Slashdot Mirror
X11R6.4 And Apache On Mac OS X Beta
Adam Attarian writes: "Tenon has released public betas of two new products for Mac OS X, XTools, an X-Window Server/Desktop based on X11R6.4. They integrate it with Aqua using both Cocoa and QuickDraw, with OpenGL support planned (the screenshots are cool, very cool). Also out in public beta is iTools, an Apache Port, that looks to have all the goodies like sendmail, DNS, and SSL. Now, if only we could get an AltiVec dnet client for X..." I should have been more clear - you can order this stuff right now - but their site so slashdotted, you can't really get through.
If you're going to be condescending to people at least try and have a clue.
That said, X protocol is pretty brain damaged. NeXT had it right with Display Postscript, and now Apple has it right with DisplayPDF. Let's hope the GNUStep team completes their Display Ghostscript X server extension so we can all enjoy the benefits of DPS, for free. GNUStep is probably the most important and underappriciated Free Software projects around...
Er, insert the phrase "is faster" between LinuxPPC and Mac OS X server up there. I had a greater than symbol in there, but I should've realized that it's an HTML symbol. My bad.
Haaz: Co-founder, LinuxPPC Inc., making Linux for PowerPC since 1996.
-- haaz.
Now. This is not oS X final or the beta. Apple is probably going to spend a fair bit of money on the theoretical optimizations for the Mach microkernel that can (theoretically) make it faster. But, as far as the public knows, Linux holds the speed record right now.
The review is at:
http://macworld.zdnet .co m:80/1999/11/reviews/linuxppc.html
That said, I am not against Mac OS X. I wish it the best of luck. I also would like to sell Linux for the Mac. ;-)
Haaz: Co-founder, LinuxPPC Inc., making Linux for PowerPC since 1996.
-- haaz.
Why would Apple, fresh from it's own brush with death want to purchase another ailing company, particularly one with such poor prospects?
Apple has finally gotten it's hardware habit somewhat under control. The original lean line-up has now ballooned but at least almost everything is being based on common motherboards. SGI would bring in a completely different set of technologies with almost no common elements.
Apple has also pared down it's software holdings. No longer does it try to compete with it's own applications but has spun off/shut down/de-emphasized most of those distracting and ultimately non-profitable lines of business. SGI would pull it back into those markets in a big way.
Finally, Apple is once again focussing on profitable markets, one where it can sell either enormous quantities of hardware (iMacs) or fewer but highly marked up ones (Cubes.) SGI doesn't fit into either category particularly well, nor does it's own category seem much longer for this world.
This appears to be a case of looking-for-a-buyer-for-SGI & not what-could-Apple-spend-it's-bucks on. Sure if gifted with SGI I'm sure Apple would be happy but $ for $ they'd be a lot better off spending their money on R&D to extend their own stuff into what's left of SGI's market.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Their application runs under BSD & 'till recently they've been requiring their customers buy a standard distribution. They've now expanded their support to the various free BSDs and are now considering MacOS X.
As their customer base is non-technical folks with limited support resources something like MacOS X would seem a logical step. However they're unwilling to commit resources and fork their product until MacOS X has been out in the market awhile, appears successful & enough customers seem willing to adopt it.
One interim strategy we discussed was simply continuing to run their application under an X Server and pretty-much ignoring the whole MacOS X-side of things until they've determined how far they want to go with this.
Generally one can get a significant discount from MSRP if one licenses only the required parts of a product, limits it's use to running the licensed application, handles product support & is willing to include an upgrade offer in the packaging. If the X Server vendor is open to licenses like this then the cost per unit could be acceptable.
Thus their product could ship almost immediately and with the exception of the added X Server install and some other "MacOS-X-ifications" (graphical installer, file locations, frameworks, icons) would be the same as their other releases. Indeed we guesstimated it would take 2 or 3 days to modify the unix side of things and another 2 or 3 to produce the MacOS X side.
This is exactly the sort of thing Apple probably worries about. Ultimately it might be a win for them but in the meantime they'll have a quasi-ported-application runnning on their shiny new OS.
As to concerns regarding the supplier, well, yours aren't new ones. Generally one can request an audit of the company to determine it's health, invest in things like a code-escrow policy, have alternative strategies in place (I expect there won't be one X Server vendor for MacOS X forever), etc.
Finally these concerns are less strong then they might be otherwise as this would intended as an interim step. Should the product prove popular then the full port to Mac OS X would take place with the Aqua GUI etc. and then the licensed X Server could be dispensed with.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Software-wise they're not a particularly good matchup. Sure they overlap in some ways but then almost everyone in that part of the market does.
Hardware-wise they've very little in common. Where SGI does have 'kewl stuff' it's not particularly applicable towards Apple's current hardware base (that I'm aware of.)
Customers, contracts, service & support, development engineers - SGI is hemmoraging all of those and again, none of them are very good matches for Apple's business model.
What Apple needs now is to improve it's hardware and solidify MacOS X.
In hardware Apple needs faster, more flexible motherboards. Faster CPU's would be great too but they can get away with dual (or more) PowerPC's as long as they're competively priced. Should PowerPC truly be stuck at a roadblock Apple could consider moving to Alpha. In no case are they going to succeed (ie profit) competing in the consumer or workstation x86 market - at least not in the near-future. Once the transition to MacOS X is complete and it's established Apple would do well to consider a Darwin-based x86 subset specialized for server duty, much like the MacOS X Server release of two years ago is used today but on a x86 hardware platform. I expect they'd treat it much like they do their '486-based AirPort today - the CPU is x86 but they don't make a big deal of it.
OS X needs to get out in the market and establish itself as a Unix peer. Once it gets some creditability as a stable Unix vendors can start porting over Unix-apps to it and customers can start weaning off of the Classic/Carbon codebase. With this transition Apple could begin to move into some of the server market making the same arguments MS makes for NT: one OS scalable for desktop / workstation / server. They'd be able to come up to speed rather quickly in the server space as the developers would be simply performing another Unix port with some added UI work.
Were I Apple i'd be looking to spend my money on a few things:
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Damn - posted instead of previewing. Well, there it is, warts & all - you get the idea. Honestly I'm not terribly interested in pursuing this discussion much futher anyway. Apple buying SGI seems extremely unlikely IMHO and 'what ifs' aren't particularly engaging.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
This is all well and good, but this program costs quite a bit of money, and for, say, educational and other use, I think it'd be really nice for a free X Server to be available for OS X. Does anyone know if there are any efforts out there to create one? (Afaik, John Carmack's project is for a complete X environment on top of Darwin, and not one that meshes with Aqua, which would be infinitely more useful.)
Where, exactly, have I or anyone stated that X11 is without flaws? As I've said in another post, it has its share of warts but that's just the way life is. But the fact remains that it still just a protocol that anybody can implement with varying degrees of success. Perhaps one day a better windowing protocol (Berlin?) will supplant it like HTTP did to Gopher, but that day isn't here yet and the work continues.
And even when something better comes along, X11 may persist just like Gopher sites can still be viewed with web browsers. Network transparency guarantees non-exclusivity, and that's also a Good Thing.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
As I recall, NeWS and Display Postscript were not open standards. That, more than anything, likely accounts for why neither is around any longer. Berlin is an open standard, but I'm discouraged by the slowness it's progressing and the lack of running client apps. A better "Kept Simple Stupid", network transparent, open, windowing environment would be a good thing to have, but it would have to be substantially better than X11 (probably not too difficult) and easier to use (both user-side and developer-side) in order to catch on. Unfortunately, we're not there yet.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
HTTP has been improved. So has X11. When the need calls for it, protocols get improved. If HTTP really were in need of dire replacement, there'd be a call for FOOTP to replace it. As of yet, I haven't seen such a desire.
Nobody's saying X11 is perfect. But it's here now, has *lots* of clients and it does exactly what it's supposed to. And since it need not replace an existing GUI, there's no reason not to implement it and enjoy X11's benefits on top of an existing GUI scheme.
Perhaps Berlin will do an even better job, but it's not here yet and remains unproven. And in the meantime, X11 still works. To me, it seems like most of the "X11 is bad!" cries are from people who don't understand what it is and when benefits it has over the current schemes, which is unfortunate because neither Microsoft or Macintosh offers some of its greatest benefits. I'd hate to see the standard free graphical display replaced by something prettier but less featureful until the benefits of network-transparent GUIs are rediscovered all over again.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
Tenon wants $199 for the product during the beta phase, and apparently plans on increasing the cost significantly thereafter. (The $199 will give you the release version at no extra charge if you pay when receiving the beta).
Now, $200 is a healthy chunk of money. Even at OEM discounts, I don't think it's going to be attractive to port many applications relying on this type of support. So I don't think Apple has anything to worry about there.
The big question is "When is carbonized Photoshop arriving?" - because until we get it, I think there will be at least some doubt surrounding the platform.
Incidentally, I'm posting this from my Mac running OS/XBeta. If it weren't for the keyboard dropping characters all the time, I'd say it's darn near perfect other than non-support of video editing applications.
D
----
As one can imagine, this is both good news and bad news for Apple They undoubtedly welcome this product as it gives the connectivity they so sorely need; particularly in their important scientific research market where they're already fairly popular. On the other hand there is likely a fear that developers might 'port' to MacOS X by simply running their apps in a X term session (possibly a cut-down server licensed from Tenon) and not go native.
As I've already said and further explained this would dovetail nicely with an Apple purchase of Silicon Graphics, who already have a very strong presence (albeit slipping somewhat) in the high-end scientific/visualization environment that even the glorious G4 hardware cannot compete in.
Mac interface zealotory aside, the ability to more-or-less seamlessly integrate MacOS & Unix X applications would make such a marriage an ideal thing -- high performance SGI enterprise-grade hardware for bigger jobs, iMacs or towers on desktops for local jobs and talking to the larger-scale machines.
I think Apple should rush to support this. I agree they might be a little scared of people just running Mac apps over X and not going native, but without a high-end server lineup in their product mix this is going to happen anyway.
You add them just like you do with RedHat's installed apache under linux....
(open terminal)
cd php-4.0.2
./configure --with-apxs
make
make install
apachectl restart
and you're done. Of course, you can always reinstall, just specify --with-layout=(whatever layout they're calling it these days) if you want the same layout as apple's (which you probably don't because it puts stuff all over the place)
So I don't have to fire up VNC to get a remote display for my linux box when I work on my powerbook. I don't even have a monitor on my linux box, it's tucked away in a closet, and if I ever want a GUI there, I use VNC. It would be nice to just be able to export my display to my powerbook...
>. To me, it seems like most of the "X11 is bad!" >cries are from people who don't understand what >it is and when benefits it has over the current >schemes, which is unfortunate because neither >Microsoft or Macintosh offers some of its >greatest benefits Don't get me wrong.... no 'X11 is bad!' cries here. X lets me get a lot done..... BUT at the same time i refuse to agree with the standard ./ mantra that if you have X (specifically Xfree86) then life is complete.
Nonsense. X has some huge holes in it, or at least limitations due to the era in which it was conceived. I don't advocate just throwing it away immediately, but the status quo isn't something that interests me.
>And since X is a protocol, it is neither slow,
>buggy or holding anything back any more than
>HTTP is slow, buggy or holding the web back. So
>can we please stop with the "X is bad" rhetoric?
huh? So a protocol in and of itself can't be good or bad? Come on.... (that is why HTTP *has* been improved, persistent connections, etc, because as things scale it *does* hold back the web)
And besides... this isn't 1975 anymore. I think we can do better than blasting bitmaps across the network using a broken security scheme.
(I'm not trying to upsell MacOSX by any means... but lets quit worshipping at the altar of X11. I mean, it gets the job done {mostly}, but it is LONG overdue for a replacement.)
j
>Apple did a lot of work to get their X server >working,
/.)
(I'm sorry but i just can't help the flame, but this is
Apple DOESN'T HAVE AND X SERVER!!!! MacOSX has NOTHING TO DO WITH X WINDOWS.
But as always, don't let knowing nothing about the topic stop u from posting.
Or does this seem a bit silly to port Xfree86 to OS X?
XFree86 was ported to Darwin, not Mac OS X. The difference is that Darwin had no graphics layer controlling the screen, much like Linux itself has no graphics layer controlling the screen.
Tenon's solution is very different. It goes through Mac OS X's drawing APIs, while XFree86 controls the screen directly. The XFree86 port was to give people running Darwin, and not Mac OS X, a GUI (of sorts).
Geez. This is only brought up in every single discussion thread about Mac OS X or Darwin since Carmack announced his intention to port XFree86 over a year ago.
Apple did a lot of work to get their X server working...
This X server is not made by Apple. It's made by Tenon. Also, Apple's current Display PDF system is not the same as an X server, if that's what you meant.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
X11 is a protocol
Why, yes. X11 is a protocol. So is Windows' SMB protocol.
Being a protocol doesn't mean that it isn't inherently flawed. X11 and SMB are very much alike in the fact that they are a series of hacks, forced inconsistencies, and special cases for backwards compatibility. They are both dangerous to run in kernel mode because there is no clean way to implement a broken standard. You may eventually reach stability, but there will still be occasional "gotchas," and your code will never be clean and well designed.
If you don't believe me, try actually reading some of the ICCCM standard sometime.
Try reading some of the sections of the Unix-Hater's handbook dedicated to X, like this one.
If you honestly think that just because X11 is a protocol that it's not inherently flawed, then you obviously have never tried to implement someone else's protcol before. There is a major difference between implementing something clean and simple and something that is a complex mass of special cases. Yes, you still want X for a Mac, just the same as you want SAMBA for Unix boxes, but don't go thinking it's not a flawed system. X is an albatross hanging about the neck of the Unix world. It's a great example of how superior products can be crushed by flawed but free alternatives.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Yes, there is an overhead. All X applications still have to formulate their drawing commands into X drawing commands and pipe them through the high-speed local socket. The local X server then has to read the command from the input, decode and interpret them, and then call its API calls to draw them.
The alternative is to have the application go straight to the graphics APIs and do it itself. There may be no network slowdown, but the above is a major slowdown. Even DPS had a slight slowdown on the local machine compared to straight rendering. Personally, I hope GNUStep takes off too. It would be good to see the UNIX world with a free, well written, exportable graphics layer.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Where, exactly, have I or anyone stated that X11 is without flaws?
"And since X is a protocol, it is neither slow, buggy or holding anything back any more than HTTP is slow, buggy or holding the web back. So can we please stop with the 'X is bad' rhetoric?"
That sounds an awful lot like you're saying X is good, which it blatantly isn't. X is bad. It's incredibly bad.
Perhaps one day a better windowing protocol (Berlin?) will supplant it like HTTP did to Gopher, but that day isn't here yet and the work continues.
What, you mean like NeWS or Display Postscript? Both lost badly to X in the days before it became a standard. Superior code does not equal inevitable domination. Just look at Windows. Just look at X. I really hope the Berlin project takes off, but don't hold your breath. X has shown an amazing ability to crush better written competitors because of its wider adoption and better availability. We'll see.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Sure, as long as you don't want to run Mac apps and Unix apps at the same time. Might as well dual boot into Linux at that point.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Duh. Why pay when you can get the crappy x-window interface for free?
You can't run it at the same time as the Quartz graphics layer. This means you can't run Carbon, Cocoa, and Classic Mac OS X apps at the same time as X apps. You might as well dual-boot into Linux at that point. What's the point of having Mac OS X at that point?
Duh. <g>
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Apple's version is the modlules it comes with - while webdav is there, there's no mod_perl, no php, and no mod_ssl. God knows how you'd add them
/Library/WebServer/Configuration/apache.conf.
I'm pretty sure there is a mod_ssl, actually, but it's disabled by default. OpenSSL, along with OpenSSH, are preinstalled on the machine.
Anyway, you add modules via Apache's DSO mechanism. If you're not famliar with this concept, the idea is that you only compile the module without recompiling apache. Only problem is, you still need compilers. This is why I putting up a page for people to download DSO modules precompiled for Mac OS X/Darwin. All they have to do is drop the file in and modify
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
And since X is a protocol, it is neither slow, buggy or holding anything back any more than HTTP is slow, buggy or holding the web back.
Actually, some people do believe this to be true. Who says a protocol can't be bad? And who says there isn't room for a better protocol than X?
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
It bothers me that Apple didn't include an X server
That would be a huge, huge mistake. The current Mac people would be expected to run X11 apps instead of Aqua apps. That would be a UI disaster. Very, very bad.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Apple is probably going to spend a fair bit of money on the theoretical optimizations for the Mach microkernel that can (theoretically) make it faster. But, as far as the public knows, Linux holds the speed record right now.
Mac OS X public beta is considerably faster than even DP4, both of which run Mach 3.0. OSX Server has Mach 2.5 and display postscript, amongst many other differences. Mac OS X public beta and Mac OS X Server can't really be reasonably compared in terms of performance.
No doubt that LinuxPPC is fast, though.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Actually, all that good scripting power is already there in the default install. Well, at least TCL is for sure, I beleive Perl is as well.
Perl, TCL, Java, tcsh, all preinstalled. Along with OpenSSH, OpenSSL, Java2, WebDAV and the newset version of Apache.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
I have Tomcat running under OS 9
But Mac OS 9 doesn't hava Java 2 support, which is required for JSP 1.0+. How'd you do it?
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
And why the hell can't Apple ever name anything that gives you an idea of it's purpose instead of giving it some cute nickname?
Like GNOME?
I'd rather have a cute nickname than a widly out-of-control buzzword fest like:
Java 2 and Objective-C API Set for Mac OS X
...
Pro Enterprise Edition.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Is webdav there? How do you turn it on?
/Library/WebServer/Configuration/apache.conf:
/System/Library/Apache/Modules/libdav.so
Apparently, you can mount WebDAV volumes on the desktop by just entering the address (http://webdav.company.com) in to the "Connect to server" dialog under the Go menu in the Finder. As far as turning on your own WebDAV server, I suppose you can turn it on by just uncommenting these two lines in
#LoadModule dav_module
#AddModule mod_dav.c
Save the file, restart Apache. I haven't tried it, but assume it will work. All the appropriate files are there.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Why not the Macintosh (OS X) Foundation Classes ?
;)
MFC is already taken.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
However, only X (to my knowledge) allows you to *display* applications that are being run on another networked machine. The distinction is that, while the application is running on my Intel-based system, it can be displayed on my Macintosh machine 1000 miles away. The benefits for remote-administration are substantial.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
You could always just run straight Darwin (by typing ">console" at the login window) and install XFree on top of that. Darwin binaries of XFree are at www.stepwise.com/Softrak, and FVWM2 and AfterStep have been ported to Darwin. Of course, you wouldn't be running Aqua underneath, but it's still cool, and it's free.
I think it's only a matter of time till there is a free X Window Server for Aqua.
It's just you and a bunch of other /.'s.
I use a mac. I use *nix. Being able to use both seamlessly on the same desktop is pretty freakin' cool. I can finally stop switching over to my linux box to run remote *nix apps or local *nix apps.
The latest clients from distributed.net have Altivec support in both the OS X and OS 8/9 versions. 3.4 Mkeys/sec on my G4/400.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
X opened up X11R6.4 a while ago. XFree86 4.0 is based upon it, so there is no reason why they couldn't port XFree86 4.0 to MacOS X.
That said, it may be easier for them legally if they used the X.org's reference implementation.
--
Yeah, LordDracula, try it sometime you have two X capable machines. Log onto machine one, type DISPLAY=host2.mylittlenetwork.net:0.0;export DISPLAY. Log onto machine two, become root, and type 'xhost +host1.mylittlenetwork.net' Then go back to machine one and run something. 'xclock &' and watch it either appear on machine two, or break horribly and display lots of horrible messages. And that's just the beginning of the KeWl ThInGs (tm) you can do with X....
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Take a look at the info about iTools. Tenon has claimed to have ported Tomcat to OS X. The funny thing is that Tomcat has been running on OS X since it had Java support. Also consider how odd it is to have "ported" a Java program to another platform. I have Tomcat running under OS 9 and I also had it running under DP 4 back in June. Now I'm sure that Tenon has created a nicer interface to Tomcat, but to call it a "port" is wrong. Does anyone know if this violates the license that Tomcat is released under?
The majority of Mac users don't give a damn about the techy details slashdotters hold so near and dear - they just want to get their email, surf the web, print pictures of their newest nephew, and maybe edit a newsletter or two.
:P
A few of us also actually make a living with our Macs. But we do all those other things too.
I imagine that the people disgusted enough with Aqua to even consider the kind of thing proposed by the original commentator will instead hold onto OS 9 until they drown with it. It won't be pretty, but so far it looks like they will be few and far between.
Mac OS X already has its own GUI framework, and there is absolutely no way that X could improve upon that. After all, the Mac GUI has always been its main selling point, whereas X is roundly, and deservedly, slated as being slow, buggy and holding back Linux on the desktop.
I honestly don't see the point in this. Surely it's not progress, it's going backwards?
This one article has caused the letter 'X' to move from the 24th most frequently used letter (in the English language) to the 22nd spot, surpassing 'J' and 'K'. If this keeps up, Huffman encoding will have to be completely re-written.
Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter-accusations.
I have avoided a flame such as this for as long as I reasonably can, because I'm well aware that you are all human beings, that geeks are stereotypically bad in the grammar department, and it's generally not that big of a deal anyhow. However, the headline:
XFree86 And Apache Or Mac OS X Beta
is so wildly different in meaning than the proper headline of:
XFree86 And Apache On Mac OS X Beta
that it merits a bit of a slap on the back of the wrist.
You, the /. Editors, run a much appreciated and much used online web service, and I am extremely glad that /. exists. I do not deny that you all have a whole lot of stuff that you need to tackle, and I do not think for one second that you are anything less than intelligent, inspired and driven individuals. However, the fact that single paragraph, front page articles regularly have the most basic of typographical and grammatical errors is cause for some embarassment, IMHO. Slashdot is recognized as one of, if not the premiere online geek news source. It's readership has grown to the point that only the strongest of web clusters can survive a fully-blown Slashdot Effect. Major international news sources (AP, Reuters) have begun referencing quotes and threads from Slashdot. Slashdot is now in the Big League(tm). Please, please put in that extra three miunutes of reading, re-reading and re-re-reading front page stories for typographical errors. Think of them as bugs in your code, and each front page post as a final version release.
I know that you're proud of Slashdot, and you should be. It's an amazing website. But please, take the next step and start making the content delivery a bit more professional. It's easy to do, and it'll help make Slashdot a better news source.
Trolls: If you must, go ahead and attack this post for typos and grammatical errors. I'm still in the process of learning this danged AZERTY keyboard, and there is in fact a difference between an editor-approved front page article and a comment in the attached thread.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Apple's MacOS X does not come with an X Windows server. Apple has no intention of developing or releasing such a beast. Apple instead chose to develop a PDF-based display system called "Quartz" upon which runs their UI named "Aqua".
Tenon, a respected developer of Mac software, has developed an X Server that runs on MacOS X. This is significantly different from John Carmack's port of X to Apple's open-source OS Darwin (upon which MacOS X is based.) Tenon's X Server is driving the Quartz PDF-based display and utilizes the Aqua toolkits to produce a fully MacOS X-integrated display. In short anything run under Tenon's X Server is immediately available to the rest of the MacOS environment as just another PDF (cut-'n-paste, etc.) as well as appearing as Aqua-like as possible.
Thus with Tenon's X Server one can run a generic X application and it will appear as simply another Mac OS X application obeying as many of the Aqua UI principals as possible. Indeed with many X applications trivial changes will be required to make them appear to be native Mac OS X applications (mostly menu placements, dialogue boxes, etc.)
As one can imagine, this is both good news and bad news for Apple They undoubtedly welcome this product as it gives the connectivity they so sorely need; particularly in their important scientific research market where they're already fairly popular. On the other hand there is likely a fear that developers might 'port' to MacOS X by simply running their apps in a X term session (possibly a cut-down server licensed from Tenon) and not go native.
As to Tenon's other 'ports' - are they ports? Likely yes. Getting a unix application, particularly one already native to BSD to run under Mac OS X isn't much effort, if any. Constructing a native user interface for it, while not very difficult, does take time and some (presumably) skill. Since we already talk of ports to other such brother/sister OS's the same would seem to apply here. The argument is strengthened with the added effort of creating an Aqua UI and integrating other Mac OS X conventions which Tenon has done.
-- Michael
No affiliation with any Mac developer currently, nor have I ever purchased any Tenon product. However I do look forward to running their OS X Server.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.