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Dumping Aqua On Mac OS X For X11?
Sagefire asks: "Aqua is a beautiful interface but it can be incredibly resource intensive (especially for older/low-end machines). And, though the open source community has made great strides in reverse engineering proprietary drivers from Mac OS X, I would love to be able to simply keep using the drivers that came with it, for now. Since there is a fully functional BSD variant under the hood, is it possible (using X11.app, darwinports, and/or Fink) to boot to a command line and simply startx? Would it use less RAM to bypass Aqua?"
But even without running Aqua OS X is extremely resource-hungry. Test it yourself by logging in as username ">console" (without the quotes) for a command prompt and you'll see what I mean. Wish I had better news...
Caveat Utilitor
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Is X11 really that much better than Aqua? I don't think so. Remember, Aqua has been optimized for Mac hardware. X11 (unless you've compiled it yourself) probably hasn't been optimized to as great of an extent. You can try switching, but I don't think you'll se much of an improvement with X11 vs. Aqua.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
Yes, there are already comments along the lines of "why use OS X if you're not going to use Aqua?"; that's basically what it amounts to. You get few, if any, benefits from ditching Aqua if you're still running OS X - the only thing that you get from it is the drivers that came with the system in the first place, and if that's all you want, you can always run Darwin instead and copy in the necessary kexts for the hardware that doesn't already have drivers with it, especially since, under the hood, Darwin and OS X are the same, except that Darwin comes configured to run primarily as a *nix-type command-line based system instead of as a desktop with a nice GUI.
Could it be done? Yes, but it would probably take a larger investment of time to figure out how to remove or disable the stuff you don't want than it would be to start from a system that comes ready to run the way you want it anyway.
Dogma: Dead (mostly because your Karma ran it over)
Bullshit.
I remember running a full 'nix with X11 and TWM with 4mb of RAM on a Sun 3/80. If you wanted color, a Sun 3/60 could handle it with 8mb; 16mb would give you a "screaming" 4 mips pizza box. When the Sun 3/80s and Sparc 1's came out, a 32mb system with a cg24 sbus card could get you full 24bit color with a megapixel display. And it had plenty of RAM to do real work.
Compare that with a 128mb or 256mb G3 CRT iMac and you've got way more than enough ram and CPU horsepower to run X11 with plenty of useful apps. Christ, I ran X11 on a 486 with 8mb of RAM and a 512kb XVGA card back in 1994 and it worked just fine. (And BTW: NeXTStep on an old cube ran DPS just great in 16mb of RAM too. It's not DPDF that's the hog - it's Aqua).
Nope, In my considered opinion, if a machine is too old to run OS X (so we're clearly talking Macs here, remember?) then linux is probably the best option, as it will have the best software support. BSDs are also an option, but again, the software support for PPC BSD isn't going to be as good as PPC linux.
.. ever since I heard 'Barbie Girl' in fact.
But you're better off using something else (eg some Linux variant, BSD, etc.)
/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
However, if you really want to try, do the following:
1) open
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.
Since there is a fully functional BSD variant under the hood, is it possible (using X11.app, darwinports, and/or Fink) to boot to a command line and simply startx? Would it use less RAM to bypass Aqua?"
Yes, it's possible. At least, it was a few years ago, when I first installed KDE via fink then logged in at the login prompt as user ">console" (with no password) and performed a startx. I didn't use it for a terribly long time as a KDE-only box, and it was more an experiment to see what was possible - but it worked just like any other KDE setup. I didn't use Apple's own X11, but had XDarwin installed instead.
A note too - Aqua is only the default theme with OSX, and just describes the look of the OSX GUI. Quartz is the engine underneath that performance depends on. There was no noticeable difference in speed with XDarwin over Quartz, but perhaps that could be improved with more work on XDarwin.
What for you would like to do it? Just for the sake of it? None of Apple/OSX strenghts would really show up in such setup:
1. Drivers - If you need, a decent BSD with X11 go use FreeBSD and craft yourself hardware that works with FreeBSD. It should not be hard to specify a set of fully working hardware with great drivers for FreeBSD. I think you have much more options with PC hardware and FreeBSD (working decently) than with OSX. Or maybe go Linux, not much different from BSD really.
2. Software - None of OSX software (such like Photoshop, Office etc.) will work under X11. And in fact it is less decently packaged X11 software than for FreeBSD or Linux.
3. Support, quality etc. - you won't get any of this from Apple in such setup. With FreeBSD or Linux you will get decent quality and community support because running kernel and userspace/X11 on top of it is what we do with Linux/FreeBSD.
So I don't really see benefits of such setup. Go get yourself decent PC or laptop with supported hardware. Install FreeBSD or Linux on it and you will have that what you are seeking in quite polished form.
Mach is a resource hog. But that's not the fault of Aqua. However, Aqua is also a huge resource hog, without much benefit if you only have 2d video acceleration. Might as well just run X11 in that case. And, if you're going to do that - might as well just run Linux or NetBSD as monolithic kernels tend to run much faster.
There are several Linux distros for Mac hardware, just install one of those. I'd give regular Ubuntu a choice, and if that's too heavy-weight, try Xubuntu.
Ubuntu comes with a lot of software pre-installed, it feels a lot more responsive than OS X on the same hardware, and it has very much a Mac-like feel. I'm running it on an old iMac and have been quite happy with it.
Every Mac going back to the old Beige PPC 601 systems had 2D acceleration support.
Hell, even the 68040(and 68LC040) Quadras had 2d acceleration.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
That's true. And they'll even run NetBSD! 'Cause NetBSD will run on your freak'n toaster, with enough loving care and attention. :P
A few years ago I compared OS X 10.2 and KDE 3 (YDL) on a G3 All in One, with perhaps a Rage 128 or some other ATI GPU with 2 or 4 MB of VRAM.
With 256 and later 320MB RAM, KDE was much, much faster, by a long shot. It was a shock, since I'd long held the misconception that KDE/Gnome were slow (coming from the days of running Windows 95/NT vs. Gnome/KDE on old Pentiums with 64 MB of RAM).
OS X did not support that machine's video card for any sort of acceleration, and there was no way to turn down the needless eye candy to a level that made the OS usable.
OS X on that machine was slower than Windows 2000 with 48 MB of RAM.
What you're talking about doing practically speaking wouldn't allow you to run any of the GUI apps that come with OS X or those that are sold for it. If you take that away it's not really OS X. As some have already said, one wonders what the point of that is.
There's no way of knowing what part of the system is the cause of your performance issues without profiling it. ( You could do a 'System Trace' with the latest version of Shark. )
Aqua is part of the Apple HIG. It defines what UI elements look like and how they behave but the name does not refer to an implementation. Apple ships at least two implementations of many UI elements in their Carbon and Cocoa frameworks.
'Older' machines generally performed adequately with the software that shipped with them. Meanwhile every new Apple OS requires more cycles from the machines it's installed on. This is to be expected. I'm betting that the source of your problems is that you're running a 10.4 with all kinds of add-ons on a Mac that first shipped with 10.1 Even with more RAM I'd expect this to be slow.
-Harv
Why would you want to do this? Seriously. Why? You bought a mac, but you want to remove all the mac specific stuff from it. Why didn't you save you're money and just by a PC and install linux on it. If you're not using the mac apps, (and let's be honest, Darwin doesn't count. It's just another BSD clone, which is essentially just another unix.) then you bought the hardware to look cool. If you absolutely have to look cool, but not run any of the macosx apps, then just dual boot.
The whole point of a unix guy owning a mac is that it's unix in all the way he wants (command line, symlinks, standard unix tools) and none of the ways he doesn't (insmod, recompiliing kernels, fucking with wpasupplicant and buggy ass drivers). It Just Works(tm). You seem bent on ignoring THE advantage of the mac, and turning it into just another piece of commodity hardware, only at luxury prices. It's absolutely pointless.
I will say this. Make sure that services that do not need to run, like the dock or Apache, are not running. If you want to run X11, things like emacs are great, if you get to know to use them. There is really no reason to not have most things running in X11, although I have gotten used to mail.app.
Of course, the big issue in these machines seems to be memory. *nix likes memory and always has. It has seldom been the OS for small footprints. Most G4 macs can accommodate at least 512 MB, and if you running a G3 mac, you likely have other difficulties.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
is if it's possible to run Aqua / Quartz apps rootless on an X11 desktop (exactly the opposite of what X11.app does). This way I can use xlogin, GNOME, etc. for the default desktop UI, but still be able to run Mac-specific programs.
You don't need 3D acceleration to speed up normal window manager tasks; Window manager tasks (for virtually all current X11 window managers) don't require them. What you need is support for your card's 2D acceleration functions.
Using a common desktop environment like stock GNOME or KDE (or such mildly reworked as with Ubuntu), try running X in framebuffer mode without DRI enabled, then try running X with the correct hardware-specific driver selected, but DRI disabled. Finally, try running X with DRI enabled.
That'll give you a good idea which portions of your video card's hardware acceleration are required for your normal desktop use.
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What you said is somewhat true. the heavy threading made it feel very fast and responsive. it also would handle media (audio, MIDI, video) very quickly. Certain benchmarks, i'm sure, would show it to be slower. but not all types of opearations, as a rule, would be slower, just because of the microkernel or the multithreading.
my pet machine
I can confirm that Gentoo runs well on an old 266mhz green G3 new world IMac. The machine had 192MB of ram and I used it to test DR17 (get-e.org) on PPC. The biggest problem was installing the DRM drivers for the ATI Rage chip (Have to pull them from CVS). Aside from that everything seemed to work fine, as long as you disabled kernel pre-empt (this might be fixed in modern kernels).
BBH
KDE is slower when compaired to running a unencumbered fvwm2 desktop. Don't get me wrong, KDE and Gnome are very nice projects. They have done wonders to help the transition to linux from winblows. But there is just something to building a desktop from scratch and watching it run like a cat with a bottle rocket up its arse.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
Needless OS X eye candy?!
I suppose you think Paris Hilton's diamond labia ring is needless, too. Well, I'm here to tell you that OS X and Paris Hilton need their bling!
Yeah. I keep telling the scientists where I work, "Do your visualization on Macs; there's no better platform. But do your compute on Linux or one of the mono-kernel BSDs." You're absolutely right that heavy real-time threading tends to make a desktop "feel" faster, but that's simply UI responsiveness. If you want to do heavy compute - where context switching incurs a heavy toll on output - then, a monolithic kernel is still the best approach.
A good analogy is the difference between bandwidth and latency. Microkernels, like as is used with MacOS X, offer the best latency because the message passing allows for very fast interrupts. Just as are monolithic kernels better optimized for long tasks, with as few interrupts as necessary.
Tailor your software to meet your needs.
you cumshitting mouth-breather. it is pathetic that you take pride in running Nigger Linux on anything, much less a Mac, much less thinking anyone gives a shit.
That's awesome! I can now skip my daily visit to bash.org! I prefer to refer to Gentoo as a "Shit Vortex of incompatibility and misconfiguration", though it is not masicism that drives me run it, but a sense of duty. I find, report, and fix package bugs before they ever see the light of day in your "Whitey" distros. All I can really say is "You're Welcome".
Thanx For the chuckle,
BBH
I haven't ever seen such a clever way to respond to trolls. If I had points, I would mod this as Informative :)
I guess thats all I have to say.