In the late 80's, context switching was so slow and local area networking was fast enough that it was sometimes actually snappier to run your xterm or emacs on another system over the local network, than both on the same workstation.
That's because running over the network didn't require ping-pong context switching back and forth between the X11 server and the client at every keystroke, so both client and server could run smoothly without getting switched out.
The X protocol is so chatty and ping-pongy that it could require several context switches per keystroke to handle the event and update the screen, when running both server and client locally!
That's because running over the network didn't require ping-pong context switching back and forth between the X11 server and the client at every keystroke, so both client and server could run smoothly without getting switched out.
The X protocol is so chatty and ping-pongy that it could require several context switches per keystroke to handle the event and update the screen, when running both server and client locally!