Never underestimate the stickiness of legacy technology

It is 40 years since Robert W Scheifler ushered in the era of the X Window System, a windowing system that continues to stick around despite many distributions looking for alternatives.

1984 was a heady time in the computing world. Apple's Macintosh arrived at the beginning of the year. What would become the Commodore Amiga was shown off in prototype form at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), and Peter Davison turned into Colin Baker on the long-running BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who.

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