The Unexpected Rise of X Terminals: Not Part of X's Initial Design

X wasn't initially designed for use with X terminals. Early X ran on full-fledged workstations; even diskless ones, while relying on servers for heavy tasks, still had a complete local Unix environment. X terminals arrived much later, only after X's success as a cross-vendor Unix windowing system was established. NCD, possibly among the first to produce X terminals, was founded in 1987 but likely didn't ship a product until 1989. This is further supported by the late arrival of XDM (X Display Manager), released with X11R3 in October 1988. While technically possible to use X terminals without XDM, its presence greatly simplified the process, indicating the adoption of X terminals lagged behind the maturation of X itself.