What's the difference between X11 and XFree86?

[MartinB]

Well, I was looking around on the web and it appears that there are two completely seperate sites (www.x.org and www.xfree86.org). Can anyone tell me what the difference between these are? I've heard people make reference to both X11 and XFree86 before, but I always assumed they were the same... And finally, which one should I download? I'm not even sure which one my Mandrake 8.2 installation came with... :confused:

[JohnT]

X11 are the standards that applications such as XFree86 should comply to.

[Dun'kalis]

X version 11, release 6 is the protocol for the X Windowing System. It is a client-server structure. XFree86 is a common X server, which communicates to the X client, your window manager.

Thats overly simplified, but its the basic idea. Most UNIXes today come with XFree86, and all Linuxes come with it.