"The X Window System, which is the foundation of graphical displays on Linux, Unix, BSD, and Mac OS X, has long stayed submerged in the public consciousness just as it has been submerged under window managers and heavyweight desktops. (In fact, the desktops bear much of the guilt for torpid response and lavish memory use that observers like to heap on X.) Recently, X as a technology has received more of the attention it deserves, on this site among other places. Yet no one has talked about the organization that makes these advances possible, the thorough makeover it has received in the past year, or the financial neglect that holds desktops back from even greater things.

Strangely, X doesn't benefit from the publicity that accompanies the public's interest in graphical applications. For instance, people routinely take interest in notices in some industry organ such as the Linux Journal or the NewsForge web site saying, "Now you can view the relative sizes of your multimedia files in a convenient bar graph, thanks to the GlomIT organizer program," which is fine and wonderful. Once in a while, however, they should write, "Now you can view the relative sizes of your multimedia files in a convenient bar graph, thanks to X drawing each pixel of each bar, and thanks to X positioning the window where you click your mouse, and thanks to X telling the program to redraw the missing part of its window after you move the stupid pop-up ad that was blocking it." Who would bother to store multimedia files on his or her system in the first place, if he or she couldn't view them using X?

It's not surprising that desktop users ignore the needs of X developers, but it's absolutely scandalous that many computer-company managers also ignore them. Unfortunately, so do trade journalists clamoring for news about the latest "advance on the Linux desktop."

At LinuxWorld this past August, I found that the press rooms would fill to the gills when some major company announced its Linux strategy (which, in recent years, has included some promise concerning the desktop). Then I went to the X developer's press conference. When I walked in the room, they said, "You just doubled our attendance."

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