Accelerated-X™ began life in the mid '90s as a product designed to provide an X server with graphics drivers for a UNIX computer product line that was intended to compete against what has now become the UNIX based Power Series line. The competition did not last long, and the competing company exited the business. Xi Graphics, however found that UNIX and Linux was in need of graphics drivers and X servers for use on numerous computer platforms that used an OS based on either a UNIX or a Linux kernel.

Since that time, Accelerated-X™ was supported a variety of CPU platforms, dozens of UNIX/Linux kernels, some forty graphics chip architectures, and hundreds of graphics card models. This page lists some of the more popular or well known OSs (or "distributions" in the case of Linux) as well as some that may not be so popular or have become extinct.

Linux kernels are available from many sources besides the originator in many "Linux Distributions," Red Hat being the most prominent. Over the years, Xi Graphics supported a fair number of such distributions, many of which are now defunct. While we now limit our official support for a few distributions, customers have successfully used Accelerated-X™ products on other distributions. To date we have not been asked for Linux support on platforms other than Intel x86.

Current supported Linux kernel distributions:

Red Hat™ Enterprise versions

Slackware (our in-house favorite for development)

S.u.S.E. Professional

Might Work, but not officially supported::

Debian - some customers have reported success with various distros.

Discontinued support:

Mandrake, Fedora, among others.

  Notes:
      1.  Please read Section 8 (regarding OS) of the Summit FAQ that is on our FTP site. 
      2.  Linux kernel versions change almost weekly, making life difficult for many. See the xsvc README
      3.  The X server shipped with the Linux distro is replaced by the Accelerated-X server when the
           Summit Series graphics driver is installed. Be sure to install the xsvc module first.

Xi Graphics has supported Solaris since about version 2.4. Suipport is avaiable on both Intel x86 and SPARC platforms, for 32- and 64-bit platforms. Not only have many Sun Microsystems' users - both commercial and individuals - used Accelerated-X™ products on the two platforms, Sun also purchased several thousand laptops powered by Accelerated-X™ for use by Sun employees. Xi Graphics' relationship with Sun goes back to about 1995.

Please read Section 8 (regarding OS) of the Summit FAQ that is on
our FTP site. Note that the Sun server is replaced with an Accelerated-X
X Window System compliant X server. Be sure to install the xsvc module first.

Support for AIX was instituted circa 2007 for a major customer of IBM who was using v5.x. Later we upgraded support to v6.x. It has been reported that v7.1 also works with Accelerated-X™, but we have not confirmed that in-house.

Support for a number of Power boxes (Power5 and earlier) are supported with the IBM GXT135P card. The performance boost with Accelerated-X grahics (X server and graphics driver) compared to the IBM software was a bit of a nice surprise.

Support for HP's UNIX extends only to v11.x, and only on the old RISC architecture. HP's committment to UNIX has not been apparent to Xi Graphics for the last several years (since dropping their highly-acclaimed graphics card line) and discontinuing their in-house cpu development/manufacturting effort. A recent report on UNIX commissioned by HP seems to indicate that - surprising to some - UNIX's popularity is actually increasing, so perhaps HP will roar back with a strong UNIX on Itanium program?

Although VxWorks is a Real Time system rather than a UNIX OS, Xi Graphics provided the Brazilian Navy with the X Window System on a Matrox graphics card for - are you ready? - shipboard systems that were mission critical. Nice to be needed.

Several other versions of UNIX systems (even DEC UNIX) were supported by Accelerated-X™ in the late '90s and early '00s as the UNIX market settled out.and the computer manufacturers tried to figure out how to deal with the upstart freeware UNIX-like Linux systems based on the Linux kernel from Linus Torvalds and the rush of new graphics chip architectures and cards from a number of independent (from the major computer manufacturers such as IBM and HP who had strong in-house graphics chip programs) graphics chip makers. The graphics houses and UNIX vendors were too numerous to mention here, but working with mamy, if not most of them, gave Xi Graphics a unique opportunity to watch, and participate, in the rather significant re-alignment of the UNIX/Linnux world from a graphics perspective. This experience is expressed in the three X servers and hundreds of graphics drivers that comprise the family of Xi Graphics' Accelerated-X™ products.