Xsun
| Company type | Software |
|---|---|
| Industry | Computer software |
| Predecessor | Xnews server |
| Founded | November 1993 |
| Founder | Sun Microsystems |
| Products | Display server for the X Window System (X11) |
| Parent | Sun Microsystems |
Xsun is a display server for the X Window System (X11) created by Sun Microsystems and bundled with the Solaris platform. It succeeded the previous Xnews server, discontinuing compatibility with older NeWS and SunView applications while incorporating support for Display PostScript.
Initially launched alongside Solaris 2.3 in November 1993, Xsun was built upon X11R5; by the time of Solaris 10, it had evolved to be based on X11R6.6.
Within Solaris 10, both Xsun and the open-source X.Org Server (Xorg)—the standard X implementation derived from X11R7—are included. On x86 architectures, Xorg was the preferred choice, whereas on SPARC hardware, Xsun remained the leading server due to limited driver availability for SPARC in Xorg until the Solaris 10 8/07 update. The OpenSolaris initiative announced plans for future Solaris versions to fully adopt the X.Org server. With the release of Oracle Solaris 11 in November 2011, only the Xorg server (version X.Org 1.10.3) is supported.
Design
In contrast to XFree86, Xsun employed kernel-level mode setting for select graphics device drivers, which improved both system stability and performance.