The X Server is the software component that resides on the 770 and 'serves up' a display from a client application running somewhere else. The howto for this here at ITT was written by RealNitro. If the info in the ITT howto is in need of any refinement then any of us can do that.

There are not many X apps that have been written for remote computing because back in the days when you could actually buy an X terminal it was an expensive, proprietary device. Then, in the '96-'97 timeframe X was viewed as a 'dead' technology and the companies that had been making X terminals stopped making them. They started making Windows Terminals, instead.

Largely because of the value of X in building the KDE & Gnome desktops, and because of the vibrant cottage industry of desktop themes, people began to take an interest in X again, not as a remote display protocol, but as a theme engine. What I was doing at the time was building an application-specific GUI out of X primitives for the point of sale vertical market, ignoring the desktop and focusing on remote X solutions. I still could not buy X terminals, so I had to use PC's as X terminals. Giant overkill - heavily overbuilt hardware, but unavoidable.

All an X terminal is, really, is a display that uses the X protocol to connect to the network and request a display from a client application on the LAN or WAN. Anything else (Flash Memory, extra RAM, Citrix/Microsoft display/connectivity software) turns it into a fatter device, a 'thin client' that hacks a remote user experience on the Windows platform. Nobody who ever manufactured a thin client (something born about 13-14 years after X was born in 84) put the X protocol on a thin client, too. I suspect that this exclusion was a Microsoft requirement for issueing a license to a 'thin client' manufacturer to put the Microsoft/Citrix display/connectivity protocols on a thin client. At any rate, it never happened, and if you bought a thin client it wouldn't do X.

X was becoming free software about this time and X development was coming back to life. The intensity of X development these days is at a level much higher than at any point since it was first introduced in 84. Many of the people who first brought X into the world are involved in this rebirth. X has always been monolithic and is about 75 Mb today. The release of X 7.0, a modular version, is imminent - RC3 was on December 5. Still, though, you can't buy an X terminal, and there's really no point in anyone building one any more. There is a need for including the X protocol on handheld devices, however. That's why a lot of important X developers have been busy at handhelds.org trying to hack X on to all the handhelds that are manufactured but which don't have X.

The Nokia 770 changes all this because of the simple fact that it has X on it. It doesn't really need to have ALL of X on it, though. It only needs to have the X Server component, the part of X that empowers it to open up a remote display to X client apps. The new bottom line question, then, as you note, is "where are the apps?".

Well, any app can be opened by a user in a remote window on the 770, as RealNitro has shown, but because of the way that the keyboard input is implemented on the 770 (for now, at least) the app can't be used except with the touchscreen as an input device. Fortunately there doesn't have to be any touchscreen code in the app because the touchscreen input of X is taking place at a lower level than the app. Unfortunately the GUIs that apps are built with are generally not designed with any appreciation for touchscreen input, but for mouse and keyboard input, so the touch zones are tiny, little things.

If you've clicked on my personal info you've seen that I have mature vertical market software and a versatile X GUI development framework that is designed for X and X terminals, but I'm not willing to launch into the market with the 770 until it's widely available. I don't really need any help from Nokia other than that. How many companies other than mine have X apps that are designed for this opportunity, the one that the 770 offers? I'm not sure that there are any. At the point when the 770 and/or its followup is available for immediate shipping then I'll move on this, but until then I just won't. If the Windows world likes Citrix, (essentially an effort to do X on Windows, but not free and not universal like X) and it does, then the Linux world will like X as a network transparent remote display protocol. It's free, it costs nothing (Citrix costs real money) and it's universal. When you have a 770 in your hand X makes sure that the remote operating system and the remote hardware are non-issues. I hope this explanation of the strange absence of apps designed for remote users has been helpful. I'm doing my best to help people see the future I see. CEO's almost never do what I'm doing, explaining all this stuff to everyone who will listen. I guess I just enjoy most of all the idea that we all are just a heartbeat away from showing how people can use software and work/play collaboratively across the world without actually having to own and manage a personal computer. That's what this is all about, actually - removing the PC from the list of required equipment for a rich, Internet-based software experience.