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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."
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.
"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved." -- John Ashcroft
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.
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.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
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)."
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
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
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
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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