Xlib
| Xlib | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | X.Org Foundation | 
| Initial release | September 1985 | 
| Stable release | 1.8.12 
   / 9 March 2025 | 
| Repository | |
| Written in | C | 
| Type | Library | 
| Website | www | 
Xlib (also known as libX11) is an X Window System protocol client library written in the C programming language. It contains functions for interacting with an X server. These functions allow programmers to write programs without knowing the details of the X protocol.
Few applications use Xlib directly; rather, they employ other libraries that use Xlib functions to provide widget toolkits:
- X Toolkit Intrinsics (Xt)
- Athena widget set (Xaw)
- Motif
- FLTK
- GTK
- Qt (X11 version)
- Tk
- SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer)
- SFML (Simple and Fast Multimedia Library)
Xlib, which was first publicly released in September 1985, is used in GUIs for many Unix-like operating systems. A re-implementation of Xlib was introduced in 2007 using XCB.