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A windowing system is a graphical user interface (GUI) which uses the window as one of its primary metaphors. It is normally one part of a larger desktop environment.
From a programmer's point of view, a windowing system implements graphical primitives such as rendering fonts or drawing a line on the screen, effectively providing an abstraction of the graphics hardware.
A window system enables the computer user to work with several programs at the same time. Each program runs in its own window, which is a rectangular area of the screen. Most window systems allow windows to overlap, and provide means for the user to perform standard operations such as moving/resizing a window, sending a window to the foreground/background and minimizing/maximizing a window.
Some window systems, like X, have advanced capabilities such as network transparency, allowing the user to run graphical applications on a remote machine.
See also
List of windowing systems
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