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Apple Explains How to Run X11 on Mac OS X
tuc writes "In this document posted on its Developer Connection, Apple explains how to install X11R6 on Mac OS X, details of the default quartz-wm window manager, how to compile X11 code on Mac OS X, how to install OpenOffice, and the like."
So? That doesn't mean one could just take the code for such a huge project, compile it and run it flawlessly.
It's much less work than, say, porting a UNIX project to run on Windows, but it's definitely much more complicated than just copying the source code to the Mac and typing "make."
X11 isn't installed by default. You have to do a custom Panther install.
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We have been doing this via fink for quite some time now. http://fink.sourceforge.net/
X.org is an implementation of the X11 protocol. X11R6 is the 6th revision of the X11 protocol. There was supposedly an X10 protocol before X11. What people have begun abandoning is XFree86, and not everyone is leaving it. I think NetBSD still uses it.
and their X11 is OpenGL native. So, rendering is fast as hell.
To those who want an aquafied OpenOffice, please check out NeoOffice. They are working to make OpenOffice more MacOS native. Currently, they have removed the need for X11, put in Aquafied menus, and native printer and font support. Sure, its not perfect yet, but its getting there.
On the other hand, it requires your end users to have X11 already installed and configured, which might be more of an issue for you, depending on your target audience.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
Or like when I ssh home (um, at lunch, right) and play Freecell. :-) Or run nedit, then go help -> about and see "Built on Linux, x86." Fun fun fun.
In all seriousness, I guess the deal here is that it's a newer version than what ships as X11.app? 'About' says 'X11 1.0 - XFree86 4.3.0'. I know the '1.0' refer's to the fact that it's *Apple's* 1.0, but can someone who spends more time with X than I do explain the significance of X11R6?
[later]
OK, I just looked at TFA. The title of this summary is a bit misleading--this title is "Apple Explains How to Run X11 on MacOS" but the actual article's title is "Configuring and Running X11 Applications on Mac OS X" and in goes on to say "X11 for Mac OS X... includes the full X11R6.6 technology including an X11 window server, Quartz window manager, libraries, and basic utilities such as xterm." OK, got it. I think. Still not sure how R6 and 4.3.0 relate, but the main thing is, there is nothing new here. They're talking about the X11 that OS X ships with.
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http://www.abisource.com/
I could never get OO to work on OS X, though I use it on my Windows Machine.
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Disclaimer: I am a developer for Mac OS X OpenOffice.org and a founder of the NeoOffice project.
:)
I happily noticed this myself earlier on in the week and was impressed to find the OpenOffice.org related section. Unfortunately there are some inaccuracies in the section, but I couldn't find any address to which corrections should be submitted.
Perhaps the most major omission is that the OpenOffice.org Mac OS X (X11) installer is not limited to 10.3 only. In fact, it supports both 10.2 and 10.3. For 10.2 users it also will automatically install XFree86 and a window manager if the system does not have XFree86 on it. Since Apple X11 is not redistributable under its license, 10.3 users are required ot manually install Apple X11. Ironically, that makes installation on 10.3 more inconvenient then 10.2!
On the trinity forums Smokey also noticed the file format "incompatibility" line in the article. It isn't actually true since OpenOffice.org is 100% compatible with StarOffice which, last I checked, is a commercial office suite even if it doesn't run on Mac OS X
Even with the little foibles, it's great to see support from Apple for X11 applications in general as well as a basic introduction that can help open up the entire world of X11 OSS applications for users, not just OpenOffice.org.
ed
In the section "Which Machine Is the Client?", they completely mess up the explanation. What is wrong with just saying "The X server is a display server. X applications are clients (running on your machine or another machine) which request the server (which may be running on your machine) to do something ("draw a line", etc)."
Hey now, that didn't deserve an offtopic. I bet I'm not the only one that misunderstood the difference between a protocol and an implementation of that protocol. Anyway it's still relevant because Apple may use XFree86 or X.org, and that was kinda my original question.
But seriously, thanks for clearing that up. All 12 of you.
Umm, right above the screenshot of XGalaga, it shows you how to start xgalaga, which is an X app.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
"Step 2: There is no step 2!"
.rc file to curb this behavior.
Depends. If you're running anything in KDE or Gnome, there's quite a few steps that Apple doesn't go into. I was quite perturbed to install KDE, have it start up successful, and get the Quartz WM trying to take it over (imagine KDE dialogs with Quartz close buttons). It took me a long time to figure out exactly what needed to be added to the
Disclaimer: I am a developer for Mac OS X OpenOffice.org and a founder of the NeoOffice project.
/. comments in that thread.
Well, as it turns out my update to the timeline was grossly misquoted in a couple of places. The update was really just to put things in perspective as to what was really going on in the various projects as well as to reinforce the importance of the X11 work. It was never intended to "cancel" anything since, well, there wasn't really anything to cancel. The update was just stating how things really are within the project.
Today's article on eWeek has some much better reporting on the progress towards 2.0 X11 and other issues that had been raised by my update. I highly recommend giving it a read as it's a bit more informative then the old
ed
Disclaimer: I am a developer of Mac OS X OpenOffice.org and a founder of the NeoOffice project.
If the X11 server was preloaded onto all Apple systems, it would also solve quite a number of distribution problems for OpenOffice.org and other X11 applications. The license for Apple X11 doesn't allow third parties to bundle it and redistribute it. That makes it really frustrating from an installation perspective. Instead of being able to automatically install the X11 server (like we do using XFree86 for 10.2) we have to prompt the user to either go out and find where the X11User.pkg is on their Panther CDs or Software Restore CDs or even go and download it from Apple to install. Our installers can automatically install all of the other 6 applications OOo requires to run, but we just can't get Apple X11 so it kind of puts a dent in the installation experience. I'm sure that other commerical appliactions like MATLAB would like to be able to auto-install X11 as well.
Preloading X11 onto all shipping systems would allow us to not have to worry about users getting confused by the additional steps of the process. Traditionally, Mac installers are very simple and it's rare they require other software to be installed first.
Another solution which would be equally good IMHO is if Apple could come up with some type of distribution clause in their license to allow X11User.pkg to be bundled with installers for other applications. I don't think the problem is the underlying XFree86 based stuff, but rather quartz-wm and maybe other components. Last I knew quartz-wm wasn't open sourced, only the XFree86 derived stuff under the MIT license.
ed
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
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
English is easier said than done.
No. OS X is Unix, and Apple's X11 implementation is fine. X apps don't 'behave' as well as native applications, but all the stuff you love about X, e.g. network transparency, works great.
X11 is an open group specification that is implemented by XFree86, X.org, and a number of commercial X servers. R6.6 is the current version of that specification.
4.3.0 is the version of the Xfree86 software that Apple ships with OS X, which implements X11R6.6.
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
I know the '1.0' refer's to the fact that it's *Apple's* 1.0, but can someone who spends more time with X than I do explain the significance of X11R6?
... originally it was simply X11, developed by the X consortium. However, since they were slow to adapt to new platforms or technologies (notably the x86 platform becoming powerful enough to run unix), a spin-off project called XFree86 evolved (it's a bit more complicated, but then who needs details). They became the de-facto reference implementation of X11, even if they didn't have the honor of owning any of the X consortium IP (like trademarks and so on). However, the leadership of the XFree86 project a while ago decided that they would change the license in ways the community did not like. As a result, the last truly free version of XFree86 is 4.3, which is the code that Apple's X11 1.0 is based on. X.org was founded around the same timeframe to step into the void left by the XFree86 project's implosion, and they now develop the official reference implementation (currently X.Org X11R6.8.1). Likely, in the future, apple's X11 will be based on the X.Org code.
X11 is two things, a standard for windowing systems, and a series of implementations of that standard. X11, the standard, is developed by the X.org foundation, at www.x.org. The current base version of that is version 11, release 6, X11R6. Don't let the version 11 thing fool you though, X has been at version 11 since 1987, and likely will never get to version 12, which is why everyone just calls it X11.
As for the implementations
The main reason I can see for Apple not doing such a thing is that it might make things seem a bit weird to people who are accustomed to thinking of each computer as a separate device, and not a big cloud of computation/storage/etc., and would rather do the "cloud" functionality via more traditional (to Windows/Mac users, anyway) file-sharing conduits such as AFP, WebDAV, etc.
Incidentally, Cocoa is the API, while Aqua is the equivalent of the window manager. Cocoa is to X11 as Aqua is to, say, fvwm, twm, pwm, etc.; it's not Aqua which would be made network-transparent.
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The general tendency is to think of server as being "the big machine that does all the hard work for lots of little clients", or "the machine that provides some useful function, of which clients take advantage", and of course the client as the converse of these.
While these may often be true, the definitional difference is much simpler and clearer: the client is the system that initiates a connection. That's all. And the behaviour of X11 clients like xterm making connections to your X11 server is consistent with this.
And to answer your actual question, yes, an X11 server and set of standard clients is both an option from the standard osx install discs, and readily available via fink. I would imagine that this guide is not about the very basics of getting the server running ("You see that thing in your applications directory that looks like a big X? Doubleclick it."), but in how it quartz-wm differs from other common window managers, how X11 interacts with Quartz if they're both running, etc.
To expand upon what canon006 said, by default the "root" account is disabled in OS X. For security reasons, it's not recommended that you enable it unless you really, really need it. If you need to run a command as root, you can type "sudo [command name]", and when it asks for a password, type in your own password, assuming your account is considered an Admin account in the system preferences.
.deb package format, even). If you're a long-time Linux user, there are probably a lot of little programs in there that you'll find useful.
By the way, if you're new to OS X, I'd recommend checking out Fink. It's basically a package manager for UNIX software that is known to compile on OS X; it works somewhat like Debian's apt-get (it uses the
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