MacOSX and X11

kono was among the hoards of folks who noted that Tenon is gonna be releasing a tightly integrated X11 Server for MacOS X, which should greatly increase the potential for those of us hoping have a desktop that we could conceivably share with our graphic designer MacOS fanatic girlfriends.

Comments

Ask your graphic-designer girlfriends

[Anonymous Coward]

to suggest new color for this page.

Re:Huh? Please explain

[Golias]

This is like putting a Yugo engine in a Ferrari.

Or like putting an old Beetle body on a VW Gulf. Oh, wait... they're doing that.

the curse of slashdot?

[streetlawyer]

I've always thought it was pretty bad luck to mention your girlfriend in a public forum when nobody else had brought up the subject. Did you ask her whether she was cool with a) having her site slashdotted b) the no doubt vast array of charming comments about her which our friends the AC's will generate and c) your randomly revealing personal facts about her?

Without some fast footwork, I'd say that the express train to Dumped City may be nearing Holland Michigan, and someone we know may have at least a provisional booking in the first class carriage.

Behind every Linux Geek...

[t0upsie]

we could conceivably share with our graphic designer MacOS fanatic girlfriends.

Behind every Linux Geek, is a smarter Girlfriend that uses MacOS...

See ya at Macworld NYC!!!

John Carmack already did this

[Kiwi]

The first port of X11 to OsX was done by John Carmack. In fact, I would not be surprised if he has something informitive to say about this X11 port.

- Sam

Re:Huh? Please explain

[mikpos]

Okay can you just shut up if you've never tried it? Have you never tried one of those X servers for Microsoft Windows? THEY ARE USEFUL. No one's forcing you to buy this X server, but believe me, sometime, somewhere, somebody (or more accurately, a few hundred or thousand somebodies) will want to run an X application on Mac OS X. Keep in mind that X11 is not so much a windowing system as it is just a remote display protocol. Would you be so upset if someone made a VNC server for Mac OS X? Making an X11 server is really no different.

Tenon, not Apple, is giving a way to run X on OSX

[isaac]

OS X, in case you've been asleep or dead, is a BSD/Mach based OS with a PDF-based windowing system (Quartz).

Since it's a BSD-based system, it makes sense that someone out there would provide a way to display X apps, to give more choice to those wanting or needing to run/port them.

Anyhow, it's not going to be a cheap product if Tenon's traditional pricing scheme is followed; I'd expect $500-$600 for a single user. This isn't a consumer product.

-Isaac

The proper order is read, then write!

[isaac]

The interesting thing about MacOS X was that it was the power of Unix "under the hood" with the (supposed) power of the MacOS GUI on top. If you remove the Mac GUI and replace it with X, don't you end up with just plain BSD (with non-standard config files)

I'd normally write this off as a troll, but I'm feeling noisy today.

The whole point of *TENON* (not Apple, a 3rd party developer) writing this X server/wm/widget set is that it allows an easy way to display X apps and even have them integrate as smoothly as possible into the OS X look-and-feel. This means rootless display where the X clients coexist with the Quartz (display PDF) desktop and windows.

A similar product was popular under NEXTSTEP (and it was actually called Co-Xist), which allowed rootless display of X clients atop the NeXT display-postscript system.

-Isaac

How it will work

[tbo]

As a Mac developer, Linux user, and someone who's actually used Mac OS X, I think I can give you a pretty good idea how it will work. There's already a few X11 Servers for Mac OS 8/9. The one I'm most familiar with is MacX (aren't all these X names getting confusing).

MacX will either let you have one big-ass MacOS window that contains your X-based desktop (with whatever window manager you want), or it can put each X window in its own Mac OS window, giving everything a much more Mac-like feel. I imagine Tenon will adopt a similar strategy: all the window widgets will be Aqua-fied, but the contents of the window will be the same as always, since they're controlled mainly by the application. Tenon's X server will probably also support a "big-ass window" mode, and maybe also a full-screen mode.

Just to set the record straight, Carmack hacked X to run on Mac OS X server, and the hack was promptly ported to Darwin, seeing as it lacked a GUI.

My dream system: quad G4s, three monitors.
Monitor 1: Aqua.
Monitor 2: X11
Monitor 3: CLUI

mouthfull

[patreides]

Pay attention here. The new X Desktop is pronounced "X" as in "X marks
the spot." But the X in Mac OS X is pronounced "10." Got that? Okay, X
Desktop will purportedly not only allow remote X applications to be
displayed on the Mac OS X desktop, but will also include complete set of X
tools and libraries to support local execution of X applications and X games
on OS X. Extending Mac OS X with an X Window porting environment
will enable high-resolution 3D-modeling and animation, graphical
visualization and image rendering applications to be built directly on Mac
OS X, says Holmgren.

Try reading that aloud, and getting all the X's right as appropriate :-)

Misguided anti-Aqua sentiment

[Junks Jerzey]

The main reason that people run X is not because it is great or beautiful or a wonderful piece of engineering, because it is none of those. It is because it is the only real standard for accessing bitmapped displays under UNIX/Linux. Apple has finally been able to break away from X, and I am thankful. You can put down Aqua all you want, and it seems many people get off on this, but all those people really need is (1) a terminal window, (2) maybe a different file browser. Just because you don't like the idea of icons and pretty pictures and such is no reason to argue for ugly Tk applications and slower video performance.