XFast is a lightweight desktop environment that incorporates a display manager and a window manager within the same process. It is portable and works on many devices (embedded devices, handhelds, set-top boxes,...). Here the communication between server layer and desktop layer can be made in classical way via TCP/IP but depending on the configuration and target system it can be done via shared memory too.
The goal of project XFast is to have a very slim and fast graphical environment that contains both within the same project: a replacement for an X-server to give access to the graphics hardware and a WindowManager-like layer that offers user interface elements for applications and desktop management.
Target systems for XFast are (not only) embedded systems with low resources where it is important to have a UI available with short loading times and low memory consumption. It currently runs at Linux, Windows, PlayStation, GP2X and others.
Within the XFast windowing system environment GTK and Simple DirectMedia Layer applications are supported, so there is no need to re-write them. To use them special patched GTK and SDL versions are required, the related patch and build scripts are part of the XFast package. Beside of that XFast offers an own GUI widget library that can be used to write native applications for that windowing system.
XFast is a fork and further development of the Xynth windowing system. It was branched from the original project in order to add some far reaching modifications to the environment that are not compatible with the idea behind the original project. The goal of this fork is to have a more compatible source base for both: low level embedded systems and desktop systems with bigger hardware resources.
Like Xynth, it is not an implementation of the X11 protocol.
Features
UDS (Unix Domain Sockets) for IPC
DMA (Direct Memory Access) for each client window surface
Cygwin is a POSIX-compatible programming and runtime environment that runs natively on Microsoft Windows. Under Cygwin, source code designed for Unix-like operating systems may be compiled with minimal modification and executed.
In computer networking, a thin client is a simple (low-performance) computer that has been optimized for establishing a remote connection with a server-based computing environment. The server does most of the work, which can include launching software programs, performing calculations, and storing data. This contrasts with a rich client or a conventional personal computer; the former is also intended for working in a client–server model but has significant local processing power, while the latter aims to perform its function mostly locally.
In computing, a desktop environment (DE) is an implementation of the desktop metaphor made of a bundle of programs running on top of a computer operating system that share a common graphical user interface (GUI), sometimes described as a graphical shell. The desktop environment was seen mostly on personal computers until the rise of mobile computing. Desktop GUIs help the user to easily access and edit files, while they usually do not provide access to all of the features found in the underlying operating system. Instead, the traditional command-line interface (CLI) is still used when full control over the operating system is required.
In computing, a windowing system is software that manages separately different parts of display screens. It is a type of graphical user interface (GUI) which implements the WIMP paradigm for a user interface.
freedesktop.org (fd.o) is a project to work on interoperability and shared base technology for free-software desktop environments for the X Window System (X11) and Wayland on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. It was founded by Havoc Pennington, a GNOME developer working for Red Hat in March 2000. The project's servers are hosted by Portland State University, sponsored by Hewlett-Packard, Intel, and Google.
Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) is a proprietary protocol developed by Microsoft which provides a user with a graphical interface to connect to another computer over a network connection. The user employs RDP client software for this purpose, while the other computer must run RDP server software.
Windows NT 4.0 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. The direct successor to Windows NT 3.51, it was released to manufacturing on July 31, 1996, and was launched to retail on August 24, 1996. Windows NT 4.0 was and remains a primary business-oriented operating system, and three years after its introduction, it was followed by Windows 2000. Workstation, server and embedded editions were sold, and all editions feature a graphical user interface similar to that of Windows 95, which was superseded by Windows 98 and could still be directly upgraded by either Windows 2000 Professional or Windows Me.
In computing, the X Window System is a network-transparent windowing system for bitmap displays. This article details the protocols and technical structure of X11.
The Sun Ray was a stateless thin client computer aimed at corporate environments, originally introduced by Sun Microsystems in September 1999 and discontinued by Oracle Corporation in 2014. It featured a smart card reader and several models featured an integrated flat panel display.
The architecture of Windows NT, a line of operating systems produced and sold by Microsoft, is a layered design that consists of two main components, user mode and kernel mode. It is a preemptive, reentrant multitasking operating system, which has been designed to work with uniprocessor and symmetrical multiprocessor (SMP)-based computers. To process input/output (I/O) requests, they use packet-driven I/O, which utilizes I/O request packets (IRPs) and asynchronous I/O. Starting with Windows XP, Microsoft began making 64-bit versions of Windows available; before this, there were only 32-bit versions of these operating systems.
Desktop Window Manager is the compositing window manager in Microsoft Windows since Windows Vista that enables the use of hardware acceleration to render the graphical user interface of Windows.
Thinstation is a free and open source Linux implementation of a thin client operating system. It only requires standard PC hardware and can boot directly from the network via PXE or Etherboot from a TFTP server, or from local devices such as Hard disks, CompactFlash drives, USB keyrings and CD/DVDs. The minimum requirement is an i686 class CPU and RAM dependent on the intended use, typically 64–256 MB.
Xynth is an embedded windowing system, released under LGPL, developed for systems with low resources, is an alternative for X Window System. The goal of the project is to release a soft but portable and powered Window Environment. The source language is C. A fork of the project exists as XFast.
In computing, virtualization or virtualisation is the act of creating a virtual version of something, including virtual computer hardware platforms, storage devices, and computer network resources.
In computing, Nano-X is a windowing system which is full featured enough to be used on a PC, an embedded system or a PDA. It is an Open Source project aimed at bringing the features of modern graphical windowing environments to smaller devices and platforms. The project was renamed from Microwindows due to legal threats from Microsoft regarding the Windows trademark.
Wayland is a communication protocol that specifies the communication between a display server and its clients, as well as a C library implementation of that protocol. A display server using the Wayland protocol is called a Wayland compositor, because it additionally performs the task of a compositing window manager.
GTK is a free and open-source cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, allowing both free and proprietary software to use it. It is one of the most popular toolkits for the Wayland and X11 windowing systems.
In computing, SPICE is a remote-display system built for virtual environments which allows users to view a computing "desktop" environment – not only on its computer-server machine, but also from anywhere on the Internet – using a wide variety of machine architectures.
Wanova, Inc, headquartered in San Jose, California, provides software to help IT organizations manage, support and protect data on desktop and laptop computers. Wanova's primary product, Wanova Mirage, was designed as an alternative to server-hosted desktop virtualization technologies.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
