Question

Can someone explain what is the difference between X server and Remote Terminal servers in simple terms?

For example, Hummingbird Exceed is an X server and Citrix is a Remote Terminal Server. How do these servers work?

Answer 1

A terminal server runs at the "other" machine while you use a remote desktop client to view the other machine’s screen.

A X server (of the X11 Window System) runs on your machine while another machine (or several thereof) send their output to your computer.

The most important difference to the end user is probably "culture": With the X Window system you typically work with windows that run on several hosts. (You often sit in front of a quite stripped down workstation, get one application from one computer, another one from another computer.) When working with X things feel very heterogeneous – a special application only runs on a HP workstation while your company is stuffed with suns or linux boxes? No problem, just buy one HP, everone can use that application over the network like as it was local.)

Remote terminal services feel more like another computer sends its complete screen to you, more like you have a 100-Mile-Long monitor and usb cable (with a little lag built in). You typically use a remote desktop client that sends a complete desktop to you.

However in recent times both techniques get close to another – windows remote desktop (which is based on citrix) can send only application windows to your desktop, while a lot of programs based on X11 are theoretically network transparent but practically need to run on the local machine. (Sorry, no 3D shooter over the network – an extreme example).

Which one is better? I don’t dare to say. White X11 is a lot more flexible (it was designed with network transparency in mind – it makes absolutely no difference if an application runs local or remote – it is in many aspects more complicated. As long as there was no remote desktop sharing there was a clear advantage, but slowly the gap is closing, for example by terminal services now allowing you to do many things that were available with X11 only in earlier times.)

By the way, the main reason many X11 application still feel a little "snappier" over the network than windows counterparts is the thing that many application programmers on windows still think they always run local and dump a lot of bitmap graphics on the screen – like custom toolbars in ZIP tools. X11 applications did not do this for a long time and chose "ugly but fast" because X11 forces you to think about the network. But as X11 applications get more pretty and Windows programmers more aware about terminal services the difference will dwindle.

Oh and an important point: X11 is deeply ingrained in the Unix way of things, Citrix is mainly used on Windows (in the form of Microsoft’s Windows Terminal Services – which originated in Citrix code). So lock a terminal services admin and a X11 operator into a cage and step back watching bloodshed when they figure out who they are locked in with …