Editing Project Athena (section)

{{Short description|1983 joint project by MIT, IBM and DEC}}
{{Distinguish|text=[[Project Athena (Intel)]]}}
[[File:Xlib and XCB in the X Window System graphics stack.svg|thumb|500px|Athena, a [[graphical control element]] library]]
'''Project Athena''' was a joint project of [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology|MIT]], [[Digital Equipment Corporation]], and [[IBM]] to produce a campus-wide [[distributed computing]] environment for educational use.<ref name="Athena Network Services">{{cite journal|title=Network Services in the Athena Environment|first1=Jennifer G.|last1=Steiner|first2=Daniel E. Jr.|last2=Geer|date=21 July 1988|journal=Proceedings of the Winter 1988 Usenix Conference|citeseerx = 10.1.1.31.8727}}</ref> It was launched in 1983, and research and development ran until June 30, 1991. {{As of|2023}}, Athena is still in production use at MIT. It works as software (currently a set of [[Debian]] packages)<ref>{{cite web|url=http://kb.mit.edu/confluence/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=5900050|title=What are the hardware requirements for installing Debathena? - IS&T Contributions - Hermes|work=mit.edu}}</ref> that makes a machine a [[thin client]], that will download educational applications from the MIT servers on demand.

Project Athena was important in the early history of desktop and distributed computing. It created the [[X Window System]], [[Kerberos (protocol)|Kerberos]], and [[Zephyr (protocol)|Zephyr Notification Service]].<ref name="Athena Network Services"/> It influenced the development of [[thin computing]], [[LDAP]], [[Active Directory]], and [[instant messaging]].