A Virtual X server

Recently discovered a virtual X server i.e. Xvbf. This is a server that ships along with a normal X server from Xorg www.x.org.

The X protocol says that X client produces the graphical output but X server renders it on the screen. Both of these softwares could be running on the same machines or on different machines on the top of TCP/IP protocl stack. This model of GUI is quite different than that of Windows.

Xvfb is used for testing as it does not produce a real GUI on some screen but rather stores that in a file as configured beforehand. A good basic introduction of Xvbf is given here : http://www.x.org/archive/X11R6.8.2/doc/Xvfb.1.html#sect6

Solaris related XVbf help could be found here : http://developers.sun.com/solaris/articles/solaris_graphics.html

A good article describing the need of Xvfb for running java applications is detailed here:
http://creamtec.com/products/ajaxswing/doc/setup.html