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I suggest you take a look at http://www.xdarwin.org/ - Ben Byer (an Apple employee) has been working to migrate Apple's X server to the x.org codeabase, and now has a re-port of the quartz system to that codebase.

Looks as though your doubts are unfounded.

Simon.

KDE, Gnome, and any other window manager that will compile on OS X can be run under XDarwin. You can also dual boot OS X and Linux with the free utility Boot Camp.

So there :P

But you're better off using something else (eg some Linux variant, BSD, etc.)

However, if you really want to try, do the following:

1) open /etc/ttys. The first two lines that begin with "console" has one which is commented out. Uncomment that one and comment out the second one. Now the next time you reboot, you'll enter the console directly

2) Install XDarwin, which can be started from the command-line as opposed to the X that Apple provides which can only be started alongside Aqua.

Have fun, but it's not really that interesting.

Brands like MacGIMP and XDarwin have seen a lot of success with zero advertising dollar output. Who would have thought five years ago that you could reach 500,000 software product consumers without having to advertise? It's all in the product positioning and passive brand building methods. The market is pull, now, not push, folks. Just ask CraigsList.

too true , and you can infact run the unix base of OS X on x86 http://www.opendarwin.org/ without the aid of an emulator.
What i find to be the charm of OS X is the coupling of a great unix core with a charming GUI and the applications therein(naturaly also the frameworks aswell)

If all you care about is the unix base in os x then opendarwin is progresing steadily ( http://www.xdarwin.org/about/ may also be of intrest)

Open Source Projects:
BSD Ports http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/
APTGET http://fink.sourceforge.net/
X11 http://www.xdarwin.org/
A lot of OS X and cross-platform projects http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php? form_cat=309
Gentoo anyone? http://www.metadistribution.org/macos/
Freshmeat has a lot of OS X and cross-platform projects http://freshmeat.net/browse/839/
http://www.opendarwin.org/
http://developer.apple.com/darwin/

As you can see, contributing the OS X platform does not mean abandoning OSS or cross-platform software development.

You can contribute to Open Darwin or to the many cross-platform software projects on freshment or sourceforge.

You could use the GNU OSX archive: http://www.osxgnu.org/

Of course as you mentioned there is Fink which lets you do things like this relatively easily ...

You could use the GNU OSX archive: http://www.osxgnu.org/

Of course as you mentioned there is Fink which lets you do things like this relatively easily ...

The Apple article was helpful and all but there are guys who have been working on the XFree86 port for a long time, like since 2002 or something, so if you need a place to get answers to running X apps on OSX, keep an eye on www.xdarwin.org/forum

If you're 10.2(.x) or earlier, you run into a bit of a roadblock at the X11 stage: Apple's X11 only works w/Panther. Anything earlier and you want to look for Fink and/or XDarwin. And have some alcohol handy.. it took me a little while to get X in place before the oO install.

caveat - i'm playing with an iBook as a possible work-PC replacement, so though unix is my day job darwin/osX is new to me.. damn if it isn't cool as shizznitz though.

-'fester

aye,

this PDF led me to:

http://www.xdarwin.org/

you are correct sir.

Well, at least Apple's support of XDarwin is still around. I doubt Apple will ever get support the freedesktop.org efforts because that would mean supporting alpha-channels for non-Mac platforms.

Although the post by Emmanual Dreyfus indicates that XDarwin is essentially a test case, this is a rather important test case. If you can run XDarwin, you're just a short hop away from having all of the X11 apps along with it. Also, imagine a package system like the fink working equally well on OSX and NetBSD. You could develop on OSX with its comfortable GUI and deploy to NetBSD with its comfortable price.

I would not be happy to give up remote display. Not going to happen.

There is no reason why you can't run a X server over the top of a directFB desktop. This would enable applications that support the new system to run fast locally while X based Apps (remote and local) can take to the X server.

There are plenty of X servers for Windows and MacOS that plenty of people use already.

You know, there *are* XFree86 subsystems for Windows and MacOS X...

-uso.

The only solution is to run Virtual PC with Red Hat Linux. This will run slow because it does it through x86 emulation not native ppc. . Generally, emulators are only use if the application does not have native linux support and thus you have to run another OS. But there are few apps that run only linux and not on MacOSX. With the Fink project andXdarwin or OroborOSX, a lot of linux/unix apps have been successfully ported to MacOSX and are fully functional. ex. Kde, Open Office, Gimp, and MatLab

Was plain old X11 even considered? If it was, and it didn't meet the criteria, then in what way was it found lacking? Too heavy for a 56k dialup connection? I didn't think it was any worse than Citrix there, but I could be wrong about that. You should be able to get a secure connection via SSH tunneling, and that connection can be compressed if necessary -- there is copious documentation for all this, so I won't repeat how to set it up here, but it's very commonly done.

The biggest "obstacle" I can think of is that people will need the X11 server software on their end, but again this isn't a very big deal: there are free versions for Windows (Cygwin and MacOSX (Apple's X11 beta, XDarwin), and of course it is the standard graphical layer for Linux & related systems.

So really, what needs to happen if you go forward with this idea is for some work to go into packaging it up for students & faculty to use, and giving enough training to show how to get going with it. There are a lot of resources out there that can be relied upon, should the state choose to take this path. It sounds to me like what you need most is for someone to make the pitch to those who are making the decisions.

I wonder how this beta will compare with the hardware-accelerated X-Darwin that is coming (4.3)...

The last XDarwin would run KDE 3.0.7 just fine, but the Apple beta would freeze the whole machine when I ran it... that's the primary reason I want X11 (and for Gimp...)

I'm dowloading the new Apple beta now...

dochood

Does XDarwin serve the same purpuse that Quartz does?

According to the layer image it appears the XDarwin cannot run Cocoa apps, is the true

First off, just to clear this up...
soon to get easier with the X11 on Max OS X

X has been on X for quite some time. You could fink it if you wanted, or, if you want something even easier, you could XonX it or xdarwin it.

What's new, of course, is Apple's X11. That Apple would Aquafy X11 is really a great step forward, and hopefully means that -- and this is key -- Apple will start shipping Macs with X11 preinstalled.

Just as OS X's built in Java Virtual Machine makes OS X a first-rate Java deployment platform as Java apps look and act native without a single end user consideration about VMs, soon OS X could be a first-rate, well-integrated client-side deployment platform for open source software. Most importantly, this will continue to add new developers to open source movements, and that can't be bad. Even if Apple doesn't share everything they do, the fact that you'll have people used to making client-side apps increasingly contributing to open source projects is a great thing.

Not to mention that I've been impressed with what Apple's give back to the oss community, even though they technically often have no reason at all to do so. They've made Darwin open source, and have worked with the BSDs to share code that they have no pressing legal reason making them do so. Safari's updates to KHTML continue to be checked back in to the Konquerer source code by this paid Apple employee, which is another great move.

The only way I see Apple's new love of oss possibly being a bad thing is that Apple tends to hire the best away from open source projects and slap them onto Apple-first ones. Though this is great in that these people feel connected to the oss community, it has to shift their attention away from Linux and other F/free *NIXes a bit.

But more developers, especially good client-app developers, is a good thing, and having Apple return their contributions to the community is icing on the cake.

I love X Window's flexibility in adding window managers. I also hate it because I never, ever get the same convenience and experience in navigating an operating system as I do with Mac OS X and Windows. KDE and GNOME have gone through great changes to make this easier, but they are desktop managers, not window managers. Nowandays the distinction is subtle, but significant when you're trying to pawn off Linux to your mom.

That said, while Mac OS X (my choice) doesn't use X (but can with the XDarwin OSS project), a user can get quite minimalistic even with Apple's OS X interface. For instance, unlike previous versions of the Mac OS, you don't have to show one damned icon, or even the dock, in Mac OS X. To do it:

1) From the Apple menu, choose Dock-->Turn Hiding On. This hides the dock until you move the mouse towards the dock's hidden location.

2) Click on the Finder button in the dock (or click on the desktop) and choose Preferences from the Finder menu. Uncheck the options under "Show these items on the Desktop." That rids you of any hard drive, removable media, or network drive icons.

3) Move any other document icons (the only things that can be left) into a folder in your Home folder, or elsewhere.

4) Change your desktop background to something pleasant.

The only thing left on the desktop now will be the menu bar.

Users who prefer to navigate their applications in a menu-centric style can create an alias (shortcut/symlink) of their Applications and Documents folders and place them in the dock. From there, users can just click on the folder and, ala the Start button or typical window manager menu, navigate through to the item they need.

Just because Apple doesn't actively support altering of Aqua doesn't mean you can't, or for that matter, that it's not allowed.

Apple has pursued those who create an Aqua style theme for other computers because the LOOK and FEEL does belong to them. They paid artists and graphic designers to come up with it. Using it elsewhere is like using the Apple logo elsewhere, and Apple has the right to keep what's theirs theirs.

X11 already runs on Mac OS X, in the same screen space as Aqua (if your turn the option on), and personally I feel as though it's a Good Thing(TM) to have X11 not look like Aqua. After all, it ISN'T Aqua and thus I am made aware of the enviromental differences simply by observing what kind of window it is. If I'm the type of person who can't handle that, why am I running X11 in the first place?

If you're talking about doing screen drawing, Aqua is meerly the look and feel (interface philosophy, if you will), it doesn't HAVE an API. You may be thinking of Quartz, QuickDraw, and QuickTime, which are pretty extensively documented, as they always have been. For free, too. If you're intrested in what Aqua actually is, read the Aqua Human Interface Guidelines.

As for Aqua, anything you need to do to make Aqua windows/widgets when coding are there. Check out the Window Manger documentation, or the Cocoa flavor, if you liek that sort of thing ;-)

There are no "hidden APIs" (unlike M$ Windoze). There are however, system internal functions for performing tasks that need to be done (Window widgets, double buffering, etc), for which there is no need of programmer intervention.

Claiming those functions are a "hidden API" is like being pissed you can't call functions in a library because they where only implemented to assist the programmers while writing the library. In fact, that's exactly the same thing, isn't it? Hmmmmmm.....

This is one of the ways Apple is achieving greater system stability, through abstraction of the OS and hardware to the programmer. MacOS 9 (er..."Classic") was hacked to shreds by anyone and everyone, and there where all kinds of problems with INITs and CDEVs and such running amok on everyone's system. I have no less than 175 INITs and CDEVs on this machine right now (yes, a Classic box, 8600/250) and I use most of that functionality. The OS sometimes gets slow, sometimes crashes. A clean install of MacOS 9 will be damn quick and DAMN stable. Throw all this crazy hack-job business in the mix and it's easy to hose your whole system in no time. With Mac OS X, Apple has abstracted many things and it keeps programmers from being naughty and say, writing directly to WindowDef structures, which reside in system memory space. So should it be allowed? Imagine a loop with a bug which, under certian conditions, will write forever to that WindowPtr. Now remember it's in the system heap. Oops.

FINKCommander

XDarwin

c'mon now, people. you're not even trying.

"All these features are yours
except Aqua."
"Make no attempt at tweaking there.
"Use it together with XDarwin,"
"Use it in peace."

Hugs and kisses,
Apple

I didn't do anything fancy when I installed OroborusX. I'm using XDarwin from www.xdarwin.org. I don't know what fink installs so that might be your problem.

But the Mac... Mail.app filters my junk mail very efficiently. Chimera does tabbed browsing almost as well as Galeon. iCal is young but already extremely cool, letting me keep track of my schedule and tasks. Terminal.app's ANSI colors suck, but it's a good emulator otherwise. Oh, and Fink and XDarwin let me sudo apt-get install gimp and almost anything else I could do on my Linux box.

Oh, yeah, and I can run Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

I've switched, and I can't see going back.

With Appleworks? It's okay, but it's not as good as Abiword. StarOffice doesn't do Mac, and OpenOffice for OSX is (AFAIK) still beta. So, to adequately import .docs you need to fink or else install xdarwin and a window manager, but there are issues with drivers etc.,and you're giving up pretty Aqua, so you may as well be using Yellowdog or Debian, because if all you want is a nice looking desktop that doesn't tie you to Microsoft and gives you some great free apps, Linux is still the best way to go.

Or were you thinking that one could Switch® to OSX and then pay US $499 for Microsoft Office: Mac. Hmm. They say "Switch" but I hear "Bait and Switch."

p.s. Mozilla works great on OSX, and Chimera's just been updated so you all can drag that Explorer into the trash any time now.

Is there any kind of "rootless" window manager for the Win32 port of XFree86?
If you're using rootless Blackbox from Fink on XDarwin, you know what I'm talking about...

- Benad

And the home user who recieves MS Office for "free" with their computer? Why pay $75 extra to do what you already can? Again, if it were a twenty-five bucks less, it sounds a lot more reasonable to test it out.

Why not some support for the XDarwin project? This would give an easy way to bring Linux GUI developers on board, without making them unlearn open source gtk to learn the very much closed source Cocoa. The world of X11 apps is very much larger than Cocoa apps at this point (compare versiontracker's cocoa app list to FreshMeat's X11 section), and will be for the forseeable future. Why? Non-North-American countries which have a lot of developers (Poland, Germany, India) find it a lot easier to buy into hardware that runs X11.

Yes, you can. Try XDarwin.

The best thing is that, in rootless mode (X windows side by side with aqua windows), the X Windows inherit the drop shadows of aqua. Enlightenment running on OSX looks *far* better than Enlightenment running on linux.

Yeah, that's XDarwin

Can you run an X server on the mac?

Dude. Where have you been for the last year?

Now I haven't done this myself so I can't speak on the performance. XDarwin appears to let you run XWindow alongside aqua and separate of aqua in fullscreen mode. Have you looked into options like this and is there any speed benefit?

Unless you can get rootless X on top of Aqua and you can make amor md2 run in rootless X, the answer is no.

True, but you can run rootless X alongside Aqua and they coexist quite peacefully. Heck, I'm doing it right now. I don't know about porting amor md2, but since OS X is an honest-to-god BSD it shouldn't be that hard. One of OS X's big selling points is the easy porting of *nix software.

If you're interested in running X11 apps on OS X, check out the XDarwin project. Here's some screenshots. Very cool stuff.

Unless you can get rootless X on top of Aqua and you can make amor md2 run in rootless X, the answer is no.

True, but you can run rootless X alongside Aqua and they coexist quite peacefully. Heck, I'm doing it right now. I don't know about porting amor md2, but since OS X is an honest-to-god BSD it shouldn't be that hard. One of OS X's big selling points is the easy porting of *nix software.

If you're interested in running X11 apps on OS X, check out the XDarwin project. Here's some screenshots. Very cool stuff.

True, X software does look crappy running in XDarwin. But then, X software looks crappy under most any circumstances.

1. It runs its native games and apps as well as Windows runs its native games and apps. There aren't as many games, but the good one make it over, and there's a good mac-only games community (shareware and otherwise).

2. OS X is definitely more stable than WIndows.

3. No Windows required, but this Mac has VirtualPC and Win98 installed , just in case.

4. Has all the things that makes the BSD family good OS's.

If Windows is necessary, VirtualPC does a fine job of running Win32 apps. WINE should eventually see a PPC port, which will add another alternative.

And it's got a nice, if still immature, Window manager installed (Aqua), good development tools (ProjectBuilder, Applescript, GCC), and it runs XWindows just fine.

Think about OS X for your next machine, especially a laptop.

I know that MacOS apps don't need that 2nd button, but WTF are you supposed to do if you want to run Linux or run *nix apps on OSX?

The right-mouse-button click is emulated by holding down the "control" key and clicking. (Actually, it's the other way around. The right mouse button sends the computer a control-click.) So for OS X apps, do a control-click instead of a right-click.

XDarwin takes it one step further, offering mappable keyboard-mouse combos for X button event emulation. Go to the XDarwin screenshots page and look at the second screenshot.

And, of course, there is the favorite option of one-button-basher-haters: spend the $30 and buy a f*cking external three-button USB mouse.

I've been a linux user for almost 6 years, and generally laughed at Macs (the whole one-button thing, etc.)

I wanted to find a nice laptop that would run linux, and even had a dell for a few days. Then, a friend of mine introduced me to Macs, and, in particular, the Tibook. You can see it yourself - overall, its probably the single best piece of hardware engineering imaginable.

And OS X really is awesome. I'm not into having the point-and-click interface myself, and love the console. But OS X really is nice to use. Its networking support is amazing, and works right out of the box. Support for sleep is great too.

Right now, from what I can see, the biggest problem with OS X is the lack of a decent DivX player. (4.11 tends to desync in about a second). Otherwise, it's awesome. And, if you really can't let go of blackbox or whatever (like me), there's the XDarwin project that lets you run X on top of OS X. So far, I've only tested the default twm, which runs fine. But using the apple developer tools you can compile any window that's been ported (I believe at least gnome and afterstep have been), and run it there.

Certain products are still not quite ready for OS X, but the situation is improving rapidly. I have to disagree with one of the posts below - its not about being "productive"; one could easily do that in Linux. (I refused to run IE, and will
NOT be getting Office). But it is a sincerely nice operating system to use, and the hardware is definitely going to be a computer legend.
Regards,

trurl