"We have tried to avoid paragraph-length footnotes in this book, but X has defeated us by switching the meaning of client and server. In all other client/server relationships, the server is the remote machine that runs the application (i.e., the server provides services, such as database service or computational service). For some perverse reason that's better left to the imagination, X insists on calling the program running on the remote machine "the client." "
Things are complicated when the remote computer calls your desktop. But that's how X works.
That's also why once in a while somebody discover a completely unexpected vulnerability on it that, although simple nobody thought about it before. Things are so non-intuitive that it's hard even to talk about them.
Yet, somehow it works. And works quite well. I imagine the authors of that book are quite annoyed by how Unix evolve to work really well, and still avoided fixing any fundamental problem.
Is the whole book full of misunderstandings like that?
There may be a point to arguing that X should use an Remote Desktop model (like Windows or VNC) instead of an Window Server model, but the terminology is correct for how X works.
"We have tried to avoid paragraph-length footnotes in this book, but X has defeated us by switching the meaning of client and server. In all other client/server relationships, the server is the remote machine that runs the application (i.e., the server provides services, such as database service or computational service). For some perverse reason that's better left to the imagination, X insists on calling the program running on the remote machine "the client." "
From:
http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/x-windows/disast...