XFree86
More info
- Released
- Type
- X server
- Successor
- X.Org Server
The free X server for PCs that gave Linux and BSD a graphical desktop throughout the 1990s, then lost everything over a licence change.
It began in 1992 as a continuation of X386, Thomas Roell's X server for Intel processors, and the name is a pun on exactly that. For a decade XFree86 was effectively the only way to get X11 running on an ordinary graphics card, and its config file — where you typed in your monitor's sync frequencies yourself and hoped — was a rite of passage for a generation of Linux users.
The project had a reputation for a closed core team and slow progress. When version 4.4 shipped in 2004 under a licence with a credit clause that didn't mix with the GPL, the distributions switched almost overnight to the X.Org Foundation's fork of the previous code. XFree86 put out a final release in 2008, by which point nobody was listening.