relevant than anyone could guess

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low angle view of Office Buildings in Hong Kong from below, with the sky visible through an X-like cross

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Often times, when I am researching something about computers or coding that has been around a very long while, I will come across a document on a university website that tells me more about that thing than any Wikipedia page or archive ever could.

It’s usually a PDF, though sometimes a plaintext file, on a .edu subdirectory that starts with a username preceded by a tilde (~) character. This is typically a document that a professor, faced with the same questions semester after semester, has put together to save the most time possible and get back to their work. I recently found such a document inside Princeton University’s astrophysics department: “An Introduction to the X Window System,” written by Robert Lupton.

X Window System, which turned 40 years old earlier this week, was something you had to know how to use to work with space-facing instruments back in the early 1980s, when VT100s, VAX-11/750s, and Sun Microsystems boxes would share space at college computer labs. As the member of the AstroPhysical Sciences Department at Princeton who knew the most about computers back then, it fell to Lupton to fix things and take questions.

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“I first wrote X10r4 server code, which eventually became X11,” Lupton said in a phone interview. “Anything that needed graphics code, where you’d want a button or some kind of display for something, that was X… People would probably bug me when I was trying to get work done down in the basement, so I probably wrote this for that reason.”

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Where X came from (after W)

Robert W. Scheifler and Jim Gettys at MIT spent “the last couple weeks writing a window system for the VS100” back in 1984. As part of Project Athena’s goals to create campus-wide computing with distributed resources and multiple hardware platforms, X fit the bill, being independent of platforms and vendors and able to call on remote resources. Scheifler “stole a fair amount of code from W,” made its interface asynchronous and thereby much faster, and “called it X” (back when that was still a cool thing to do).

That kind of cross-platform compatibility made X work for Princeton, and thereby Lupton. He notes in his guide that X provides “tools not rules,” which allows for “a very large number of confusing guises.” After explaining the three-part nature of X—the server, the clients, and the window manager—he goes on to provide some tips:

  • Modifier keys are key to X; “this sensitivity extends to things like mouse buttons that you might not normally think of as case-sensitive.”
  • “To start X, type xinit; do not type X unless you have defined an alias. X by itself starts the server but no clients, resulting in an empty screen.”
  • “All programmes running under X are equal, but one, the window manager, is more equal.”
  • Using the “--zaphod” flag prevents a mouse from going into a screen you can’t see; “Someone should be able to explain the etymology to you” (link mine).
  • “If you say kill 5 -9 12345 you will be sorry as the console will appear hopelessly confused. Return to your other terminal, say kbd mode -a, and make a note not to use -9 without due reason.”

I asked Lupton, whom I caught on the last day before he headed to Chile to help with a very big telescope, how he felt about X, 40 years later. Why had it survived?

“It worked, at least relative to the other options we had,” Lupton said. He noted that Princeton’s systems were not “heavily networked in those days,” such that the network traffic issues some had with X weren’t an issue then. “People weren’t expecting a lot of GUIs, either; they were expecting command lines, maybe a few buttons… it was the most portable version of a window system, running on both a VAX and the Suns at the time… it wasn’t bad.”

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Akinwumi Ajadi

Akinwumi Ajadi is a passionate blogger and technology enthusiast specializing in the information technology niche. With a keen eye for the latest trends and innovations, Akinwumi delivers insightful, engaging, and practical content to help readers navigate the ever-evolving world of tech. From software development to cybersecurity, Akinwumi's expertise spans a wide range of topics, making complex concepts accessible to both novice and experienced tech enthusiasts alike.

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Here’s an alleged Pixel 9 in a vibrant pink [Video]

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Google is releasing the Pixel 9 series very early, and right on cue the leaks are coming. In a first leaked video, we’re getting a look at a surprisingly vibrant Pixel 9 in a pink color.

It’s almost inevitable for every Pixel to leak in a hands-on video ahead of its launch, and that’s what it seems we’re now seeing for the Pixel 9.

A leaked video posted by @hanibioud on Twitter/X supposedly shows the Pixel 9 in a bright pink color. The device is supposedly from Algeria and is claimed to have 256GB of storage.

Focusing in on the color, it’s way brighter than any color we’ve seen in recent years outside of the A-Series, but matches the leaked “Peony” color that first surfaced back in May. The color is unusually vibrant for Google’s flagship lineup. As mentioned, we’ve not seen a color this vibrant on a Pixel outside of the A-Series since 2019’s Pixel 4 (with its delightful “Oh So Orange”).

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The design, of course, lines up perfectly with past leaks, with the device having flat edges and a glossy back, just like we’ve seen previously. This model also has two cameras, unlike what the similarly-sized Pixel 9 Pro is expected to have.

We’re taking this video with a grain of salt, but the user posting images claims we’ll hear more details tomorrow.

More on Pixel 9:

H/T Mishaal, Brandon

Follow Ben: Twitter/X, Threads, and Instagram

Update: Removed speculation over date.

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Akinwumi Ajadi

Akinwumi Ajadi is a passionate blogger and technology enthusiast specializing in the information technology niche. With a keen eye for the latest trends and innovations, Akinwumi delivers insightful, engaging, and practical content to help readers navigate the ever-evolving world of tech. From software development to cybersecurity, Akinwumi's expertise spans a wide range of topics, making complex concepts accessible to both novice and experienced tech enthusiasts alike.

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The first Thunderbolt 5 cables are here, but there’s barely anything to plug in

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Available today from Amazon in 1-foot (0.3m), 1.6-foot (0.5m), and 3.3-foot (1m) lengths for $23, $27, and $33, respectively, the new cables obviously don’t do anything on their own — you’d need a computer with a Thunderbolt 5 port and a dock or accessory of some sort to get some real use out of it.

But as of today, the only laptop we’ve heard of with a Thunderbolt 5 port is the Razer Blade 18, and even there, it’s not guaranteed. You’d have to buy the $4,500 Mercury edition of the laptop to get that port. (You do also get an Intel i9 and a mobile RTX 4090 for the money.)

A Razer Blade 18 at CES with a Thunderbolt 5 port.
Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

And unless you own two of those laptops, there’s still probably nothing special you can do with a Thunderbolt 5 cable as of today because the peripherals we saw at CES aren’t yet ready: Belkin, J5Create, OWC, and Sabrent do not yet list any of those Thunderbolt 5 products on their websites, and Hyper still shows its $400 dock as being out of stock with a “Sign up to be notified” button.

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But if you do have two of the exact same $4,500 Razer laptops, could you use Thunderbolt Share to transfer files between them at ludicrous speed? Inquiring minds want to know. If not, I suppose you could use it as a USB4 / Thunderbolt 4 cable for now.

According to Cable Matters’ press release, its cable is manufactured by Lintes, the same company that provided the prototype cable we saw at CES.

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Akinwumi Ajadi is a passionate blogger and technology enthusiast specializing in the information technology niche. With a keen eye for the latest trends and innovations, Akinwumi delivers insightful, engaging, and practical content to help readers navigate the ever-evolving world of tech. From software development to cybersecurity, Akinwumi's expertise spans a wide range of topics, making complex concepts accessible to both novice and experienced tech enthusiasts alike.

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Instagram’s ‘Made with AI’ label swapped out for ‘AI info’ after photographers’ complaints

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On Monday, Meta announced that it is “updating the ‘Made with AI’ label to ‘AI info’ across our apps, which people can click for more information,” after people complained that their pictures had the tag applied incorrectly. Former White House photographer Pete Souza pointed out the tag popping up on an upload of a photo originally taken on film during a basketball game 40 years ago, speculating that using Adobe’s cropping tool and flattening images might have triggered it.

“As we’ve said from the beginning, we’re consistently improving our AI products, and we are working closely with our industry partners on our approach to AI labeling,” said Meta spokesperson Kate McLaughlin. The new label is supposed to more accurately represent that the content may simply be modified rather than making it seem like it is entirely AI-generated.

The problem seems to be the metadata tools like Adobe Photoshop apply to images and how platforms interpret that. After Meta expanded its policies around labeling AI content, real-life pictures posted to platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Threads were tagged “Made with AI.”

You may see the new labeling first on mobile apps and then the web view later, as McLaughlin tells The Verge it is starting to roll out across all surfaces.

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Once you click the tag, it will still show the same message as the old label, which has a more detailed explanation of why it might have been applied and that it could cover images fully generated by AI or edited with tools that include AI tech, like Generative Fill. Metadata tagging tech like C2PA was supposed to make telling the difference between AI-generated and real images simpler and easier, but that future isn’t here yet.

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About the Author

Akinwumi Ajadi

Akinwumi Ajadi is a passionate blogger and technology enthusiast specializing in the information technology niche. With a keen eye for the latest trends and innovations, Akinwumi delivers insightful, engaging, and practical content to help readers navigate the ever-evolving world of tech. From software development to cybersecurity, Akinwumi's expertise spans a wide range of topics, making complex concepts accessible to both novice and experienced tech enthusiasts alike.

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